AMP helps boost number of minority grads
 

The number of science, math, engineering and technology degrees awarded to minorities in New Mexico has increased by 87 percent - from 253 in 1992-93, to 474 in 1998-99 - in part because of the New Mexico Alliance for Minority Participation, headquartered at NMSU.     Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, New Mexico AMP helps historically underrepresented minorities excel in science, math, engineering and technology fields. Among them are undergraduates in a range of majors, such as chemistry, engineering, microbiology and wildlife sciences. The statewide partnership involves 21 two-year colleges and six four-year universities, and is one of 27 such programs in the nation.     Leonard Lowe, '99, a former AMP student from Fruitland, N.M., who received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, participated in the undergraduate research assistantship program through AMP. He said it helped him learn technical writing and communication skills, which prepared him for his job with Honeywell at the White Sands Test Facility. The number of science, math, engineering and technology degrees awarded to minorities in New Mexico has increased by 87 percent- from 253 in 1992-93, to 474 in 1998-99 - in part because of the New Mexico Alliance for Minority Participation, headquartered at NMSU.

NMSU student Kimberly Nelson, right, an AMP participant, shows Las Cruces public school students how to build and program robots. The students are, from left, Nick Mendoza, ninth grade, Las Cruces High School; Chris Simpson, 10th grade, Onate High School; Aaron Rodriguez, seventh grade, Vista Middle School; and Jeffrey Evans, ninth grade, Las Cruces High School. Photo by Michael Kiernan.

    Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, New Mexico AMP helps historically underrepresented minorities excel in science, math, engineering and technology fields. Among them are undergraduates in a range of majors, such as chemistry, engineering, microbiology and wildlife sciences. The statewide partnership involves 21 two-year colleges and six four-year universities, and is one of 27 such programs in the nation.

    Leonard Lowe, '99, a former AMP student from Fruitland, N.M., who received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, participated in the undergraduate research assistantship program through AMP. He said it helped him learn technical writing and communication skills, which prepared him for his job with Honeywell at the White Sands Test Facility.

    "It was more than just taking classes," he said. "I would strongly recommend it to others because I know a lot of students going to school that have no job experience. Going through AMP gets your foot in the door to find out what it might be like on the other side."

    "The focus of AMP as a whole is to recruit, retain and graduate students with the expertise the country needs to contribute to the technical workforce, and to groom future faculty," said Ricardo Jacquez, AMP director.

    AMP offers students scholarships, tutoring, bridge programs, mentoring and opportunities to conduct research and present at conferences. Through a SMET 101 course, students are introduced to SMET fields, develop teamwork, critical thinking and problem solving skills and explore career options.

    Kimberly Nelson, an NMSU electrical engineering technology major and AMP student, transferred from Dine College. She decided on her major after taking the SMET 101 course. This past summer she worked with her faculty mentor, learning how to build and program light- and heat-seeking robots, then teaching area middle and high school students how to do the same thing.

    Rachel Kendall
 

Region's voters have impact James Peach and Richard Adkisson, economics and international business professors at NMSU, have completed a study of the voting patterns of residents along the U.S.-Mexico border in U.S. presidential elections.  They found the border counties in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas voted differently from the rest of the state' counties, which could have implications for future elections.  In the spring of presidential election years, economist Ray Fair of Yale University releases predictions for election outcomes based on economic models. After his 1996 article the NMSU researchers began to consider his work from a border perspective.  "The border is right here and we have done a lot of research related to the border. We often find this area is different from national results," Peach said.  The researchers used data from the 1992 and 1996 elections to determine if the border region votes differently based strictly on geography. "We controlled for other factors such as ethnicity and other social and economic considerations," Adkisson said. "Even after controlling for these variables, we found a significant difference."  Overall, the border counties voted more often for Democrats, but there were discrepancies between different parts of the border. Texas border counties were heavily Democratic, and California's border counties were heavily Republican.  "Ross Perot was a unique element in those elections that probably won't occur in 2000," Peach said. "Along the border, Perot helped the Democrats."  Research shows voting patterns are greatly influenced by economic variables such as income and employment rate, as well as past voting behavior and political loyalty. Adkisson and Peach also theorize that border residents pay more attention to federal issues.  "National policies on issues including immigration, trade flows, exchange rates, migration and drug policy are more of a concern to them," Peach said. "That may be part of the reason we see a difference in their voting." Rachel Kendall

Chanover selected as Tombaugh Scholar

    Clyde Tombaugh would be pleased. For the next two years, the astronomy research scholarship he helped establish will be held by a fellow planetary scientist, Nancy Chanover, '97.

    She recently was selected as NMSU's third Tombaugh Scholar - an honor named for and made possible by the man who discovered the planet Pluto.
 

Chanover earned her Ph.D. in astronomy at NMSU. She did postdoctoral research at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and returned to take a college faculty position in the NMSU astronomy department. She is the first NMSU faculty member to be selected for the Tombaugh Scholarship, which is advertised nationally. At the moment, Chanover's discoveries are related to the atmosphere of Saturn and its large moon Titan. Her research will be important to the success of NASA's Cassini mission, a four-year, close-up study of the Saturnian system that will begin in earnest in 2004, when a spacecraft that was launched in 1997 approaches the ringed planet. "On Saturn itself, we're trying to understand some of the storm systems that have been seen by the Hubble Space Telescope, to find out how long they last, how they move, and what wave length it's best to observe them in," she said of her research. "For Titan, there are a lot of brightness variations on the surface that are interesting - they could be due to oceans, lakes, mountains, or some other kind of terrain."

Tombaugh Scholar Nancy Chanover stands near a portrait of the late Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of the planet Pluto. Photo byMichael Kiernan.

      Chanover uses data from a range of sources, including the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope; the 3.5-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory, operated by NMSU on a ridge high in the Sacramento Mountains; and the Mount Wilson Observatory in California.

    For the next two years, her NMSU salary will be paid by the Tombaugh Scholar endowment, allowing her to concentrate full time on research.

    Tombaugh, who joined the NMSU faculty in the mid-1950s, died in January 1997 at the age of 90. Just 24 when he discovered Pluto, he was in his 80s when he embarked on a speaking tour of about 40 cities to talk about his discovery and raise contributions toward the scholarship endowment. It now has assets of about $900,000.

Karl Hill