Practical, Applied Education at UNM-Taos

Louis Moya and Enrico Trujillowork on the set in the Digital Media Arts studio.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have always had a personal fondness for Taos Local Television, ever since a few of us---Candyce O’Donnell, Gail Russell, Rose Rutherford, Rick Romancito, Kathy Cordova, George Chacon, Bob Romero and I, if I recall correctly---created a nonprofit corporation and formed the first TLT board of directors some thirty years ago.

Thanks to the dedication of many board members and only a handful of general managers over the years, most notably Ron Usherwood and Tom Myers, whose unique contributions and personal commitment were the mainstay of Cable Channel Two (now 22), the public access station has gone from a cinder block bunker in the middle of a cow pasture off Ranchitos Road with no heat, no plumbing and one bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling to its current locations upstairs over the Town Council chambers on Civic Plaza Drive and a fully functioning production studio across the street overseen by Louis Moya, the UNM-Taos Director of Development.

But here’s the exciting part: the station is now an integral part of a newly created UNM-Taos Digital Media Arts program offering both a 31 credit hour Certificate in Information Technologies and a 67 credit hour Associate of Applied Science in Digital Media Arts (DMA). Moya explained that the DMA program offers “a solid foundation in technology, a rich creative background in the arts, and the communication skills necessary to convey ideas in the digital realm.”

Students working toward the associate degree in media arts will gain hands-on experience by helping to run the station as interns at the Taos Channel 22 public access, education and government facility (the URL is www.taos22.com) and digital production studio along with pre-existing campus digital media and computer labs. This, in a way, represents the latest transformation of the station into an arm of the community college and, as the DMA program proposal puts it, “the program...provides a pathway for students into careers in IT and the growing field of digital media....[It] pursues these goals through practical, applied education geared toward entry level positions in digital media and IT support.” In other words, our public access station is now part of UNM-Taos’ workforce development and career readiness mandate. If that appeals to you, call 737-6200 right away and ask to speak to an advisor. The first day of fall semester is August 19.

Jim Sanborn, UNM-Taos instructor and Taos Municipal School Board member, is responsible for the second component of the DMA program, the Certificate in Information Technologies, which prepares students for entry-level positions in information technology support.

Speaking as someone whose IT skills pretty much begin and end with being able to charge my own cell phone, I have a genuine respect for those individuals that we rely upon to keep things running in our increasingly complicated world.

“We’re providing the opportunity to obtain a workforce certificate that positions you to qualify for an entry-level job starting in the $35,000 range, and accomplish that in as little as one year,” Sanborn maintained in a telephone interview. “This isn’t a disembodied training program. Our approach is performance based, and we use a software simulation package that is the industry standard. It not only speeds up the learning process but puts you in the real-world IT environment without risking business downtime and making mistakes that could damage equipment systems.”

In other words, it’s like a flight simulator that lets you crash the plane without hurting anyone.

In addition to core course work the program teaches IT support, cyber security, networking, visualization and business intelligence. If you are interested, whether you have academic training or workforce experience that you want to sharpen and expand, you can email Jim Sanborn at jsanborn@unm.edu. We expect interest in the new Digital Media Arts Program for either the design track or IT technical track to be considerable, so the sooner you look into them, the better.  

      

Institutional Effectiveness at UNM-Taos

Anita Bringas

Most of the staff at UNM-Taos wear more than one hat. Anita Bringas is the UNM-Taos Administrative Officer and the Title V Grant administrator. She handles data and institutional research for the branch and files reports to the state, the federal government, the Higher Education Department and the Public Education Department. In addition, she compiles the Institutional Effectiveness Report each semester, which is more of an internal document that makes it possible to track enrollment and demographic trends at UNM-Taos over the past five years. The IE Report is a favorite of mine because it creates an accurate profile of the college, its programs, policies and procedures, and although the finished product will be on our website (taos.unm.edu) toward the end of July, I asked Anita to give us a preview some of the more significant data.

“The IE Report is a comprehensive snapshot of how we have been doing over the past five years,” she began, “and this year, because it is our 10th anniversary of becoming a UNM branch campus, we will also include 10 year comparisons in some areas. The full report is all public information and will include an executive summary, a brief history of the campus, enrollment and degree data, and detailed demographic information.

“Our enrollment this past spring semester was 1,526, including dual credit, degree seeking and non-degree seeking students. Now if we break that down, we see we had 368 dual credit students, or 24 percent of our enrollment. That’s an impressive number of high school students able to take college level courses and receive both high school and college credit for them. This program is paid for by the state, so by the time these students get to their freshman year in college, they’ve already completed several of their core curriculum courses. That represents a considerable savings in both time and money, plus they have already become familiar with the college routine by then.

“There were 948 students working on a degree track last semester, which is fully 81 percent of the total. But the really remarkable statistic is that in spring of 2011 degree seekers were only 63 percent of the whole student body. So in just two years degree seeking students increased by almost 20 percent, and if you go back five years, to 2008, they represented only 43 percent of the total. So in five years we have almost doubled the number of students seeking a degree.”

Bringas credited UNM-Taos having more advisors and better advising for much of the increase, and noted that it not only indicated better use of limited financial aid, but was also one of the criteria in the new funding formula that determines state funding of higher education.

“We still offer personal interest classes,” Bringas added, “but students are far more serious about completing their degrees these days. That’s really important.

“Now when you look at a breakdown of ethnicity for last semester, we see that 58 percent of our student body was Hispanic, which closely matches the percentage in our service area. But what is more remarkable is that we are recognized as an official HSI--Hispanic Serving Institution---by the federal government, which qualifies institutions with at least 25 percent Hispanic enrollment for Title V funding. Title V is designed to increase enrollment, retention and graduation rates for Hispanic students. However, the intent of the grant and the way we are utilizing those funds is for capacity building, which means increasing the number of advisors, increasing their professional development, expanding the free CASA Tutoring program, working with peer-to-peer tutors, creating math and writing labs, providing exam prep and other workshops, all of which benefit every student at UNM-Taos. That’s what we mean by capacity building.

  “Another interesting demographic is gender. Historically, our enrollment, and this follows a national trend in community colleges, has been made up of mostly females. However, the number of male students at UNM-Taos has been slowly and steadily increasing in recent years, and we went from 37 percent to 39 percent this spring over last spring. I think this shows that in a community like ours, male students are beginning to get the support they need to get into school and continue with it, as opposed to the many other things they could be doing that aren’t as productive or fulfilling.”

And finally, I asked Bringas to give us a quick comparison between that first year as a branch campus, 2003, and our last full academic year.

“For the academic year 2003-2004, our head count was 2,415 students taking 16,882 credit hours. Now if we jump to the academic year 2012-2013, our head count was 3,228 and credit hours were 27,606. In other words we increased enrollment by 813 students and 10,784 credit hours in ten short years. This shows that we not only have more students, but we have more students on average taking more core classes toward a degree. This has enormous social and economic implications for our community.”

More than 600 students have already signed up for the fall semester at UNM-Taos that starts August 19. Fall schedules are in racks around town and 10,000 more will be inserted in the July 11 edition of the Taos News. The full enrollment team is on duty in Pueblo Hall on the Klauer campus Monday through Friday, and you can drop in or call 737-6200 to find out if UNM-Taos might be right for you. 

Bragging Rights at UNM-Taos

In light of 2013 being the 10th anniversary of the state legislature designating UNM-Taos a branch of the state’s flagship university, we have already seen some events worthy of celebration, or at least a little bragging.

After several years of setting aside funds, resources are being applied to student amenities such as indoor social and study areas, outdoor seating in the Pueblo Hall patio, and what will likely be one of the safest outdoor camera monitoring systems in the county, covering the bulk of the Klauer campus. We have always had an exceptional safety and security record at all college locations, but we intend to keep it that way by being proactive. The student body has grown from under 300 to an all-time high of 1,705 students last Fall, so it is imperative that we step up to the challenges of being a vital, growing institution before problems occur.

In the interests of transparency, we are also going to load up our website, taos.unm.edu, with the entire archive of UNM-Taos Reports which have appeared in the Taos News over the years. This resource of some 80,000 words and counting will be completely searchable, so that any reader will have full, immediate access to the issues and individuals that make up our community college.

Representative Ben Ray Lujan

This year we wanted to make graduation something special, so we started by booking the largest convention facility in Taos---the Sagebrush Inn and Conference Center. It drew upwards of a thousand attendees. One reason for the outstanding turnout was that we invited Congressman Ben Ray Lujan, Representative for New Mexico’s Third Congressional District, as keynote speaker for the evening. He graciously accepted, and even brought his mother, Carmen Lujan, to enjoy an evening in Taos while helping to honor our graduates. His message was clear:

“Don’t forget the joy that you have in your heart, the way your family and friends look at you today. Don’t forget what success feels like….Do the right thing and change the world…but don’t forget to leave your imprint on the place we call home.”

Lujan urged graduates to remember where they come from. “Be proud,” he said. “I’m proud that I speak with an accent. I speak with the accent I obtained as a graduate of Pojoaque High School when I sit across the table from the President of the United States.”   

Kerri Trujillo, Gates Scholar

We are also proud to announce that UNM-Taos student Kerri Trujillo was named the recipient of a Gates Millennium Scholarship. Kerri and her mom are residents of Taos Pueblo, and she is in her third semester focusing on a Bachelor of Science degree in laboratory sciences. She is currently the only Gates Millennium scholar at UNM-Taos, and one of only 350 Native American students in the nation to receive the prestigious award.

Asked what advice she would give to aspiring Native American students, Trujillo responded, “I’d say pursue your dreams. You’ll never know what could have been, if you didn’t try.”

Senator Martin Heinrich

And finally, it was a bit of a shock last week to hear UNM-Taos mentioned on the floor of the US Senate. Newly elected Senator Martin Heinrich and his staff had met with the leaders of numerous New Mexico solar businesses on the Klauer Campus back in February to discuss renewable resources, and in his first speech to the Senate, this is in part what he had to say:

“The University of New Mexico Taos campus is a prime example of the public and private sectors working together to employ cleaner energy. Their campus is home to one of the largest solar arrays in the state---a project that was successful thanks to a partnership with Los Alamos National Labs and Kit Carson Electric Cooperative.”

In starting our second decade as a branch campus, UNM-Taos plans to continue to amaze. Otherwise, how would we know what could have been?

  

Real Life Learning at UNM-Taos

Jerome Samora and Mayra Gutierrez

In its ten years as a branch campus of the state’s flagship university, UNM-Taos has sought to expand its services and increase the diversity of the student body by identifying those groups that might benefit most from higher education, but due to circumstances beyond their control, need a little extra help to get started, develop a clear education plan and graduate. College and Career Prep, the summer Puentes program, Upward Bound for Veterans, Upward Bound for Math and Science, the GED, English as a Second Language and Adult Learning programs, along with the recently activated CAMP Program are all good examples.

Last week I met with Jerome Samora, summer CAMP coordinator, who, along with Nicole Romero, is in charge of recruitment, and Mayra Gutierrez, Senior Academic Advisor for CAMP, to find out more about the program.

Samora explained that CAMP is the College Assistance Migrant Program. It is federally funded through the US Department of Education through the Office of Migrant Education, and it was established to identify, recruit and enroll migrant and seasonal farm worker students. Currently they are recruiting for both the summer and fall programs.

“We provide academic, social and financial support so that they can complete their first year of college,” Samora explained. “The program offers financial assistance, academic advisement, paid internship opportunities and tutoring along with getting them involved in social and cultural activities. A lot of the students we get are first generation college students.”

Gutierrez said that there were still a few openings both for the Summer and Fall programs, and the only requirements to qualify were that students or their parents had done at least 75 days of agricultural work in the last two years, which could include farming, weeding, growing crops, either for pay or crop sharing, and that they were enrolled in college and had less than 24 credit hours. “We are actively recruiting,” Gutierrez said. “We have funding for 35 students and we are not filled up yet.”

“We walk students through the process step by step,” Samora said. “We have a check list for students including the Compass Test for placement in English and math, and we are funded so that there is no charge to students.”

“I know sometimes students are not comfortable applying, not familiar with the process, so we stay with them every step of the way,” Gutierrez said. We’ve had students intern at the BLM, Dental offices, working in green houses. We try to match job placement to what they are going to school for.”

Samora added that some of the students have never been in a professional environment before. “It’s their first professional job and so we help them with etiquette---what’s the right way to behave, dress and how to deal with that world. But probably the most entertaining parts of the program are the field trips.”

“We are going to be offering two classes this summer,” Gutierrez added, “intermediate math, and biology in a hands-on educational environment. We set up experts and professionals on different sites and take students on field trips for real-life learning experience. Introduction to Field Research Methods is a cool class because we are going to take students to Ghost Ranch, Bandelier, the Sand Dunes, and explore the Hondo burn and the effects fire has on the ecosystem. You don’t just look at slides, you actually get to be a part of it and get involved.”

The CAMP program strategy is simple: to surround the student with support in order to make sure that they are successful college students and they are comfortable with the process. To achieve this, program directors work in close collaboration with other CAMP programs in the state and UNM-Taos faculty and staff members, particularly in financial aid, CASA tutoring, admissions, and student success.

“We all have dreams,” Gutierrez said. “We try to let our students know that there are other options out there. It’s all about trying to make something better out of yourself.  Higher education can be a life changing experience. I know it has been for me. I got into a program like this that believed in me, that supported me, that opened those doors for me and now I can’t see myself without it. Juan Monte showed us that we are all here to grow together. He’s all about life learning.”

Samora and Gutierrez both attribute much of their personal and programmatic success to program head Juan Montes, calling him a mentor and a role model. Both agreed that he has a way of pushing students out of their comfort zone, but always with respect and caring.

“I don’t know where I would be today if it hadn’t been for Juan,” Gutierrez said

“Juan has always treated me as an adult and as a professional,” Samora added. “And when somebody treats you like that, that’s what you tend to become.”

To find out more about the Summer and Fall CAMP programs, call 575 737-3720, 575 737-3721, or just stop by 114 Civic Plaza Drive.