Profiles

NMSU grads produce prize-winning fiction

Colorado State also publishes the Colorado Review, which will include one of Lee's stories this fall. Many of the stories in Lee's collection appeared in her thesis, and one of them, "Still Life," won a $3,000 Jim Sagel/Red Crane Books prize. She won a 1999 $7,000 Rona Jaffe Writer's Award for her fiction.

The writers agree that the literary life isn't easy and that NMSU's writing program has been a key element in their success. Parsons said he almost gave up on getting Leaving Disneyland published after 10 agents rejected it. Then his thesis adviser Robert Boswell suggested entering it in national contests. Now, as Parsons anticipates the book's publication, he has nearly completed a second novel, Malpais, which in an earlier version was his NMSU thesis.

Lee, who also is working on a novel, wrote fiction for about 10 years before she came to NMSU. Faculty members Boswell, Kevin McIlvoy and her thesis adviser, Antonya Nelson, "helped me see the weaknesses in my work and improve it," she says.

Lee also writes for such publications as Conde Nast Traveler. All but one of the stories in her collection are set outside of the United States.

"I spent about 15-16 years traveling fairly obsessively, and I started writing somewhere in there," Lee says. "Now all that seemingly pointless travel is paying off."

Rita A. Popp, '93

Reed edits book on ancient culture

Reed

Paul Reed, '86, '88, had ample experience of his topic when he decided in 1996 to edit a book on Native American culture in the Southwest. Foundations of Anasazi Culture, published by the University of Utah Press last September, explores new evidence about the early stages of the Anasazi, prior to their development into the culture which built the elaborate, multi-storied buildings whose ruins dot the Southwest.

He has observed or excavated sites and gained direct knowledge of about half the projects discussed by the 21 authors whose articles are included in Foundations of Anasazi Culture.

Reed was looking for a place to publish his own writing on what are called the "Basketmaker" sites when he decided to put together the book. Given his contacts, collecting the articles was a fairly informal process, he said. "I asked around, got a list (of researchers) together and started contacting people," he said. Steadman Upham, formerly an associate dean of NMSU's graduate school and one of Reed's professors in its sociology/anthropology department, who is currently president of Claremont Graduate University in California, calls the book a challenge to the orthodox position on the beginnings of Anasazi culture. "A key part of Anasazi history, known as the Basketmaker-Pueblo transition, remains poorly understood. Reed and the other authors in this book bring forth big ideas about technology, settlement, economy, and polity to shed light on the transition and on the larger question of origins," Upham wrote. Jack King

Disability inspires teaching career

When Ray Banks, '89, '93, '00, enrolled at NMSU to study engineering technology, he never imagined where his studies would lead him - to teaching computer classes to inmates at the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility in Las Cruces.

Banks didn't earn the bachelor's degree in engineering technology as he planned. Instead, after he was diagnosed with dyslexia in his junior year, he earned an associate's degree through Dona Ana Branch Community College's youth and adolescent paraprofessional program, a bachelor's at NMSU in special education and a master's in learning technologies. Banks said the dyslexia affected his ability to think abstractly, a skill necessary to success in math and engineering.

 

"Once I was diagnosed with a learning disability, I didn't think it would in any way stop me from getting an education," Banks said. "All the disability did was show me where my talents are - teaching." By learning about his own disability Banks has been able to recognize similar symptoms in the inmates he now teaches, who he says have failed to learn in traditional environments. Recently Banks received a letter from Harvard University asking him to take part in a study focusing on learning disabled students who have obtained higher education degrees. According to Banks, only 3 percent of all people with dyslexia earn master's or doctoral degrees. "I am excited that Harvard is working on this kind of study because of the potential results it could have on others with learning disabilities," he said. Chris J. Minnick

Ray Banks, '89, '93, '00, left, works with Salvador Robles, seated, while teaching a computer class at the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility. Photo by Michael Kiernan

Law, legislative career spans 60 years

Gonzales

On December 29, 2000, Albert Gonzales, '35, closed a 60-year career in law and completed another chapter in a most remarkable life. He took in stride the diving accident that cost him his sight at 17. Undaunted, he applied to New Mexico A&M, but because the college had never admitted a blind student, he says "I had to show them I could do it." In class and out, he relied on student readers and study partners. Gonzales soon proved as helpful to his helpers. "We both got more out of studying together," he says.

After Georgetown University Law School, he returned to New Mexico where he became the first blind member of the Santa Fe Bar Association and state legislature.

"Dad was a legal aid society before there was such a thing," says his daughter Carmen Gonzales, an NMSU education faculty member. She says clients often paid their legal bills in enchiladas and pinon nuts.

Gonzales tried to retire in 1991, but says "people kept seeking me out."

Now, at 88, he plans to take a computer course for the blind. Although he has hung up his shingle, he still thinks of helping people. "I would miss that," he says.

Linda G. Harris, '80