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Student selected as Truman Scholar	New education dean hired from Kansas	Decline in enrollment prompts planning	Center transforms trash into useful material

NMSU visitors in search of... positive view of the future

Turner offers sobering thoughts amid allegory and humor

Humanity is going to either sink or swim together, media giant Ted Turner quipped during the Gardiner Memorial Lecture on April 15. "We've got to be intelligent and take care of our little spaceship," Turner told the unversity audience.

In an evangelical speech mixed with one-liners and profundity, Turner spoke of cultivating love and respect for people and the planet as his wife, Jane Fonda, listened from the audience. Fonda addressed a public audience on the topic of teen pregnancy earlier in the day.

Turner is vice chairman of Time Warner Inc., the world's largest media and entertainment company. The couple owns the 360,000-acre Armendaris Ranch and the 155,000-acre Ladder ranch near Truth or Consequences, N.M., and the Vermejo Ranch in northeastern New Mexico.

'How are we doing?' Wiesel: 'Not too well.'

Indifference is the greatest threat to human rights everywhere, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel told NMSU audiences in March.

Nearly 3,000 people heard Wiesel's University Speakers Series presentation, "Building a Moral Society," at the Pan American Center. Earlier in the day he fielded questions from reporters and from students on topics ranging from peace in the Middle East to racial intolerance. "How are we doing?" he said, repeating a reporter's catch-all question about the world's condition. "Not too well. Better than I feared but worse than I expected."

Wiesel, who survived the Nazi concentration camps that claimed the lives of his parents and his younger sister during World War II, warned against the dangers of indifference. ÒThe opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference," he said. "We know how to fight injustice. We must learn how to fight indifference."

The University Speakers Series is presented annually by the NMSU Honors Program. Previous speakers have included author Alice Walker, primatologist Jane Goodall, Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes and paleontologist/author Stephen Jay Gould.

Student selected as Truman Scholar

Kelly Neville, NMSU's student body president, has been selected as a 1997 Truman Scholar from a nationwide pool of more than 700 applicants.

She is the second NMSU student to win the prestigious award. Government major Jason Ackleson received the Truman award last year. "Now we're hoping to become a school that produces a winner every year," said Wenda Travathan, chair of the NMSU Fellowship Committee.

The Truman Scholarship, named after the 33rd president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, acknowledges students for their leadership potential, intellectual ability and likelihood of "making a difference" in the field of government or public service. The scholarship will pay Neville $3,000 for her senior year at NMSU, and up to $27,000 for two or three years of graduate study.

Neville, a junior majoring in international business, is a 1994 graduate of Aztec (N.M.) High School. After receiving her bachelorÕs degree, she plans to attend graduate school to study public affairs and public policy in developing countries.

New education dean hired from Kansas

H. Prentice Baptiste Jr. has been selected as the new dean of the College of Education. He replaces Barbara Simmons, who has chosen, after serving with distinction for 12 years as dean, to devote her energies to being a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction. Baptiste, associate director of the Center for Science Education at Kansas State University, will join NMSU's administration July 1.

Baptiste

Baptiste has his masters and doctorate from Indiana University and has more than 20 years experience in higher education. He is a professor in Kansas State's Foundations and Adult Learning Department and a program planner for the Midwest Desegregation Center.

Decline in enrollment prompts planning

Since NMSU President J. Michael Orenduff launched a university-wide strategic planning process last fall, more than 150 people have volunteered for committees and subcommittees.

The impetus for strategic planning came from concern over declines in enrollment, federal research dollars and state funding. NMSU lost about 600 students in the two years leading up to the fall 1996 semester.

The president said the university is facing significant challenges, but "we are planning from a position of strength."

Orenduff told NMSU's Strategic Planning Committee that the only givens are that the university remain a land-grant, public institution with its main campus in Las Cruces. The committee is spending about a year gathering information and drafting NMSU's first-ever strategic plan for the next three to five years.

Committee co-chairs are Jim Peach, an economics professor, and Cookie Stephan, a sociology professor. They seek comments from faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members about NMSU's strengths, weaknesses, programs, mission and future. Comments may be sent by e-mail to strategy@nmsu.edu. Or call Peach at (505) 646-3113 or Stephan at 646-4312.

Rita A. Popp, '93

Center transforms trash into useful material

The Aggie Recycling Center passed the two-million-pound mark in recycled materials this spring and celebrated with an open house of its new facility.

The building near the Bookstore Warehouse on Locust Street holds equipment for sorting and baling waste paper. Across the street are piles of composting organic matter - grass clippings, leaves, tree trimmings and manure from the College of Agriculture's livestock pens.

"That's a two-year accumulation that we have stockpiled," said Kerry Krumsiek, NMSU recycling manager. "In the past it was burned, or the university paid to have it hauled away and buried in a landfill. Now we're turning it into a useful product."

The compost is used to enrich the soil for lawns and planted areas throughout the university's 900-acre main campus.