Biology professor Peter Houde stands beneath the skeleton of a 25-foot adult female minke whale, which he re-assembled over the past two years for display in NMSU's vertebrate museum in Foster Hall Room 136. The museum will be open during the biology department's Homecoming open house and reception in Room 234 of Foster from 3-5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 13. The whale skeleton was donated to NMSU by Portland State University. The whale's corpse was washed up on the Oregon shore in 1986. The 10-ton animal was about 15 years old when she died.  Photo by Michael Kiernan

"Smart bridge" a first

    A new bridge over the Rio Puerco west of Albuquerque will be the first of its kind with built-in fiber-optic sensors to monitor stress in the bridge's girders. The project was scheduled to begin in July and be completed by the end of 2000.

    Known as "smart bridge" technology, the self-monitoring system offers many advantages over methods that rely largely on visual inspections, said NMSU civil engineering professor Rola Idriss, '86, '91.

    Idriss previously has retrofitted an Interstate 10 bridge in Las Cruces with fiber-optic sensors as part of her smart bridge research. The Rio Puerco bridge, being built for an Interstate 40 frontage road about 15 miles west of Albuquerque, is the first U.S. bridge to have this type of monitoring system built into the girders, Idriss said.

    "This is a really interesting project, because it is so practical," she said. "The data will be immediately useful, from the time the concrete is poured for the girders, as they are transported to the site, during the construction of the bridge, and while it is in service."

    The bridge also will be the first in New Mexico to utilize high-performance concrete, said Bryce Simons, state concrete engineer for the New Mexico Highway and Transportation Department.

    The built-in monitoring system will provide data for assessing the performance of the concrete, which is expected to withstand heavier loads and last longer than ordinary concrete, he said.

    Collaborating on the project is the University of New Mexico, which is involved in testing the high-performance concrete.

    For bridge safety monitoring, the use of fiber-optic sensors can provide information on the effects of stress long before signs of fatigue begin to show visibly, allowing engineers to address potential problems before they become serious and costly, Idriss said.

    Karl Hill

New health science bachelor's begins

    A new bachelor's degree program in environmental and occupational health (EOH) is being offered beginning this fall through the Department of Health Science in the College of Health and Social Services.

    From 40 to 60 students are expected to choose the major, according to department head Stephen Arnold. A shortage of qualified EOH professionals has created career opportunities nationwide in the public and private sectors, he said.

    Graduates of the EOH bachelor of science degree program will be qualified to find employment in most areas of environmental health, occupational health and public health, Arnold said.

    Nationwide, there are only 23 EOH accredited university programs. NMSU's program will be the first in the Southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

    No additional faculty or staff will be hired to administer the program because all EOH courses already were being offered by NMSU.

Stamp of approval

    The master of public health program at NMSU has received full accreditation by the Council on Education for Public Health for a three-year term.

    The CEPH "is the premier accrediting body for graduate programs in all areas of public health," said Stephen Arnold, an associate professor and head of the health science department in NMSU's College of Health and Social Services.

    NMSU now has one of only 13 CEPH-accredited graduate programs in community health education in the United States.

    "Our program is now recognized at the national level, even internationally, which will assist our students as they enter the professional work force," Arnold said.

    The program began in the fall of 1996 and has grown to an enrollment of 25 graduate students.

Creative writers earn national acclaim

    NMSU novelist Antonya Nelson, an associate English professor, has been awarded a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and English department creative writers have won acclaim in The Pushcart Prize 2000 anthology.
 

Nelson's Guggenheim fellowship provides an unrestricted cash award of about a year's salary. This year 182 fellows - only 15 of them poets or writers - were selected from 2,900 artists, scholars and scientists who applied from the United States and Canada. The award is based on distinguished achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. Nelson is the author of the novel Living to Tell, which was published this year, the novels Talking in Bed and Nobody's Girl, and three short-story collections.

Nelson

    The New Yorker magazine named her one of the 20 best young fiction writers in America and invited her to give a reading in May at the magazine's 75th anniversary celebration. In August she was asked to read at the renowned Breadloaf Conference in Vermont as the conference also marked its 75th anniversary.
 

Poet Tony Hoagland, who recently left the NMSU faculty, also received a Guggenheim Fellowship this year.     English department members are recognized in the Pushcart Prize 2000 anthology, the 24th annual collection of the best work published the previous year by hundreds of literary journals and small presses.     This year's anthology includes professor Robert Boswell's short story Miss Famous, which originally was published in The Colorado Review, and Hoagland's poem The Dog Years, which appeared in Many Mountains Moving.

Boswell

    The anthology mentions other important literary works published during 1999. On the list are stories by Nelson, Professor Kevin McIlvoy and English graduate student Becky Hagenston.

    NMSU's national literary magazine Puerto Del Sol was recognized for a story by Nicholas Montemarano.

    Copies of The Pushcart Prize 2000 are available at the NMSU Bookstore, (505) 646-1427, and at bookstores nationwide.

Well done, grads

    Graduates of NMSU's College of Education are performing well above average on the state's three-part licensing test for public school teacher candidates.

    A review of the March New Mexico Teacher Assessment test results showed that 97 percent of the 29 NMSU graduates who took the teacher competency portion of the test for secondary education passed it, and 100 percent of those who took the elementary education portion - 25 graduates - passed.

    Those figures outpaced the state averages of 84 percent passing the secondary education portion and 90 percent passing the elementary education portion.

    NMSU's graduates also performed above state averages in the basic skills and general knowledge portions of the Teacher Assessment test.

Women's teams now Aggies too

All NMSU intercollegiate athletics teams are now known as the Aggies.

The women's teams had been called the Roadrunners since the men's and women's programs combined into one athletics department in 1975, although the nickname dates back to at least the 1950s.

The change, which took effect July 1, came at the urging of several members of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.

"The student-athletes felt that having one nickname was important to them, that it would be less confusing and would help with marketing and promotions," Athletics Director Brian Faison said. "The Roadrunners will always be an important part of the fabric of women's athletics at New Mexico State. We will always recognize that important role and maintain that history."

"We're going in a new direction with the Sun Belt Conference," said Associate Athletics Director and Senior Women's Administrator Karen Fey, who has been with the NMSU athletics department for 27 years. "The change will be helpful in many ways, including from a marketing and promotions standpoint. The timing for the change is perfect."

Head coaches' contracts extended

    Head football coach Tony Samuel and men's head basketball coach Lou Henson are working under extended employment contracts ratified by the NMSU Board of Regents.

    Samuel had one year remaining on his original four-year contract signed in 1997. The current agreement extends Samuel's contract through the 2004 football season.

    Samuel led the Aggies to a 6-5 record last season, just the third winning season at NMSU in the last 32 years. NMSU finished one game away from a Big West Conference title and berth in the Humanitarian Bowl.

    Under Samuel, the Aggies have beaten rival University of New Mexico two straight seasons and in 1999 recorded what many experts nationally considered the upset of the year: a 35-7 victory over then-22nd ranked Arizona State on the road.

    During Samuel's three seasons, 24 student-athletes have been honored by the Big West as Academic All-Conference selections in football - the highest total in the league over that span.

    The Board of Regents ratified a two-year contract extension for head men's basketball coach Lou Henson, '55, '56, extending his contract through the 2003-04 season.

    Henson had two years remaining on his original four-year contract signed in 1998. Henson is 11th all-time in victories among Division I coaches with a 726-363 mark. He is the winningest coach in NMSU (236-103) and Illinois (423-224) history. Last season, his third year of his second stint as the Aggies' head coach, he led New Mexico State to a 22-10 mark and an NIT bid.

    Henson previously coached at NMSU for nine years, including a trip to the Final Four in 1969-70, when the Aggies posted a 27-3 record. In 1975, Henson moved to Illinois, where he coached for 21 seasons and led the Illini to 12 NCAA Tournament berths, including an appearance in the 1989 Final Four.

Former NMSU player signs with Celtics
 

Randy Brown in his days at NMSU.

The Boston Celtics in August signed former Aggie basketball player Randy Brown, ex-'91, to a three-year contract worth $7.5 million, according to ESPN.com and the Boston Globe. Brown spent the past five seasons with the Chicago Bulls and was a member of three championship teams (1996-98). The veteran guard spent the first four years of his career with the Sacramento Kings. He was with the Aggies from 1990-91. Last season, Brown started 55 of the 59 games he played, averaging 27.5 minutes, 6.4 points and 2.4 rebounds.

Gary Ward named head baseball coach
 

Ward

Former Aggie baseball and basketball great Gary Ward, '63, who led Oklahoma State to 10 College World Series appearances in 19 seasons as head coach from 1978-96, has been named New Mexico State's ninth head baseball coach. Gary Ward's .753 career winning percentage ranks sixth all-time among Division I coaches, and he stands 23rd in total victories with 953. His OSU teams earned seven consecutive CWS berths from 1981-87 and were national runners-up in 1981, '87 and '90. Former Aggie baseball and basketball great Gary Ward, '63, who led Oklahoma State to 10 College World Series appearances in 19 seasons as head coach from 1978-96, has been named New Mexico State's ninth head baseball coach.

Gary Ward's .753 career winning percentage ranks sixth all-time among Division I coaches, and he stands 23rd in total victories with 953. His OSU teams earned seven consecutive CWS berths from 1981-87 and were national runners-up in 1981, '87 and '90.
 

Ward replaced his son Rocky Ward as part of a staff reorganization.

    "The decision to reorganize the Aggie baseball program resulted from an intense evaluation," New Mexico State Athletics Director Brian Faison said.

    "In conversations with Gary, Rocky and (Associate Athletics Director) Karen Fey, every aspect has been analyzed with particular emphasis on the areas of budget, facility, academics, fund raising and recruiting in an effort to chose the best option available to improve our baseball program."

    Gary Ward served as the Aggies' top assistant during the past season after being out of coaching for three years. Before his tenure at OSU, he had served as head coach of Yavapai Junior College in Prescott, Ariz., from 1970-77, where he led the school to national championships in 1975 and 1977. From 1963-69, Gary Ward was the head baseball and basketball coach at Collinsville (Okla.) High School. During the 1962-63 season, he served as a graduate assistant baseball coach at NMSU as well as being the freshman basketball head coach. He competed in baseball and basketball at NMSU from 1960-62 and was named to the school's Athletic Hall of Fame in 1991.

    Rocky Ward, who completed his fourth season with the Aggies in 2000, was hired in 1996. Prior to his appointment at NMSU, he was an assistant coach at Kansas State University.

Student-athletes match best-ever GPA

    This fall NMSU student-athletes are aiming to match or exceed their best-ever record - in the classroom. As a group they achieved a 2.96 cumulative grade point average following the spring 2000 semester, matching 1999 for their best spring GPA ever.

    Eight of NMSU's 14 teams combined to average a 3.0 or better during the spring. Eleven of the Aggies' 14 programs own cumulative GPAs of 3.0 or better following the spring semester. Forty-seven percent of all NMSU student-athletes have a 3.0 cumulative GPA or better.

    Of the 298 participants in NMSU athletics, 161 qualified for the Academic Wall of Honor in the Pan American Center by achieving a 3.0 or better cumulative or semester grade point average. Sixteen student-athletes posted perfect 4.0 grade point averages during the spring semester.