Valerie DeLaCruz’s tightly knit ranching family thought that they could fend for themselves. That all changed about two years ago when both of DeLaCruz’s grandfathers approached the end of their lives within a few months of each other. Suddenly, DeLaCruz and her formerly independent family found themselves welcoming hospice workers into their homes. “Hospice was just great to us,” said DeLaCruz, “They were amazing. They helped us mentally, physically. They helped with everything.” It was this experience that made DeLaCruz realize she wanted to be a social worker. “It was seeing that people do make a difference in families,” she explained. The experience made such an impression on her that she wrote an essay about it, “Rock Bottom,” that is soon to be printed in “The Maverick,” published by Mimbres Press of Western New Mexico University. Now in her second year in the WNMU BSW program, DeLaCruz is already making a difference in the world. This year, she was...

Two WNMU master’s degree programs, the Master of Arts in Counseling and the Master of Social Work, have teamed with the New Mexico Expanding Opportunities Project (EOP) to support graduate students who plan to provide mental health care in the state’s school system. Sponsored by the NM Department of Education’s Safe and Healthy Schools Bureau, the EOP “aims to recruit and retain school-based mental health (SBMH) professionals to serve the needs of students across New Mexico, focusing on rural and frontier communities with a high percentage of at-risk and vulnerable student populations,” according to the program’s website. The program is funded with a grant from the United States Department of Education. The EOP funds current graduate students in behavioral health fields as well as SBMH providers that are already licensed. Awardees of the grant are required to commit to working for at least two years in a New Mexico school. While the EOP was originally designed to...

“The longer I have been here, the more and more and more I love it,” says Phoenix native Breya Brown of living in Silver City. Brown, who graduated from WNMU with a degree in Kinesiology in May, is the new Campus Recreation (C-Rec) Coordinator. One of her goals in the role is to help students love living here as well, and she certainly has enough activities planned to keep students happily busy when they are not in class or studying. One of the first items on her agenda when she began the new position was to start an intramural sports program. “Being in charge of the gym and all the intramural sports is something I am really passionate about,” said Brown. So far, the sports in the intramural program include basketball, volleyball, soccer, ultimate Frisbee, and pickleball. “Pickleball is a really popular one right now,” she said, “A lot of the community members come for that one.” Involving the community in C-Rec programs is important to Brown. “I think it is...

“I wanted to concentrate and take my art practice more seriously,” says ceramics artist Susie Meskill about what brought her to Western New Mexico University. Recently, Meskill completed her second year in the ceramics post-baccalaureate program at WNMU, a program that helps aspiring artists develop their practice. The post-baccalaureate program is designed for people in the position Meskill was in when she started: artists who are ready to focus intently on their art practice as they transition from student to professional artist. The program is one that benefits both the individual and the university. The post-baccalaureate student is provided with studio space and mentorship from WNMU faculty, and in return, they work a number of hours each week to manage the ceramics studio, assist with classes, and lead workshops. During their time in the program, artists are able to develop a portfolio of work that can help them in getting into graduate school or pursuing other...

While the United States aims to become carbon neutral by 2050, Western New Mexico University has set a more ambitious goal: to be carbon neutral by 2030. Many of the initiatives that will be needed to achieve this goal are well underway. At present, approximately 50% of the energy the university uses comes from carbon-neutral sources. The greatest single source of this energy is a solar farm operated by PNM’s Community Solar Direct program, located on the Jicarilla Apache Nation in northern New Mexico. According to Vice President of Facilities and Operations Kevin Matthes, WNMU currently receives one megawatt of electricity from this farm, which is enough to satisfy approximately one-third of the university’s energy needs. WNMU also generates solar power on campus. In 2022, the university added a parking structure with photovoltaic panels next to the Fine Arts Center Theatre, and this summer, additional panels were added near the WNMU Museum. These on-campus panels provide...

After years as a teacher, head basketball coach, assistant principal, principal, educational consultant and eventually as a superintendent in three different states, Assistant Professor Robert Neu found his way to WNMU, where he is teaching in and leading the Educational Leadership Program. While he has only been at WNMU since last January, Neu has already been instrumental in revamping the program’s curriculum to center it on “futures literacy.” Futures literacy is “the skill that allows people to better understand the role of the future in what they see and do,” according to the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “Being futures literate,” says UNESCO, “empowers the imagination, enhances our ability to prepare, recover and invent as changes occur.” Neu provided an example from recent history to explain the concept further. “When you think about the pandemic,” he said, “no one was prepared for that. But those that...

Western New Mexico University hosted the New Mexico Basic Economic Development Course on July 16 – 20. The course was open to municipal and county managers and department directors, tribal leaders, community planners and developers, and others interested in community job creation in New Mexico. Accredited by the International Economic Development Council based in Washington, D.C., the course provides one week of intensive training on how to select the right combination of strategies to cost-effectively create jobs in New Mexican communities. It is intended for “practitioners and community leaders committed to building healthy and resilient economies at the local and regional levels,” according to the program’s website. The Basic Economic Development Course features faculty that share their professional experiences and introduce participants to academic theories about economic development. The course began in 1992 as a partnership between Western New Mexico University and...

Going to college was not a priority for Margarita Telles until her young niece starting asking her about it. Telles, a resident of Las Cruces, has been working with her mother to raise her niece, who is now nine years old. Inspired by her niece’s questions and encouragement, Telles enrolled as a Psychology major at Western New Mexico University, where she has been completing her coursework online. Her academic career at WNMU was capped this spring when she learned she was the first-prize winner in this year’s Academic Writing Contest. Telles’ award-winning paper, “The Adverse Effects of Parent-Child Loss or Separation: A Literature Review,” was written for her senior seminar class and nominated for the award by Associate Professor Jennifer Johnston. In it, she reviews recent studies that have considered the psychological and physiological effects when a child loses contact with a caregiver. Her project was inspired by her interest in psychological parenting, a form of...

The Silver City CLAY Festival is an annual event held every July since 2011, but this year’s festival looked different from previous years’, with many of the events taking place on the WNMU campus, July 10-16. The university is one of the major sponsors of the festival. The festival brought together artists, educators, families and collectors for a week of activities and exhibitions that explored and celebrated clay. Participants had an opportunity to take part in hands-on workshops with prominent clay artists, and children were welcomed to WNMU Museum as well as the Silver City Museum, where they had a chance to participate in clay-based activities. Demonstrations, lectures, exhibitions and gallery talks were held throughout the week, and the festival concluded with a ceramic-glaze-inspired brunch at Bear Mountain Lodge. Headlining the event this year was WNMU Visiting Artist George Rodriguez. Rodriguez, a sculptor whose work addresses themes of culture and community,...

WNMU Assistant Professor Heather Frankland is publishing a new chapbook of poetry, soon to be released by Finishing Line Press, a widely respected publisher in literary circles. The chapbook, “Midwest Musings,” collects together poems completed recently as well as some from earlier in Frankland’s career that she has since revised. The chapbook came together as Frankland, a native of Muncie, Indiana, reflected on the connections between her various poems.  “I realized I had a lot of poems that were interrogating the Midwest, family, loss, and identity,” she said, “I had never put all together before, but when I did, I realized that there was a theme that was running through them.” This new collection, Frankland said, is about “identity, regionality, and connections to land and landscape.”  She uses an analogy about fruit from a farmer’s market to describe the relationship between her poetry and place. “If you buy fruit from the farmer’s market,”...