NMSU's Alumni Association has mapped out an ambitious new year. Its plans include chartering 25 alumni chapters nationwide and boosting alumni participation through its new Internet Web site.

Debbie Widger, '81, '93, alumni relations director, says the ventures have complementary purposes. "We want to connect the alums back to the university, and we want to give them the opportunity to network among each other," she says.

In many cases, the new charters will build on alumni organizations already in place. To achieve charter status, each group now must have 25 dues-paying alumni and elected officers. Leading the charge for increased alumni participation this year are, from left, Debbie Widger, '81, '93, alumni relations director; Anna Mejia Chieffo, '91, Alumni Association president; and Archie Beckett, '51, president of the newly chartered Dona Ana County alumni chapter. They are pictured with Aggie memorabilia in Dove Hall's Alumni Living Room. Photos by Michael Kiernan The alumni chapter's program chair, for example, will work with the Alumni Association staff in planing up to three events a year. "One could be a pre-game event, which is always popular with younger members. We will ask the chapters what other events they would like," Widger says. The San Jose, Calif., alumni group, for example, planned a reception March 11 in conjunction with NMSU's retablo traveling exhibit, "El Favor de los Santos," which was scheduled to open in San Jose March 4. A reputation for having fun may be why Archie Beckett, '51, is president of the newly chartered Dona Ana County chapter. Beckett, who helped found the popular Oral History Club in Las Cruces, promotes the pleasure of "informal learning." He would like to see, for example, classes in conversational Spanish in which a tutor would lead a group of alums in lively discussions in Spanish - minus textbook and tests. "This way, everyone would be having fun," he says. He also wants to host a "mortanza," or traditional hog barbecue. The family affair, possibly to be held next fall, would include all types of entertainment, including "washers," a horseshoe-like game popular in the Hispanic culture. "We have 13,000 Aggies in Dona Ana County. It would be great if we could get a thousand of them to come," he says. The Alumni Association will continue established programs such as High School Honors Night during which the association awards certificates of academic achievement to high school juniors. The events are held throughout New Mexico and West Texas. Anna Mejia Chieffo, '91, counts Honors Night as one of her favorite functions as president of the Alumni Association's Executive Council.

"I'm in the education business, so I care about student recognition," she says. Chieffo, a professor of business at the Dona Ana Branch Community College, is delighted the association in 1997 began giving the Outstanding Graduates Award to branch college graduates. "I'm pleased we brought the branch campus into the fold. It shows that the association also supports two-year students," she says.

Alumni Office staff members play an important role in keeping graduates connected to NMSU. From left are Roger Walker, '93, '98, Sylvia Saenz Franco, '95, Patti Benzie, '88, seated, and Nohemi Perez.

The Alumni Association also is bringing Aggies into the fold through a new Web site, which offers the latest NMSU and alumni news plus information ranging from world news to golf scores. Using this Web site, alums can customize their home pages to feature up to nine topics specific to their interests. For example, clicking on music news pops up U2's March tour schedule, while clicking on health news reveals the latest on fad diets. "The Internet also is changing the way alums keep track of what's going on at NMSU," Widger says. Younger graduates like the speed of the Internet and routinely use it to zip suggestions to the Alumni Association office. The Web site's free e-mail service also helps on-the-move graduates keep track of each other no matter where they are. Linda G. Harris, '80

Liefeld on lookout for fireballs

Fireballs are large meteorites that shoot across the Earth's skies, leaving a fiery tail behind them. Recently, scientists became especially fascinated by the gaudy phenomena when they began observing them by satellite. It seems not every meteorite becomes a fireball and, like space-traveling Eurotrash, fireballs seem to congregate at certain spots on the globe, said Richard Spalding, a senior researcher at Sandia National Labs.

Robert Liefeld, left, and physics student Chris Hoxworth on the roof of Gardiner Hall

To investigate these and other fireball traits, Spalding and some colleagues established the "fireball network" in 1998, setting up a line of sky-watching video cameras located on Vancouver Island in Canada, in Washington state and near Albuquerque. In 1999 the group added another camera to its network - on the roof of NMSU's Gardiner Hall. With the help of senior physics major Chris Hoxworth, NMSU physics professor Robert Liefeld set up and maintains a video camera suspended on a scaffold and aimed at a fishbowl-shaped convex mirror below it. The camera can record a 360-degree view of the sky. Connected to three video recorders whose eight-hour tapes turn on sequentially, it films the skies around Las Cruces 24 hours a day, Liefeld said. But the network's all-sky, all-the-time equipment has one drawback. Because the camera films in real time, it's difficult and tedious to review the tapes to see if they have recorded interesting phenomena - also, the tapes are recycled every two weeks, erasing the evidence of any undetected space travelers, Liefeld said.

So Liefeld has asked residents of the surrounding area to report to him the time, location and direction of any unusual celestial phenomenon they sight.

In 1997, he noted, a fireball did cross Las Cruces' skies, heading for West Texas. Several people reported seeing it, and even caught it on video, but because they failed to record the times of their sightings or the meteor's direction of travel, researchers were never able to pin down where it landed.

Jack King