Wednesday, May 7, 2008

New UNM president visits local campus

Jackie Schlotfeldt News-Bulletin Staff Writer; jschlotfeldt@news-bulletin.com

Tomé The 20th president of the University of New Mexico made his first visit to the UNM-Valencia Campus Monday morning, meeting with administrative personnel, faculty members and students.

Dr. David Schmidly toured the campus, viewing the numerous programs offered to students, as well as having one-on-one conversations with students in the recreation center.

"I love branch campuses," Schmidly said. "I believe in them very much, and they're essential for access and affordability in higher education."

Schmidly's experience with branch campuses covers many years from the time he lived in Texas, running one in the Texas A & M system for five years, as well as starting three branch campuses when he was president at Texas Tech, and three while at Oklahoma State University.

He said branch campuses offer a good learning environment with smaller classes for students.

"It's kind of like being around family," he said. "Students know each other, and they know the faculty and the faculty all know each other."

The Valencia campus has seen the largest increase in enrollment this year, and Schmidly attributes that to the great leadership at the campus and the programs that are offered. He said the students relate to it and what the leadership teams offer is what he calls a "no hassle" environment.

"They don't have to go back and forth to solve little problems," Schmidly said. "They can go to one place and get it all done — financial aid, register, and see academic counselors."

Schmidly said this is important when serving students that work full time and don't have the time to come back three or four times to get things done. "They have to go to a place that's serious about serving them, and they have to make it relevant."

Even though Schmidly has only been on the job since October, he said he's created four priority strands for UNM and its branches. He calls it strategic framework for moving universities forward to better serve the people of New Mexico.

"The first area is student success," Schmidly said. "We must do a better job of graduating our students. UNM graduates less than 50 percent of its students in six years. That's just not acceptable."

The second area in the priority strand is excellence. He wants to have degree programs that are respected and prepare students to work once they graduate.

His third priority is healthy communities. He said if people don't have healthcare and live a healthy lifestyle, it's hard to imagine they will have a productive life.

The fourth priority is economic and community development, where more people are being educated and better jobs are being created, he said.

"There's a great opportunity for this campus to help with economic development and to help with communities," Schmidly said. "The talent we have out here, and the capabilities we have, need to be put to work for the good of the communities around our campuses. From what I see, UNM-VC is doing great in all these areas."

Schmidly also commended the work being done with the area high schools where dual enrollment is offered to students. He said the opportunity for students to take college courses while still in high school convinces them that they can do it.

"It's really important what they are doing with high schools, and they are a model for the UNM system," Schmidly said of the Valencia campus. "I think they are doing it better than anyplace else."

One program started two years ago provided students with the opportunity to complete the first two years of a four-year Bachelor of Science degree in nursing at the branch campus. The first students completing this program graduated in April, and eight more will begin the program in May.

However, it is anticipated that the program will not be admitting further students from UNM-VC.

"They're having challenges in funding, but we're going to work on that," Schmidly said. "We've got to find a way to comprehensively look at nursing across the entire UNM system."

Schmidly went on to say what they need is students to complete their four-year degrees in nursing, and go on to earn their Ph.D so they can be hired as faculty to teach new nursing students.

"That is one of the biggest problems," Schmidly said. "We don't have enough faculty to teach more nursing students. This is one of the major opportunity areas for UNM and the branches to work together and start a partnership to address the nursing shortage."

Schmidly said with all the branch campuses he oversees, he wants them all to have a core program so students can transfer with ease to the main campus when they complete their associate's degree. He said beyond that, the branch campuses need to develop programs and courses relevant to the region they serve.

"My vision is just to maximize the ability of UNM to help this state move forward," Schmidly said. "The three 'R's' are no longer reading, writing and arithmetic — it's rigor, relevancy and relationships. One of the best ways to open the doors to higher education is access and affordability. You have someone sitting in this seat that cares about what you do. Branch campuses matter."

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