Press Releases

Western New Mexico University signed agreements with four higher education institutions in the border state of Sonora at the 2018 Annual Plenary Meeting of the New Mexico Sonora Commission on Thursday, August 23. The meeting took place in Santa Fe and was attended by delegates from both the State of New Mexico and the State of Sonora, Mexico. Among the higher education delegates at the meeting was WNMU President Dr. Joseph Shepard whose initiatives in the realm of international education have spurred agreements between WNMU and 48 Mexican universities. President Shepard met the rectors from Universidad de Sonora; Universidad Estatal de Sonora; Centro Regional de Formación Profesional Docente de Sonora; and Secretaría de Educación y Cultura for a private meeting on Thursday morning, leaving having signed general collaboration agreements with each institution. “The State of Sonora and the State of New Mexico share much culturally and economically. With the signed...

Western New Mexico University is adding a new sculpture to its permanent collection. “Blood Moon Raven” is a piece by Silver City artist Cecilia Stanford and is the most recent sculpture of a series dedicated to the iconic raven. The sculpture will be installed on the hill overlooking Light Hall Theater and will be dedicated on Wednesday, August 29, at 1:30 p.m. “‘Blood Moon Raven’ celebrates the beauty of southwest New Mexico and will be a great addition to our sculpture program, which extends all across campus,” WNMU Special Assistant to the President for Cultural Affairs Faye McCalmont said. “These works of art help to beautify the campus for both the WNMU community and the Silver City community. The fact that the artist is a local sculptor adds to the appeal, further connecting WNMU to local residents.” Stanford’s mosaic work covers a range of narrative imagery inspired by a career in theater arts and by an apprenticeship to James Hubbell, international...

Stephanie Seguin’s solo exhibition, Finding For(u)m, will open at the Western New Mexico University Frances McCray Gallery of Contemporary Art on September 10, 2018, with a reception at 4:30 p.m. Seguin will also give an artist talk on August 30 at 6 p.m. in WNMU’s Parotti Hall Room 140. Comprised of over 100 clay vessels, Finding For(u)m explores the relationship between the collective and the individual. Through various compositions assembled with attention to proximity, likeness and divergence of forms, the show asks viewers to consider the roles in which the novel and the nuanced play in our everyday. Seguin is an artist-in-residence at Carbondale Clay Center in Carbondale, Colorado, as well as faculty at Colorado Mountain College in Aspen, Colorado. She received her MFA from Pennsylvania State University in 2017, and her BFA from Minnesota State University – Moorhead in 2009. Born and raised in the Minneapolis area, Seguin used her ambition in clay to explore new...

The twelve student participants in the Western New Mexico University outdoor program’s first ever wilderness orientation returned to campus healthy and enthused Monday. Many of the freshman on the multi-day backpacking trip through the Gila Wilderness signed up to try something new and branch out. “I thought it would be a new life and wanted to start with something different and see how it went. It was great — better than I expected,” said Luis Chavez, who plans to be a wilderness orientation leader next year. Raegan Carpenter from Los Angeles County, California, said, “I’ve always wanted to do something outdoorsy so when my advisor told me about this trip, I thought, ‘That’s pretty cool.’” Over several days, the group hiked 40 miles from TJ Corral toward Woodland Park, through The Meadows, down the Middle Fork of the Gila River, and then out of the wilderness via Little Bear Canyon Trail. “I’ve been hiking and to camp but nothing as crazy as...

The Western New Mexico University Board of Regents approved the post-tenure review for Dr. Manda Jost, the Revised Five-Year Capital Outlay Projects and Institutional Capital Projects and Infrastructure Projects, and the 2018-2033 Master Plan during their telephonic meeting on Friday, August 10, 2018. Regent Chair Janice Baca-Argabright; Regent Vice Chair Dr. Carl Foster; Student Regent and Secretary/Treasurer Arlean Murillo; and Regents Dr. Dan Salzwedel and Jerry Walz were all in attendance by phone. The board unanimously approved Dr. Jost’s post-tenure review, following WNMU President Dr. Joseph Shepard’s praise on her performance in the realms of teaching, scholarship and community service. “She is eligible to continue her tenure appointment,” Dr. Shepard said. In the summer hearings, the regents added three critical projects to the university’s 5-Year Capital Outlay Projects & Institutional Capital Projects & Infrastructure Projects plan. The request for...

Western New Mexico University students will celebrate their return to school with the annual Welcome Back Bash in The Hub Plaza at the corner of 6th and Bullard streets in downtown Silver City on Friday, August 17. WNMU’s Welcome Back Bash begins at 5:30 p.m., and WNMU President Dr. Joseph Shepard will give his State of the University address first thing at Power & Light Press. The bash continues with music by DJ Aero, dancing, games and face painting until wrapping up at 8 p.m. “The beginning of the fall semester is my favorite time of year, because it means that our students are back in the community. We hold the Welcome Back Bash to give students and community members an opportunity to interact and to update everyone on WNMU’s plans and progress,” President Shepard said. Students and members of the public are encouraged to purchase dinner from the establishments in The Hub Plaza, as they will run specials and discounts for the Welcome Back Bash. Every student will...

At the conclusion of Western New Mexico University’s 25th annual basic rural economic development course last week, students presented prescriptive economic development strategies for three New Mexico communities — Doña Ana, Sierra and San Juan counties — to three of the top economic development minds in the state, who were hypothetically seeking to underwrite the implementation of these plans. Using real data, the students assessed each communities’ strengths, needs and estimated what it would take to bring the necessary number of jobs to completely wipe out unemployment and boost the economy overall in their respective communities. Their presentations are archived here. The group assigned to assess Doña Ana County wrote a jobs-focused plan to enhance and strengthen the economy over ten years. They guessed the county would need to add 14,115 jobs to sustain growth in a decade and assessed that the county will likely get a majority of those jobs from the employer...

Laurie Ware, a graduate of Western New Mexico University’s Elementary Education program, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and traveled to Central Asia with three professors and 11 other secondary teachers from New Mexico and Arizona this summer. Ware wrote an extended curriculum unit for an English Language Arts workshop that she brought back to the States and will implement in her New Mexico classroom. “I will also be creating a module to expose my students to the Kazakh language,” she said. In addition, Ware took close-up pictures of her students’ faces as well as portraits of students in the villages along the Silk Road. “Some scholars believe that the Navajo people may originate from a mountain region in Mongolia and think that many native people in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan look similar to Navajo people,” Ware said. Her goal is to have her students write narratives based on these comparisons. Her superintendent recommended she apply for the...

Western New Mexico University Assistant Professor of Philosophy & English Dr. Phillip W. Schoenberg was awarded a fellowship to attend National Endowment for the Humanities’ Summer Institute for College and University Faculty called Reviving Philosophy as a Way of Life this month. Hosted by Wesleyan University, the institute includes scholars from around the country who are interested in exploring proposals that philosophers and philosophic traditions have suggested for living well. About a quarter of those who applied were selected for this fellowship, and Dr. Schoenberg was chosen in part because of his role at New Mexico’s only public Applied Liberal Arts and Sciences university. He was hired at WNMU last fall in order to update the humanities curriculum and build a philosophy minor, which is important to WNMU as it builds an identity as a liberal arts institution. Dr. Shoenberg said the two-week summer institute is about teaching and sharing ideas to bring back to...

The Western New Mexico University School of Business has recently been granted Full Reaffirmation of Accreditation under the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP). This is the third reaffirmation of the WNMU School of Business, and the accreditation runs for ten years. Associate Dean of the School of Business, Dr. Miguel Vicéns, attended the 30th Annual ACBSP conference to accept a certificate of WNMU’s accreditation and continue learning with School of Business faculty from all across the nation. “I am extremely happy to have achieved full reaffirmation of our accreditation. The ACBSP assures the quality of our degrees, as well as the international recognition of quality in our programs. As part of this reaffirmation, the School of Business has established a five-year strategic plan, a marketing plan, and an assessment plan to ensure continuity of quality programs,” Dr. Vicéns said. The ACBSP Baccalaureate/Graduate Degree Board of...