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From the Lone Star State to the Land of Enchantment: New Library Director Brings Fresh Vision to WNMU

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When the State of Texas passed Senate Bill 17 in the spring of 2023, banning offices of diversity, equity and inclusion on public college campuses, it was a career-defining moment for WNMU Miller Library Director Samantha Johnson. Johnson, who was working at a community college library in Baytown, TX, at the time, was concerned about the legislation broadly, but on a professional level she was concerned that it was going to make it difficult to do her job. “I wasn’t going to be able to do any equity programming,” she said, “We had a very active equity office, and I had done a lot of work with them.” When the legislation passed, Johnson knew she was making the right move by leaving behind her longtime home state of Texas. Even before this most recent round of legislation in Texas, Johnson was hoping to relocate. “My husband and I have wanted to move out of Houston for a long time because it is very polluted, the traffic is awful, and the weather is horrible,” she...
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Venezuelan Graduate Student Finds Home at WNMU

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Oscar Arteaga expected to spend recent years working on his MBA in Kansas, but when his husband found a job in Silver City, Arteaga saw a new opportunity at WNMU, and he quickly decided to expand his educational experience beyond business. While business administration remains one of his concentration areas in the WNMU MA in Interdisciplinary Studies program, he has added two others: sociology and kinesiology. “I like sociology because it has to do with human behavior,” Arteaga, who is originally from Venezuela, explained. Similarly, kinesiology has given him “an opportunity to learn about the human body, body movement, physical activity,” he said. Currently in his second year of the program, Arteaga appreciates how his unusual combination of concentrations allows him to explore “human life in its different facets.” He gets to study human behavior and relationships, social interactions, the decision-making process, leadership, management, physical activity, and...
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WNMU Hosts Early Childhood Education Symposium

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The New Mexico Center of Excellence for Early Childhood Education Symposium was held on the Western New Mexico University campus on October 19, 2023.  The symposium was created to share with policy makers, educational leaders and other interested stakeholders what it means for WNMU to be designated by the State Legislature as the NM Center of Excellence for Early Childhood Education. The university received this legislative distinction in 2022 for having developed a full-service center that has been providing early childhood and family services for decades. WNMU provides the highest quality child care, an active research site, a family counseling center, professional development and numerous teacher preparation programs, and it integrates these early childhood services, which is what makes the center’s model unique. The symposium also provided a forum for discussing child wellbeing in New Mexico and how the various parts of the center put this integrative model of early...
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Learning in the Gallery: English Composition Students Follow a Long Tradition of Writing about Artwork

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From John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to Anne Sexton’s “The Starry Night,” writers have often taken their inspiration from other works of art. This kind of writing—called ekphrasis—is at the heart of a recent assignment that Associate Professor Roberta Brown gave to students in her English composition class. Brown said the assignment was not originally one she had planned for the semester, but rather one that emerged on the opening night of the recent McCray Gallery of Contemporary Art retrospective of the art of former WNMU art professor Cecil Howard. One of Brown’s students, Brandy Lynn, was also at the opening reception, and Lynn told Brown that she wished the class could write about Howard’s art. Brown agreed that the exhibit would serve as an excellent subject for the students in her English composition class, and she quickly amended her course plans to include the new writing assignment. Ekphrasis, explained Brown, “is a form handed down to us from...
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Teacher Residency Program Provides Mentorship for New Teachers

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The WNMU School of Education is in its second year of offering a Teacher Residency program that allows students finishing their coursework to earn $35,000 for a two-semester guided apprenticeship in which they work alongside mentor educators. The program was created following the passage of House Bill 13, the Teacher Residency Act, which in 2022 established funding and guidelines for offering teacher residencies across the state. According to Assistant Professor of Secondary Education Stephanie Fanselow, who directs the program at WNMU, lawmakers created the program as a measure to grow and diversify the teaching workforce. “They want teachers who look like the kids in the classroom,” she said. What that means can vary in different parts of the state, depending on the local population, said Fanselow. The residency is a two-semester program that pairs each teacher resident with a mentor teacher who works in a New Mexican public or tribal school. Students planning to teach at...
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From Regular Patrols to Flat Tire Fixes, Campus Police Work Toward a Safe Campus

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While the Campus Police force is small, with only six staff members, they play an outsized role in keeping the WNMU campus safe. “We are a full-service police department,” said Barbara Perez, WNMU Campus Security Specialist, “We handle all the cases, whether they are an offense report or an accident report, or just general information reports, we take care of all of it.” The officers are all retired from other police forces, said Patrolman Joseph Arredondo. “We do come with a lot of experience,” he said, “Any situation that arises, it’s not new to us.” All of the officers are certified through the state of New Mexico, Arredondo added. According to Perez, the most common type of crime on campus is theft, which is also the easiest to prevent. “We try to put it out there to make sure your doors are locked,” she said. Arredondo added that when crime occurs, it is commonly because the dorm entrance doors are propped open. While the exterior doors lock...
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An Eclectic Mind: MA in Interdisciplinary Studies Grad Uses His Degree to Teach College Classes in Diverse Areas

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When Jon Weiss (MA ’21) found the Master of Arts program in Interdisciplinary Studies at Western New Mexico University, he did not just find it serendipitous. Said Weiss, “I read the description , and I thought, ‘That can’t be right. That’s too close to what I want. I must be reading something incorrectly,’ It didn’t seem possible that there was something that put together … what I was interested in doing.” What Weiss was interested in doing was getting a degree that would allow him to explore his diverse interests. Having worked for many years as a mediator in Chicago and not ready for retirement, Weiss explored work in information technologies, tutoring, and teaching high school before deciding he wanted to go to graduate school. He had already earned bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Information Technology and taken numerous science classes, and he was ready for a new challenge. After finding the MA program in Interdisciplinary Studies at WNMU,...
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Looking to the Past and Future to Reignite MEChA

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Students at WNMU will be continuing a long-lived student organization this year as they revitalize MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán). MEChA began in the 1960s as a national activist and educational organization that was fueled by the civil rights movements and especially by the Chicano Movement. Today it has over 400 loosely affiliated chapters, many of them on college campuses, including the chapter at WNMU. While the organization lost momentum on campus in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year, student leaders are determined to bring new energy to the group. MEChA President Anais Orantez, an English major with minors in Communications and Music, was recently elected to her position after serving in an interim role. She was asked to serve as Interim President by the previous president who no longer had time in his schedule to serve. While Orantez, who is in her second year at WNMU, did not see herself stepping into the role of President so soon,...
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WNMU Takes Part in the Border Archives Bazaar

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WNMU was well represented at this year’s Border Archives Bazaar, held September 23 at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces, where both the J. Cloyd Miller Library and the WNMU Museum had table-top displays of the university’s archival treasures. Hosted by the Border Regional Archives Group, the event brings together resources from more than a dozen libraries, archives, and museums of the borderlands. The library’s display was drawn from the Juan Chacón Collection, which focuses on organized labor and mining in southwest New Mexico as well as on the film “Salt of the Earth.” Librarian Andrea Jaquez said that in deciding what to feature from the library’s collection, she decided to focus on “what we are known for,” which is the Juan Chacón Collection and related materials connected to mining history and labor. Jaquez noted that it is sometimes a challenge to present the library’s rich resources in a way that is visually engaging, as at...
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Miller Library Hosts Event in Recognition of Banned Books Week

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The American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week was observed this year with an event at WNMU J. Cloyd Miller Library. Sponsored by the library and the Humanities Department, the event drew a record crowd this year, with an estimate of ninety in attendance. Director of the Library Samantha Johnson opened the event by welcoming the audience and engaging them with questions about book banning and book challenges. WNMU Writer in Residence JJ Amaworo Wilson then spoke on the history of book bans. Mentioning both ancient and more recent history, Wilson said that “Tyrants, dictators, autocrats—they are still trying to silence writers . . . When we read, we become aware of alternative ways of thinking, alternative ways of living, alternative ways of being. When we read, we learn to understand that the world could be different.” This is precisely what those in unearned positions of power fear, said Wilson. “Tyrants, dictators and autocrats,” he said, “have to...
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