2017, Spring

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SPRING 2017

M A G A Z I N E THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO I ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Global Lobos International Exchanges Foster Deeper Learning

Alumnus Climbs Into Mountain Rescue | New Coach Brings Running and Winning Style UNM Dance Major Takes Up Residence at Smithsonian | Finding Cures in Clinical Data What Can We Learn From Hummers’ Tiny Lungs? | Opening Restroom Doors for Everyone


Photo: Courtney Bryan

Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (‘96 BFA, ‘14 MA)

Contents

Alumna Rebecca Kush helps clinical data speak a common language.

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LETTERS

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ALBUM

Keeping current with classmates

7 PROGRESS

message from Alumni Association A President James B. Lewis

Alumnus Jason Williams, director of UNM's International Mountain Medicine Center, teaches backcountry emergency response.

8 CAMPUS CONNECTIONS

What’s going on around campus

12 APPLES AND AVOCADOS

Alumna drills down clinical study data By Leslie Linthicum

14 DANCING WITH DANA

“National dance treasure” keeps UNM connection By Keiko Ohnuma

18 ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES UNM’s international connections get students out of their comfort zones By Leslie Linthicum

On the cover: In this issue we go around the world, highlighting the movements of alumni and UNM's global connections. Photo: Roberto E. Rosales

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MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Mirage was the title of the University of New Mexico yearbook until its final edition in 1978. The title was then adopted by the alumni magazine, which continues to publish vignettes about UNM graduates.


M A G A Z I N E

Spring 2017, Volume 37, Number 1 Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (‘96 BFA, ‘14 MA)

The University of New Mexico Chaouki T. Abdallah, Acting President Dana G. Allen, Vice President, Alumni Relations UNM Alumni Association Executive Committee James B. Lewis (’77 MPA) President Harold Lavender (’69 BA, ’75 JD) President-Elect Ann Rhoades (’85 MBA) Past President Tom Daulton (’77 BS) Treasurer Dana G. Allen, Secretary Sandra Begay-Campbell (’87 BSCE) Member At Large Hummingbird researcher Chris Witt also likes big birds, including this sandhill crane.

Rosalyn Nguyen (’03 BBA, ’07 MBA, JD) Member At Large Henry Rivera (’68 BA, ’73 JD) Member At Large Alexis Tappan (’99 BA) Member At Large

26 RESCUE ME

36 ACCESSIBLE TO ALL

Alumnus Jason Williams heads up unique mountain rescue program By Leslie Linthicum

Generous gift improves restroom access at Popejoy Hall By Michelle G. McRuiz

Daniel Trujillo (’07 BBA, ’08 MACCT) Member At Large

28 BIRD NERD Hummingbird research puts UNM’s

39 GETTING TO KNOW YOU

Dana G. Allen, Vice President, Alumni Relations

Chris Witt on international stage By Leslie Linthicum

30 SHELF LIFE

Books by UNM alumni and faculty

34 NEW COACH, NEW TEMPO Mike Bradbury has the women Lobos running By Chelsea Pitvorec

A message from Alumni Association’s Dana Allen

Mirage Editorial Leslie Linthicum, Editor Wayne Scheiner & Company, Graphic Design

Meet our award winners

Address correspondence to MirageEditor@unm.edu or The University of New Mexico Alumni Association, MSC 01-1160, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131-0001. You may also contact us at (505) 277-5808 or 800-ALUM-UNM (800-258-6866).

42 ALUMNI NETWORK

Web: UNMAlumni.com

Facebook: Facebook.com/UNMAlumni

40 ALUMNI CALENDAR 41 HONORING ALUMNI

Did our cameras catch you?

44 IN MEMORIAM

Twitter: @UNMAlumni Instagram: Instagram.com/UNMAlumni Flickr: Flickr.com/UNMAlumni

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editor LETTERS TO THE

FROM THE EDITOR:

TO THE EDITOR:

W

T

hen I began to consider a unifying theme for this issue of Mirage, the idea of movement came to mind. Maybe it was the season and the big yellow cottonwood leaves dropping outside my office window. Or the news that UNM’s president would be moving on and another would be moving in. A relative’s move also has me traveling outside the country, getting my passport stamped and experiencing the sounds, smells and streetscapes of a foreign culture. That all knits together in the issue you have in your hands, which explores movement—and the global community. Among other stories, we look at the grace of a dancer, the whir of a hummingbird’s wings and the cultural cross-collaboration that happens when UNM students study abroad and students from around the world choose to enroll at UNM. As anyone who has sat at a desk all morning and then stood up to take a walk knows, moving is good. It’s really what we’re made for. Beyond our bodies, the movement of ideas is central to our growth—as individuals, as a university and as a people. And as anyone who has traveled to or lived in another country can attest, moving outside our histories, our cultures and our comfort zones opens minds and hearts and allows us to see ourselves and others more clearly. As always, please keep us up to date about your movements so we can share that news with your classmates in our Album section.

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Leslie Linthicum MirageEditor@unm.edu MIRAGE MAGAZINE

he “touchstone” sentence (“UNM is a hub for progression rooted in history propelling us forward” chosen by a marketing firm to sum up UNM in “What’s Our Big Idea?”) is anything but. It is ambiguous, dull, clumsy and uninspiring. It may also be ungrammatical depending on what it means. The word “hub” is a poor choice. Dull, mundane. How about “center” or “source”? If “progression” is being used as a verb, what is its subject? Is it UNM or the hub? Or, is “progression” being used as a noun, the subject of “progressing”? What is being “rooted in history”? UNM? The hub? Progression? What is “propelling us forward”? UNM? The hub? Progression? I doubt that anyone will repeat this sentence for any purpose. It is a real jawbreaker. Very truly yours, Norman S. Thayer (BA 1954, JD 1960)

Photos: Roberto E. Rosales (‘96 BFA, ‘14 MA)

By Leslie Linthicum

U

NM: Reimaging rural medicine while fine-tuning flamenco. UNM: Living la vida Lobo. UNM: Each of us defines all of us. Those are some of the slogans that are emerging in advertising and marketing for the University of New Mexico as it undertakes a four-year $1.98 million rebranding campaign. In a January rollout on campus, a representative of 160over90, the Philadelphia marketing and branding agency contracted to revamp UNM’s public image, stressed that a brand isn’t a logo or one of those slogans or taglines. Instead, he said, it is “an over-arching big idea.” What is that “big idea”? And why does UNM need to find it and create advertising and marketing around that concept? University officials say that unless they take hold of their public image, others will. And the view from outside is not always accurate or flattering. In perception surveys over the years, people reported generally favorable opinions about UNM. But almost no one could identify a specific program outside of Lobo sports and University Hospital.

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MIRAGE MAGAZINE

And the reputation as a safety school lingers on and off campus. “The university has not had a consistent brand—not meaning a logo or campaign—but really talking about who we are collectively and not disparately,” says Cinnamon Blair (’10 MS), UNM’s head of marketing and communications. “The old brand, whether it was intentional or not, was ‘University Near Mom.’ It was thought of as the default or the safety school. We want to position UNM as a university of choice.”

Recruitment tool

That is even more important amid declining enrollments and shrinking revenues. Remaining attractive to potential students in New Mexico while also appealing to out-of-state students can help bolster a sagging bottom line. “One of the initial targets, given our situation, is new students,” Blair says. “We have a declining prospective student pool in New Mexico and if the lottery scholarship changes, that’s going to change our ability to attract in-state students. We don’t want to discount that group, but financially and also

just to build a better university, we need people from different places and different backgrounds and perspectives.” As the marketing department begins to develop new material for recruiting students, it will focus on what Albuquerque and New Mexico have to offer, as well as what sets UNM apart. A sample headline in a prospective student view book reads “On a plateau below a great sky next to the Watermelon Mountains. Live and learn in a historic city on an expansive mesa a mile above sea level, a city that is simultaneously cosmopolitan and soulful, urban and rural and brimming with light and possibilities.” The firm 160over90 was chosen from among eight bidders and began work in 2015 by surveying students, faculty, staff and alumni. About 450 people responded to the survey and then representatives of the company came to campus for a week of interviews with 350 people representing all facets of the university. The consultants distilled some themes from what they heard: Soul and spirit. Diversity in ethnicities, thought and approaches. Scrappiness and innovation.

R

e: “What’s our ‘Big Idea’?” First of all, the student publication headline, “On a plateau below a great sky…” is horrible! This is really being used to attract students? Who is the editor or is there an editor???? Secondly, when I was a student at UNM it had a pejorative “brand”… “Harvard on the Rio Grande”… a description that recognized the gulf between the pretensions of the university and the working class reality of the community surrounding the campus. I came to UNM in 1966 because then the visual arts studio degree program was good. The studio faculty were not above the community. They all provided an excellent education for all of the students who came into what was then Scholes Hall. I finished both a BFA and MA degrees in the program. Over the 40+ years since graduation I have remained in touch with UNM faculty and fellow students. They were a good group of excellent teachers, artists, community members and mentors. I do not share the alumni comments in the article stating that my education relationship was “functional” or a “business” relationship. The knowledge I gained has helped me immensely. I was a professor for over 30 years, a dean of a school of art and I remain a practicing studio artist. I am ever grateful for all that I learned.


Look for a friend on every page! Send your alumni news to Mirage Editor, The University of New Mexico Alumni Association, MSC 01-1160, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131-0001. Or better yet, email your news to UNMAlumni@unm.edu. Please include your middle name or initial and tell us where you’re living now. Deadlines:

As an alum I would feel much better to know that UNM invested $1.98M into hiring better faculty, sustaining quality programs that linked the university to the community, and created some stability in key programs. Quality attracts students. Clever slogans never replace quality! As of now the $1.98M bought UNM this sentence… “UNM is a hub for progression rooted in history propelling us forward.” This is not even a good high school graduation slogan. I can’t tell which is more embarrassing… this slogan or the “Howlabaloo” concept. Neither helps me feel proud of my UNM history…

Thank you, Richard Thompson (BFA ’70, MA ’72) dean and professor of art (retired)

The SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) Project

Catching the Wave Physicist/actor confirms Einstein was right By Leslie Linthicum

I

t happened just before 6 a.m., East Coast time, on Sept. 14, 2015. Both of the U.S. Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory detectors, one in Hanford, Wash., and the other in Livingston, La., detected two black holes colliding a billion light years away. It took cautious scientists until February to share the news with the world and explain its stunning implications. The observatories, each called LIGO, had finally recorded proof of Albert Einstein’s century-old theory of general relativity. Robert Ward (’00 BS), an Albuquerque native and UNM alumnus, had kept the secret under wraps for five months. A member of the Advanced LIGO team since 2003, he helped design, construct and test some of the precision instrumentation on the wave detectors. Ward calls the LIGO concept “ambitious and audacious,” a huge machine that pushes the limits of technology to monitor the universe for movement billions of light years away, converts that energy into volts and ultimately records it as a little squiggle on a computer screen.

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MIRAGE MAGAZINE

“A large part of my contribution has been in getting the machine working,” says Ward, 38. “It’s really been my entire career so far.” So imagine Ward’s emotions when he started to see a flurry of emails last September that said LIGO had found what it was looking for. “Exciting, very exciting,” Ward says. “It was amazing. Every scientist has small breakthroughs throughout a career. This is a big one.” It is a big one, one most likely to win the Nobel Prize for physics. Ward was part of an enormous team—more than 1,000 scientists—who worked on LIGO and Nobel prizes are much more often given to individuals than to teams. But he has the satisfaction of knowing that he was part of one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the last century, one that opens the door to probing the farthest reaches of the universe. And the September detection wasn’t a fluke. In June, LIGO announced the detection of another collision in December.

Spring deadline: January 1; Fall deadline: June 1

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1940s

was at first excited then disappointed in Samuel E. Neff (‘46 BS), Clovis, N.M., was “Catching the Wave”, the article in the awarded the key to the city by Clovis Mayor David just-published Fall 2016 Mirage regarding Lansford in recognition of his outstanding service to his community and country. colliding black holes. It’s certainly an exciting phenomenon and discovery, 1950s particularly with its accompanying Martin Charles (’52 BA), Denton, Texas, is an elder image—the first ever of any black holes of in the Cherokee Nation. which I’m aware, let alone two colliding. Albert L. Grubesic (‘57 With the image’s resolution, it must have BBA), Santa Fe, N.M., been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. was honored by the city Or so the article carefully and craftily of Santa Fe as a Living Treasure, recognizing his would like the reader to believe. That work on the Santa Fe City image, as beautiful and detailed as it Martin Charles Council, as a builder and presents, is no more a photograph of black other contributions to the community. holes and their attendant gravitational Jack L. Stahl (‘57 BSED) and Carol Ann Stahl lensing, than one of the man in the moon. (’58) celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary It is clearly a simulated image, presumably in Albuquerque. based on the authors’ programs; but that 1960s is not mentioned in the article. In fact, no Charles B. Corbin (‘60 BS, ‘65 PhD), Phoenix, Ariz., appellation is given at all regarding the received the lifetime achievement award from the source of the image. President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. I believe a truthful disclosure should be The award honors those who greatly contribute to advancing physical activity, sports, fitness and made in the next issue of Mirage regarding nutrition programs nationwide. the source of this image, lest most nonDon Perkins (’60), Albuquerque, was recognized astro-scientists continue to believe this at the UNM Black Alumni Chapter Awards. In 1968, image is actually of two colliding black he helped end the Dallas Cowboys’ practice of holes, itself worthy of its own Nobel Prize segregating players when traveling to hotels. He retired as the fifth-leading rusher in NFL history. were it true.

Robert Kazmer Latven (BA, Chemistry, 1974, UNM; Ph.D., Analytical Chemistry)

Editor’s note: The image was indeed a simulation. It was credited to The SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) Project

Signe M. Stuart (‘61 MA), Santa Fe, N.M., is featured in the New Mexico Museum of Art’s “Alcoves 16/17” show. The show features current work by contemporary New Mexico artists. Rudolfo A. Anaya (‘63 BAED, ‘63 MA, ‘72 MA), Albuquerque, was honored by President Barack Obama with the National Humanities Award. He received the medal for his “pioneering stories of the American Southwest” during a White House ceremony. Anaya is considered to be the “dean” of contemporary Chicano literature. Ira L. Harge (’65 BS), Albuquerque, a former professional basketball player, was honored for his athletic leadership by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter.

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T H E

U N I V E R S I T Y

O F

N E W

M E X I C O

WE ARE A COMMUNITY OF UNIQUE PERSPECTIVES EMBRACING OUR DIFFERENCES. BUT WE’RE MORE THAN JUST A CONTRAST OF CULTURES—THIS IS A CULTURE OF CONTRAST. THOUSANDS OF VIEWS IN THOUSANDS OF HUES. UNAFRAID TO LET OUR COLORS RUN AND BLEND AND LET THE THINGS THAT DIVIDE US BECOME THE THINGS THAT UNITE US. SO WE CAN WORK TOGETHER TO CREATE, COLLECT AND SPREAD KNOWLEDGE ABOUT EVERYTHING—EVERYWHERE. THROUGHOUT THE STATE. THE COUNTRY. THE WORLD. WE ARE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO—NEW MEXICO’S FLAGSHIP UNIVERSITY. WE ARE INDIVIDUALS, TOGETHER, SHARING OUR STRENGTHS. LIVING, LEARNING AND BECOMING STRONGER. AS A PACK. AS LOBOS.

unm.edu


Moving Forward

A

s you read this, fellow alumni, I will be approximately three-quarters of the way through my term as your Alumni Association president. As I have met and talked with so many of you both in and outside of Albuquerque, I have been continually impressed by the success of our alumni and the passion they have for the University. It has been an honor to serve in this leadership role and I can assure you these last few months of my term will have as much momentum as when I took office last June. In our fall issue of Mirage, you read about some of my goals for the year and I’m pleased to share with you the progress we have made toward them and how we are continually looking forward. First, the Karen Abraham Courtyard project has made significant progress and we look forward to an opportunity to officially dedicate this space sometime this summer. Our chapters across the country have found new ways to engage alumni in their areas and promote UNM pride. Our connections with key campus partners continue to grow and we have found new ways to communicate, collaborate and cooperate. And your Alumni Association board of directors, under the leadership of the executive committee, has tackled challenging issues with engaged dialogue, good thought and the overarching goal of working to promote in every way the best interests of the University. I am appreciative every day of their time and dedication to this organization. I would like to ask all of you to find a way to promote UNM and become an ambassador for the good this institution is doing to improve the state of New Mexico and the world as a whole. As our branding campaign reminds us, “Each of Us Defines All of Us.” It does, and each of us is a champion for telling our story. If you have not had an opportunity to visit Define.unm.edu and view the exciting video that embodies all that it means to be a Lobo, I highly encourage you to do it. Its energy and message have resonated with our alumni, students and community members. And, if there is anything your Alumni Association can do for you, please do not hesitate to contact the Office of Alumni Relations to ask.

Go Lobos!

James B. Lewis Alumni Association President

Charles P. Roberts (’65 BAED, ’70 MA), was recognized by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter for his leadership as an athlete at UNM. He was one of the first black athletes to be given a scholarship to the University. Patricia L. Harris (‘66 BSN) and Richard A. Harris ('69 MS, '75 PhD), Albuquerque, celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. Kyla T. Thompson (‘66 BAED), Los Ranchos, N.M., and her husband Roger Thompson helped create the Veterans Heading Home program to help homeless veterans, and the New Mexico Women Veterans Smile program providing dental services to low-income women veterans. William M. Brown (‘67 BS), Arroyo Hondo, N.M., was honored with a lifetime achievement award as part of the 2016 Paul Ré Peace Prize. He was recognized for his environmental conservation and sustainability work. Rene P. Matison (’68 BS) was honored by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter for his athletic leadership in track and field at UNM. He is vice president of the New Mexico Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle Club. Harold Bailey (’69 BS, ’71 MA), Albuquerque, was honored by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter for his athletic achievements and his leadership in the Afro-American Studies program at UNM. John L. Kessell (‘69 PhD), Durango, Colo., celebrated the 90th anniversary of the New Mexico Historical Review with a lecture titled “Whither the Waters: Mapping the Great Basin from Miera to Fremont.” Robert D. Riggs (’69 BM, ‘74 MMU), Oxford, Miss., has published the book “The Violin.”

1970s Enrique R. Lamadrid (‘70 BA), Albuquerque, has co-authored the book “Hotel Mariachi: Urban Space and Cultural Heritage in Los Angeles.” He and his co-author Catherine Lyn Kurland and photographer Miguel A. Gandert presented their book at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. Joan Konopak Eng (’71 BUS) and Christopher S. Eng, (’68 BA) live in Silver City, N.M. Joan retired after 12 years as a psychotherapist and 13 years as an elementary counselor. She is an ordained deacon in the Anglican Church. Pete Gibson (‘71 BS), Albuquerque, was honored for his athletic leadership by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter at their annual awards event. Victor Moss (‘71 JD), Highlands Ranch, Colo., has published his second book, “No Return Home” continuing the story from his first book, “Beware the Wolves.” The novels are based on the lives of his parents during and after World War II. Baldwin G. Burr (‘72 BAFA, ‘73 MA), Los Lunas, N.M., presented a lecture on historic Route 66 through New Mexico in a lecture series at Zimmerman Library.

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Campus Connections Space Microsystems Innovations & Applications Center and served as its director from 2012 to 2014. Acting President Chaouki T. Abdallah called Christodoulou “a highly-accomplished scholar and distinguished professor” and an innovator in his field. “Most not be seeking a second term. His fourimportantly,” Abdallah said, the new year term was to end on June 1, 2017. dean “is a talented administrator Provost and Executive Vice President who cares deeply about UNM and for Academic Affairs Chaouki T. Abdallah the School of Engineering.” took over as acting president in January “I am honored to be the next and Craig White, dean of the Anderson dean for the School of Engineering School of Management, is serving as at UNM,” Christodoulou said. ’‘I am acting provost. excited about this opportunity and am A search committee, comprised of looking forward to working with the Regents, university faculty and staff, school‘s faculty, staff, students, and alumni and community members, will alumni to continue our long tradition help choose UNM’s 22nd president. of commitment to excellence in The Regents plan to make a decision research, education, diversity, on a new president by early spring. and entrepreneurship.” You can follow the search process at Joseph L. Cecchi, the current dean, presidentialsearch.unm.edu. will step down at the end of June 30.

Chaouki T. Abdallah

SEARCH IS ON A search is underway for UNM’s next president. The Board of Regents and President Robert G. Frank reached an agreement in December for Frank’s early exit from the presidency. Frank took over as president in 2012, coming to UNM from Kent State University where he was provost and senior vice president. The triple UNM alumnus—he holds a B.S., an M.A. and a Ph.D. in psychology from UNM— announced in September that he would

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MIRAGE MAGAZINE

NEW DEAN

Christos G. Christodoulou, a distinguished professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is UNM’s next Jim and Ellen King Dean of Engineering and Computing. Christodoulou, the current associate dean for research in the School of Engineering, was selected following a comprehensive national search. Christodoulou has been at UNM since 1999, when he joined as a professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is one of the founders of UNM’s Configurable

Christos Christodoulou


Raymond Hamilton (’72 BAED) was honored by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter with their Trailblazer Award. He was the first African-American to serve as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico.

Steven Bradfute

ZEROING IN ON ZIKA

The rapid spread of the Zika virus over the past year has caused thousands of babies in the Western Hemisphere to be born with abnormally small heads and intellectual disabilities, terrifying women of childbearing age and causing concern among public health officials. Now, a trio of UNM scientists is racing to develop a vaccine against Zika using a novel technology that they hope will trick the immune system into attacking and neutralizing the mosquito-borne microbe. David Peabody and Bryce Chackerian, professors in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, have teamed up with Steven Bradfute, an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious

Disease and the Center for Global Health in the Department of Internal Medicine. Their project is getting a jumpstart with funding from UNM’s Clinical & Translational Science Center. “We’ll be able to do an awful lot of this in a year,” Peabody says. “That’s to get an idea whether it works in a mouse. It will take longer to test in nonhuman primates and, ultimately, humans. We have no idea whether it will reach that stage, of course.” The project starts with a key technology Peabody developed. He took a bacteriophage—in this case, a virus that infects E. coli bacteria—and figured out how to produce its outer shell while eliminating its genetic material. What remains is a noninfectious particle that resembles a microscopic soccer ball. Due to its unique shape, our

Cid E. Backer (‘73 BA), Taos, N.M., is owner of Taos’ oldest independent, natural and organic food store, Cid’s Food Market. Morris A. Bjurlin (’73 MATM), Hutchinson, Minn., and the “UNM Road Runners” who were classmates in a special UNM math program, continue to have reunions every summer with members coming from across the country to remember their UNM days. Carol J. Condie (‘73 PhD), Albuquerque, a retired contract archeologist, recently completed a study identifying all the cemeteries in Bernalillo County. Alfredo R. Vigil (‘73 BS, ‘77 MD), Taos, N.M., was recognized as a 2016 UNM School of Medicine distinguished alumnus. He is a family medicine practitioner in Northern New Mexico and is board chair of the Con Alma Foundation and New Mexico Health Resources. Herb J. Hammond (’73 BS, ’76 JD), Dallas, an attorney at Thompson & Knight LLP, has been recognized in the “The Best Lawyers in America 2017.” Don Woods (’76), was honored by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter for his leadership in athletics. Sandra Lee Brantley (‘77 BA, ‘97 PhD), Albuquerque, is a UNM research professor, Museum of Southwest Biology collection manager and spider specialist. Robin Cole (‘77), Donora, Penn., was honored by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter for his leadership in the NFL as a player for the Pittsburgh Steelers and for his support of the March of Dimes, the Arthritis Foundation and promotion of seat belt use. Miguel A. Gandert (‘77 BUS, ‘83 MA), Albuquerque, provided the photographs for “Hotel Mariachi: Urban Space and Cultural Heritage in Los Angeles.” Ronnie Patrick Lopez (‘77 BA, ‘97 PhD), Socorro, N.M., was honored as the 2015 New Mexico Senior Prosecutor of the Year at the 2016 Annual Conference of District Attorneys. Michael Cooper (’78), View Park, Calif, a former Los Angeles Laker, University of Southern California coach and current WNBA coach, was honored by the UNM Black Alumni Association for his athletic leadership at UNM and in his post-collegiate career. Preston Dennard (’78), was recognized for his career at UNM and in the NFL by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter.

Bryce Chackerian

Wirt H. Wills (‘78 BA), Albuquerque, a UNM professor of anthropology, recently worked with a group of 11 UNM archaeology students on a six-week research program at Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

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Campus Connections immune systems identify this inert protein sphere as a virus, triggering the production of virus-killing antibodies. “When Bryce and I got together about 10 years ago, we realized this could be a vaccine platform,” Peabody says. He and Chackerian are trying to attach just a small piece of the Zika virus to the surface of the virus-like particle. They hope the human immune system will develop a unique antibody in response to the vaccine that neutralizes the active virus. Identifying a candidate vaccine should happen relatively quickly. The next step lies in confirming that it stimulates an effective immune response and actually prevents disease. That’s where Bradfute comes in. “Dave and Bryce generate the vaccine,” he says. “They’ve got the technology and they can tailor the vaccine specifically to Zika. What we do is analyze the immune responses. We determine how much a response we get and whether or not it protects from infection.” Bradfute and his team are studying Petri dish cultures to see how the virus infects and kills human cells. When they have a candidate vaccine in hand, they can introduce it into the cell culture to see whether it’s protective, and at what concentration. Bradfute says that because the stakes are so high, the UNM team is in a race with researchers around the world. “I knew nothing about Zika virus until last November,” he says. “The pace at which discoveries have been happening is really incredible.”

INTELLIGENCE FACTOR 10

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

The Central Intelligence Agency, the United States government’s civilian foreign intelligence service, has a mission to gather and analyze information from around the world to preempt threats and further national security objectives. Increasingly, its mission includes counter-terrorism and cyber security and the agency is making an effort to ensure that its employment ranks are as diverse as it mission. “Improving diversity at CIA is not

Former CIA Director John O. Brennan

simply a moral imperative—it is a mission imperative,” then-CIA Director John O. Brennan said in a visit to UNM’s campus in November. To help achieve that goal, the CIA chose UNM, one of the more diverse universities in the country, to launch its Signature School Program. The CIAUNM Signature School Program is the agency's first. Four other university partnerships will be announced later. While Brennan emphasized that a diverse and talented workforce is critical to the success of the CIA’s global mission, Emile Nahkleh, director of UNM’s Global and National Security Policy Institute, said the partnership will aid UNM students in getting a leg

up in seeking competitive jobs within the agency. “It's win-win for our students and faculty,” Nahkleh said, “because the program will strengthen the students’ competitive edge in their search for careers in the federal government and in global and national companies and organizations.” Under the partnership, the CIA will regularly recruit on campus, helping students with applications for internships and full-time jobs after graduation. The agency will offer lectures and trainings and help UNM faculty develop research projects in certain courses relevant to existing security problems in the world. Brennan stressed that the CIA needs employees who represent a broad range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds as well as language fluencies. And he said students from a wide range of academic majors will be encouraged to apply, including engineering, technology and computer science but also economics and law.

NATIVE AMERICAN RAP

Four UNM librarians have completed groundbreaking work in analyzing the cultural relevance of Native American rap artists. Their unique project grew out of a love of rap music and a special interest in the work of Tupac Shakur who, before his murder in 1996, rhymed about gang life, gun violence and racism and oppression in black communities. Teresa Neely, an associate professor


Tommy Jewell (’79 JD), Albuquerque, was honored with the UNM Black Alumni Chapter’s Trailblazer Award. Jewell was the first African American trial judge in the state of New Mexico.

in the College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences, had spent a sabbatical studying the lyric content of Shakur’s music. Three of Neely’s colleagues, assistant professors Jorge Ricardo López-McKnight and Sarah Kostelecky (of the Zuni Pueblo) and Library Operations Manager Monica Etsitty Dorame (of the Navajo Nation) all shared her fascination with rap lyrics

transcribing lyrics from Native American rappers Waln, Nataanii Nez Means and Gary “Litefoot” Paul Davis and using software to count words and phrases. They found the music addressed colonized aggression, oppression, structural racism and other social issues experienced by Native American communities. The group presented their paper at the 2016 National Diversity in Libraries Conference in Los Angeles.

COURTYARD NEARS COMPLETION

The jackhammering, concrete pouring and planting are done, and the space in front of the Art Annex building on Redondo Drive is now a grassy green space. The Karen Abraham Courtyard, named in honor of the longtime director of the Office of Alumni Relations who retired in 2015, has been transformed from a crumbling concrete eyesore into a welcoming and their impact on marginalized and entrance to the Alumni Relations underrepresented people. The four wondered if contemporary offices at Hodgin Hall, just to the west of the courtyard. Native American rappers were also More than two dozen newly using lyrics to promote awareness of planted trees, shrubbery and expanses native and indigenous suffering and of lawn now flank a wide walkway that explore social justice issues in their leads to the garden’s centerpiece, a communities. After conducting a fountain. The space is designed to quick comparison of the lyrics from offer a place to relax for students, staff a Shakur song and a song by Sicangu and faculty as well as campus visitors Lakota hip-hop artist Frank Waln, they were astonished at the similarities and to offer a welcoming venue for campus events. and encouraged to further develop the research. Neely, Kostelecky, Dorame, and López-McKnight spent months

Jay Douglas Rosenblum (‘79 BA, ‘82 JD), Albuquerque, is with Sutin, Thayer & Browne. He was recently honored by the 2016 Chambers USA guide.

1980s John C. Jourdan (‘80 BSCE), Hobbs, N.M., has closed Dalco, Chaparral Builder and Security Fence, Inc. a family business serving Lea County since 1962. Teresa L. Knott (‘80 BUS), Glen Allen, Va., is serving as 2016-2017 president of the Medical Library Association. Felicity Ann Muench (‘80 BFA), Lafayette, Colo., has released a new CD, “Amoroso Guitar Duo—Romantic Music from South America.” The Teresa L. Knott guitar duets, performed with Kevin Garry, have been rarely recorded due to the obscurity of the composers. Her web site is felicityguitar.com. Andy L. Halasz (‘81 BSME), Santa Fe, N.M., is founder, president and CEO of Vizzia Technologies, a startup focused on the “Internet of things.” James H. Hinton (‘81 BA) is CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health in Dallas, Texas. Previously, he was CEO of Presbyterian Healthcare for 21 years. Raymond Florencio Ortiz (‘82 MD) has joined Alta Vista Regional Hospital in Las Vegas, N.M. Douglas M. Smith (‘83 PhD), Albuquerque, is president and founder of NanoPore, Inc and co-founder of Cool Logistics Ltd. He was honored by the UNM School of Engineering with a Distinguished Alumni Award. Annabelle Oczon Hammer (’83 BA), Reston, Va., retired after a 31-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency as an intelligence analyst in the Washington, D.C., area. She is involved in the Project Linus Fairfax County chapter, making, collecting and distributing blankets, quilts and afghans to sick and traumatized children. Dennis Anderson (‘84 MPA), Albuquerque, and his wife Willa celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Sarah B. George (’84 PhD), Salt Lake City, Utah, is the executive director of the Natural History Museum of Utah. She has more than 30 years of science and museum experience. She was elected to the Association of Science-Technology Centers board of directors. (continued on page 17)

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Making Data Speak the Same Language Alumna Rebecca Kush’s Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium sets the standard By Leslie Linthicum

Kush works to make sure scientific studies compare apples to apples to get closer to disease cures and treatments. Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (‘96 BFA, ‘14 MA)

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cientists searching for a better treatment for Parkinson’s or a cure for diabetes might spend years and millions of dollars in clinical research studies. When it comes to reporting their data, which might hold precious clues for other researchers on similar paths, one research team might code the sex of study participants as male or female. Another might choose M or F. Someone else may assign males the number 1 and females the number 2. Someone else may have no data sets for “sex” because they classified that information as “gender.” To a computer trying to search that data for meaningful patterns that might advance medical research, it’s as if the studies are speaking different languages—or even talking gibberish. Compound that by different ways to describe patients’ race, how they responded to a therapy, whether their side effects were serious, mild or non-existent, and much of the information gleaned from clinical studies is useless to others. Worse than comparing apples and oranges, the system of reporting clinical trial results throws figs, bananas and persimmons into a confusing fruit basket of data. Rebecca Kush (BS ’75) has devoted two decades of her professional career to advocating for data standards that can be easily interpreted and shared. It’s more than just for the sake of convenience, she says; the stakes are enormous. Locked in all of those separate data sets could be a promising therapy to slow memory loss in Alzheimer’s, a better treatment for asthma or even a cure for cancer. “Every piece of data is precious,” says Kush, who is the president and CEO of the Austin-based Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium, known as CDISC. “You can’t waste data, and you do waste data when it is formatted and reported in ways that are not sharable.” CDISC, a non-profit that Kush founded in 1997, has advocated for a common research reporting language not just for American medical research but globally. At the end of 2014, CDISC achieved a breakthrough. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration adopted rules to take effect

at the beginning of this year requiring that data be submitted in standardized formats that will be available electronically. Last spring, Japan followed suit. “It is a big step forward,” Kush says. And it was, for her, a major milestone in a long battle. “So many people told me this couldn’t be done,” she says. “All along the way.” Her next goal is to persuade the National Institutes of Health to follow similar requirements. Eliminating the hodgepodge of formats among the thousands of clinical trials investigating therapies that are ongoing at any time, Kush says, can help science get closer to effective treatments and cures. If data doesn’t speak the same language, she says, a clinical trial in Hong Kong could be repeating the same mistakes and reaching the same dead end that a clinical trial in Kansas already did. That wastes precious time, she says, and it also puts patients through unnecessary trials. And miscommunicating data can also fail to connect successes; that researcher in Kansas might find data in a study in Germany that could spark a breakthrough. “When patients participate in clinical research to help collect data they do it to help themselves and for the good of others. And they expect their data to be shared and used,” Kush says. “They don’t expect it to get siloed and not used going forward.” For people outside the world of medical research and clinical trials, it might come as a surprise that there have been no standards for collecting, formatting and sharing research results. In fact, it was when Kush was working in pharmaceutics and someone asked that innocent question­—“Don’t you guys have any kind of standards in your industry?”—that the germ of the idea that would become CDISC started to form. Kush, who grew up in Los Alamos (she was Rebecca Daniels when she graduated from Los Alamos High School in 1971), comes from a Lobo family. “Four kids and my dad all graduated from UNM,” she says. Kush credits the Honors College for helping her see different ways to learn, how to think outside the box and to think big. She went through UNM on

some scholarships and money she made babysitting, and she recently endowed a scholarship to benefit a Native American student attending the Honors College. Her degree was in biology and chemistry and, although her father, a research chemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, thought she should go to medical school and become an allergist, her path was different. She did attend the University of California, San Diego, med school, but for her doctorate, not her M.D. “At that point in time,” she says, “life and death was something I wasn’t ready for.” She did clinical research in diabetes among the Pima Indians for the NIH in Phoenix and when her husband got a job that took them to Austin, she did a postdoc in immunology at the University of Texas and went to work for a drug testing company. Her husband’s company, Schlumberger, transferred him to Japan and then Paris and then back to Austin in 1988. Meanwhile, Kush ran a lab that did nutritional analysis and completed a second postdoc, but was at loose ends. By then, she was ready to become a physician, but UT didn’t have a medical school at the time. Answering a newspaper ad, she applied to be a phlebotomist at a clinical research organization, moved up the ranks at the company and began to understand the data collection process and start to see its inefficiencies. After hearing that question— “Don’t you guys have any standards in your industry?”—and having to answer, “No, we don’t,” Kush started organizing what would become CDISC. The organization has grown into a global consortium with coordinating committees in Asia and Europe, 35 full-time employees and a $7 million annual budget. The consortium’s motto is “Strength through collaboration” and Kush, 64, hopes for a future in which science is open, data is shared and data sets all speak to each other in a shared language. “You have to a have a vision of what you’re building and where you can go with it,” she says. “Or else you would get frustrated and quit.” ❂

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Dancing Across �he Divide Dana Tai Soon Burgess crosses cultures through the universal language of movement h Keiko Ohnuma h

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lthough he is not what one immediately pictures as New Mexican—Asian-American and a prominent East Coast dance choreographer who performs internationally—Dana Tai Soon Burgess is a native son who has absorbed the deepest influences from the Land of Enchantment. Raised in Santa Fe by an artist couple who had come West seeking a creative environment, Burgess remembers his childhood as steeped in diversity—not so much being different himself, as being surrounded by the richness of difference. In Santa Fe in the 1970s and 1980s, “there was a small Asian community, and all the kids went to school together,” he recalls. “Most of us went to the same martial arts dojo, in the same building as Project

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Tibet on Canyon Road. I went to bilingual schools. My best friend growing up was Navajo, so there was moving through these diverse communities every day.” It’s not a stretch to see those influences at work in the dances he creates for his Washington, D.C.-based multicultural troupe, now in its 24th season. Burgess, 48, has performed at the Kennedy Center, United Nations headquarters and Lincoln Center. He has been tapped by the U.S. State Department as a cultural ambassador, performing in dozens of countries, as well as at the White House at the invitation of President Barack Obama. His choreography has been recognized with two senior Fulbright scholarships, seven Metro D.C. Dance Awards and the Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence.


Photo: Matailong Du

Even today, as a “national dance treasure,” as one writer calls him, Burgess traces his artistic development to the training he received at the UNM Department of Theatre & Dance and continues to nurture relationships with UNM faculty and students a quarter century after graduating. Burgess remains close to his undergraduate professors, emeritae Judith Chazin-Bennahum and Jennifer Predock-Linell. He brought the current department chair, Vladimir Conde Reche, to Washington to choreograph

a dance for his own students at George Washington University, where he chairs the Department of Theatre & Dance. And he donated a dance to Conde Reche’s students to perform here, strengthening the connection between the two departments. With his husband, playwright James Freeman, Burgess established a dance fund at UNM last year that the department can use to bring guest artists to the school. “I have seen students connecting with us and staying involved, but not as much as Dana,” says Conde Reche, who

will host Burgess when he returns to New Mexico for a benefit performance in March. “He’s a person who’s really looking into how he can give back to UNM. He’s interested in supporting the students, the faculty. He’s so grateful for how the faculty in the dance program supported him.” Raised in a family of visual artists, Burgess initially chose to major in accounting as an act of rebellion. “Soon, I realized I could never do that all my life,” he laughs. Walking by a gym one day, he became captivated by the dancers

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practicing. It reminded him of his many years competing in martial arts. “He was a very shy, skinny young man coming into our studios, hanging out when we were still in the gym,” recalls ChazinBennahum. “He really loved all kinds of movement, every kind of dance, and he had

Soon Burgess Dance Company). “I just had this feeling that I really wanted to tell the unique stories that I was interested in, and that would resonate with larger audiences,” he says. Descended on his mother’s side from the first wave of Hawaii plantation workers

first choreographer-in-residence at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery to accompany temporary exhibitions at the museum. If it seems strange for a portrait museum to collaborate with a choreographer in this way, it serves as a testament to Burgess’ ease

from Korea, Burgess initially focused on the Asian-American experience. His father was an Asian history scholar who spoke Mandarin, and he was steeped in AsianAmerican art at home, with family friends such as sculptor Isamu Noguchi. He began choreographing dances about the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Korean adoptee experience and “hyphenated” identity, including a collaboration with the estate of pioneering Korean-American video artist Nam June Paik. Then Burgess started thinking about “what is universal to new Americans and so-called marginalized communities.” His newest work, premiered in October, is called “Margin.” It addresses broader issues of race, gender and class. It is the first in a series of works that he will create as the

with navigating across borders, not only between cultures but also across artistic media. “I’m a big proponent of the idea that all fields utilize creativity,” he says, “even science. The same steps go into it. You have this concept, take a leap of faith, experiment

Photo: Jeffrey Watts

a completely open mind about the art form and imagery. It was such a pleasure to teach him, because he has knowledge, excitement, and an inquiring mind.” Predock-Linnell recalls Burgess as standing out immediately for his “really fascinating and unusual ideas” and his talent for choreography and dance. “He was a quiet student, but very focused and clear about how he wanted to choreograph—and this is where he ended up.” After graduating from the College of Fine Arts in 1990, Burgess moved to the nation’s capital to dance professionally. He attended George Washington University, where he received his Master of Fine Arts in 1994, and at the same time founded Moving Forward: Contemporary Asian American Dance Company (since renamed Dana Tai

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The Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company will begin its 25th anniversary tour in New Mexico with three recent works, 7:30 p.m. March 21 in the Elizabeth Waters Center for the Arts (Carlisle Gym). Ticket proceeds go to fund dance education in New Mexico.


and come to a new discovery.” He often says he was drawn to dance because it is “a unifying language that we all understand.” Given his family background, it seemed natural to use movement as a bridge to appreciating visual art. The National Portrait Gallery had contacted Burgess in 2013 to help with its first big show on American dance, “Dancing the Dream.” The museum had featured him in a 2012 exhibit about prominent Korean Americans, and wanted to include that portrait in the dance show. Burgess proposed incorporating dance by actually choreographing with his troupe on the floor of the exhibition as people walked through, an experiment that proved so successful in engaging audiences that his current residency is set for multiple events at the museum over the next three years. The melding of artistic media “resonated with me from childhood,” Burgess says. “Coming from a family of visual artists, seeing the creative process every day, I think of dance steps like brush strokes.” He begins his creative process from personal experience, which “I spin to make more universal.” What fascinates him is “these entry points for looking at our society through personal story, or the universality of specific stories, so people can become more empathetic to varying points of view.” Empathy, or emotional engagement, is what the arts can contribute to healing rifts both personal and social, Burgess says. Chazin-Bennahum sees in her former student’s approach the influence of the special environment he grew up in, not only at home but also in the blended cultures of New Mexico, which fuel “this desire to connect with the underpinnings of life, which are really based in ritual and culture.” She often took her students to see Native American dances, and encourage an appreciation of folklorico, flamenco, country line dancing equal to ballet, jazz and modern dance. “All these different kinds of love of movement, I think really had an effect on him,” she says.

Burgess likewise regards his undergraduate experiences as “planting deep seeds of wisdom” that have continued to grow with him as an artist. “I’ll have a funny or wonderful memory Rick L. Marquardt (‘84 BSCE, ‘91 EMBA), from something that happened in class, Albuquerque, is chairman and CEO of Jaynes or that a professor said, that resonates Corp. and was selected as a distinguished alumnus with what I’m doing now,” he says. “You’re by the UNM School of Engineering. instilling in them all these ideas and Diane M. Menapace (’84 BSED, ’86 MPA), Albuquerque, retired from Systematic Management concepts, and then it’s how they water Systems, a contractor to the U.S. Department of them and give them sun, and also prune Energy Office of Intelligence & Counterintelligence. them—that’s what creates success.” She had worked as an insider threat analyst. According to his former teachers, Joseph (Jody) D. Giles (‘85 BBA), San Juan Burgess himself excels as a teacher, which Capistrano, Calif., formerly the founder and CEO of Exhort Advisors, was the McKinnon Distinguished they also connect to the time he spent at CEO Lecturer for the UNM Anderson School of UNM. “I’ve seen how his students feel Management. His topic was “Why Artists Are Essential for Business Success.” about him—how appreciative they are of what he does for them,” says Conde Reche. Paul E. Guerin (‘85 BA, ‘91 MA, ‘98 PhD) is the director of the Institute for Social Research “So when I say he is very appreciative of in Albuquerque. what he received here, this is how he is Timothy David Cass (‘87 BBA) is the general showing that.” manager of the U.S. Tennis Association’s National Besides chairing the dance department Campus in Orlando, Florida. at George Washington, Burgess runs Michael E. Gaillour (‘87 BBA), Albuquerque, is co-owner of Indian Motorcycle dealership dance programs through his company at in Albuquerque. two area schools, and operates an Asian Mary Jane Gallahan (‘87 PhD), Rio Rancho, American youth outreach program that N.M., is a physician assistant with Lovelace mentors high school students in life skills Medical Group. as well as in the arts. Daniel G. Gutierrez ('87 BA, ‘93 MPA) is bishop “I think that the arts now, more than of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. ever, are important for expressing what Thomas R. Novak (‘87 MMGT), Albuquerque, is CEO of Klinger Constructors, a company that actual American ideals are in the new employs 115 people and averages approximately millennium,” he says. And for that, $53 million in work each year. “we have to nurture new younger Lisa S. Tanen-La Fontaine (’88 BA), West Hartford, artists constantly.” Conn., is the vice president and chief marketing officer for LL Global, a worldwide research, learning Looking back at himself as that skinny and development organization for more than accounting student, Burgess marvels at 850 insurance and financial services companies how his teachers took the “extra step” of in 64 countries. instilling not only the fundamental skills he needed to dance professionally, but also 1990s Pamela McBride (‘90 BS), Albuquerque, is the to survive as an artist. director of the paleoethnobotany lab at the “Because he was given freedom to New Mexico Office of Archaeological Studies. explore his ideas, I think that’s one of the La Vern Clarke-Roberts (’91 BS), Albuquerque, still holds many track and field records at UNM. She things that he passes on in his teaching— honored by the UNM Black Alumni Association the freedom to succeed and fail,” Predock- was for her athletic leadership. Currently, she is a doctor Linnell says. “He has a great deal of respect of chiropractic medicine. for his students’ individuality.” Derek Eller (’91 BAFA) has a gallery in New York City. He was recently interviewed about the For Burgess, it all comes back to gallery’s new location for Artspace magazine. empathy. “Working with young people, New Mexico artist Thomas Barrow, who shows his I know that you have to take that extra photography in the gallery, was Eller’s photography and photo history professor at UNM. step,” he says. “Because growing up is hard. And growing up as an artist is Patrick J. Melloy (‘91 BAFA), Albuquerque, manages the FIAT and Alfa Romeo dealership even harder.” ❂ owned by the Melloy family.

(continued on page 31)

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Around the World International exchanges lend UNM a global perspective

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“I wanted to be uncomfortable.”

Josh Lane

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By Leslie Linthicum Photos: Roberto E. Rosales (‘96 BFA, ‘14 MA)

Sadhvikas Addamane

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adhvikas Addamane was studying at the Amrita School of Engineering in his native India when he heard about an opportunity to study in the United States for a semester. “Oh, I have a chance to go to America,” he thought. He filled out the paperwork and, just like that, his life changed. “The idea of America is always enamoring,” the 26-year-old says while on a break from his work growing crystals in the Center for High Technology Materials on UNM’s South Campus. “I loved to watch the Hollywood movies. I realized once I came here that what you see in Hollywood is not what America is about.” Addamane arrived on campus in the fall of 2010, alone, with a box of belongings and a sleeping bag and the enormity of

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his choice sunk in. “It was scary, awfully scary,” he says. “I was literally in tears.” He started classes in engineering and the university hooked him up with a parttime job that might have sounded like a practical joke had it not turned out so well. He was hired to officiate intramural sports, and the Indian who barely knew the rules of cricket was soon sporting a whistle and officiating American soccer, football, softball and basketball games. “I made friends there, great friends there, and that’s where my Americanization began,” Addamane says. The guys at the gym were from Clovis and they took him home with them on school breaks and introduced him to breakfast cereal and burritos. As the semester was ending, Addamane had also found out about UNM’s work with high-powered lasers and he didn’t

want to leave. “I was blessed to have those experiences,” he says. “I was in love with Albuquerque.” With the help of UNM, he was able to change his visa and transfer to UNM. He graduated in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering and he stayed on for his Ph.D. He’s now running a lab, growing ultra-pure crystals for use in solar cells. “It’s a science and it’s an art,” Addamane says. “I enjoy doing it and I would like to do this for rest of my life. I feel blessed to be here.” Addamane has volunteered at a homeless shelter and with other nonprofits in Albuquerque and is immersed in American culture. “Sometimes I feel guilty about it,” he says. “India brought me up to be who I am, but I made myself here.”


“It’s a self-discovery.” Nicole Tami

Josh Lane

Nicole Tami

‘Fatal to Prejudice’

Nothing presumes that a university education must include the understanding of different nations through either study abroad or exposure to classmates from other countries. But the concept of international education through the exchange of students has been opening minds to different ways of life since it was pioneered in the late 1100’s— that’s when a student from Holland crossed the North Sea to attend Oxford University. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness,” Mark Twain wrote in “The Innocents Abroad” and countless undergraduates have come to understand that first-hand as they supplement their university education through a semester abroad.

Whether it is to gain fluency in another language, study a particular academic topic in situ or simply get away for an adventure, study abroad has grown steadily and has exploded more recently as the world has moved toward globalization. More than 1 million international students studied at U.S. colleges and universities in 2015-2016 and one in 10 U.S. undergraduates now studies abroad before graduating, according to the Institute of International Education. UNM maintains offices in Mexico and China and has developed partnerships with colleges and universities around the world to facilitate exchanges. In any given year, 800 UNM students study outside the country and UNM hosts about 1,500 foreign students.

Through a Different Lens

While Sadhvikas Addamane has been finding himself in the United States, UNM sophomore Josh Lane has been traveling the globe in a similar pursuit— to learn about himself as he immerses in other cultures. A photography major, Lane had already experienced an international upbringing. Both of his parents were South African, and the family lived in South Africa and England while he and his younger brother were growing up. “It was a good way to grow up,” Lane says today—“gallivanting around Europe, hanging out in misty old castles in the English countryside. And my parents also took us to Burning Man every year.” Lane’s father’s job brought him to the United States and Lane graduated from

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Bárbara Gómez Aguiñaga

high school in New Jersey, then took a gap year before enrolling at UNM. In Thailand, he helped with disaster relief in primitive villages. In Vietnam he volunteered at a pediatric hospital. In India he helped “picker” children and teenage monks learn English. And in Nepal he was caught in that country's devastating earthquake while hiking the Annapurna Circuit. Everything (except the earthquake) was according to plan. “I wanted to be uncomfortable,” Lane says. “I wanted to stretch myself. Travel is really the greatest way to gain a sense of empathy and therefore become a better person.” Since arriving at UNM, Lane has participated in a two-week travel abroad program to South Korea under the International Business Students Global program within the Anderson School of Management. The purpose was to meet local artisans and work to establish a pop-up folk art market when South Korea hosts the Winter Olympics in 2018. “It was a pretty incredible experience for me on almost every level,” Lane says. “To sit in a classroom and talk about a culture or a religion is one thing, but to actually go and immerse yourself is so much more rewarding. There is nothing like experiential learning.”

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Lane is enjoying his classes at UNM and exploring the relatively foreign landscape of New Mexico, but he hopes to fit a full semester abroad into his four years. “‘Other-izing’ is such a global problem right now,” Lane says. “Looking at other people as so different from yourself. If you go and you study and you sit side by side every day, that’s real learning and that increases you ability to empathize.”

in Zurich in 1980 to pursue an advanced degree in sociology. Tami lived in married student housing and attended Lowell Elementary, where she quickly picked up English and eventually became a student at UNM herself, earning a B.A., in cultural anthropology in 1998 before going on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for a Ph.D. Tami speaks German, Italian and Swahili, which stems from her field study and postInternational Advocate doc work in Kenya. Watching her mother Nicole Tami is fishing in her wallet for exact struggle to complete high-level academic change to pay for her cup of chai at the work in an unfamiliar language and finding Satellite in the SUB when she pulls out herself pushed to her limits in Africa, what she thinks is a penny. It’s actually Tami has become a cheerleader for a 5 cent Euro coin, the student barista tells studying abroad. her, which leads to a conversation about “It’s a self-discovery,” she says. “You the possibilities of spending a semester discover your own strength, but also your abroad in Ireland. limits. Ideally you’re exposing yourself to Tami, the executive director of Global a whole new swath of sights and smells Education Initiatives at UNM, hands over and ideas that leads to a new level of her business card along with advice to get open-mindedness about the world. It’s lifein touch with the office. changing and it broadens your perspective Nothing about the encounter is and shifts your horizon.” unusual for Tami, a citizen of the world UNM’s Global Education Office handles who is a living advertisement and both sides of the international education enthusiastic ambassador for the exchange—arrivals and departures. It power of global connections. brings students from other countries—99 “I came to UNM as the child of an countries at last count—to UNM for a international student,” Tami says. Her host of experiences ranging from short mother brought her from their home programs to years-long degree programs.


“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”

Jessica Yepez Moscoso

Mark Twain

One benefit for UNM is financial. Foreign students pay out-of-state tuition, although the Amigo Scholarship reduces qualifying foreign students’ tuition to the in-state level. And it facilitates UNM students studying in other countries for shorter-term programs that might span a winter or spring break to longer stints of a semester or a year. Even if students who study abroad never travel or work outside the country again, Tami believes they have a leg up in the job market, either when a company is looking for someone to work on an international project or is just looking for an employee with some special punch. “I think if it’s on your resume you stand out,” Tami says. “It shows a certain level of courage and curiosity and willingness to be uncomfortable. There’s nothing like stepping outside your comfort zone to challenge your perceptions.”

Tami also encourages cultural exchanges on campus and partnerships with other universities throughout the world. Around 200 UNM faculty members and post-docs are from other countries. “To assume you can step back from the global experience I think is naïve,” Tami says.

Ideas Exchange

Bárbara Gómez Aguiñaga, like a lot of foreign students who consider studying in the U.S., wanted to improve her English. She was also interested in studying immigration, an important political, economic and social issue in her native Mexico. “At the beginning, I thought the only benefit was to practice my English,” Aguiñaga says. “Then I took a class in Latino politics and I started to connect the dots. That triggered my interest in race and

politics. That was what I was looking for (in a major) but I didn’t know it.” Aguiñaga stayed at UNM and graduated in 2015 with a B.A. in political science. She is now pursuing a Ph.D. in American politics and public policy, concentrating on issues of race and class. Aguiñaga said that leaving Mexico City, where she lived with her parents, to study in a foreign place gave her confidence. And learning in an American classroom forced her to think more critically. But the transition wasn’t always easy. “I would go in a store and just freeze,” Aguiñaga says. “I couldn’t think of the English words. Sometimes I couldn’t understand what my professors were saying.” But she adjusted with the help of UNM programs and other international students. “I think UNM does a really good job” in helping foreign students adjust, Aguiñaga

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“You really learn a lot about yourself when you put yourself outside your comfort zone.” Jaylee Caruso

Jaylee Caruso

says. She was matched with an American student for her first semester and they met once a week so Aguiñaga could practice English and learn about American sports, food and culture. It is an experience she recommends to any college student. “Whether it’s a semester or a year or a whole program,” Aguiñaga says, “you learn to survive in another country. It pushes you.” And the host institution benefits by exposing its students, who might never leave the country to travel or study, to different perspectives. “I think it’s a great exchange of ideas,” Aguiñaga says. “Other people learn because I raise questions in class that maybe other people take for granted. And I learn from them. That opens up a level of tolerance in the long run.”

Prestige degrees

When she was in high school in La Paz, Bolivia, Jessica Yepez Moscoso took her first trip outside the country. She spent a summer in Fairbanks, Alaska, as a Bible school summer camp counselor. Next came a church mission trip to Turkey, Iran and London when she was 17. “I was curious about the world,” says Moscoso, now a junior majoring in intercultural communication at UNM.

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“My parents always had this global view and were always pushing us to learn more languages.” Moscoso came to UNM on a junior year exchange program with her Bolivian university. “It was my best year,” she says. “I had so much fun. I made such good friends from all over the world. I loved the culture.” She went back to Bolivia with a proposal for her parents: if she could get financial help, they would let her finish her college degree at UNM. With the Amigo Scholarship, which provides her in-state tuition, Moscoso was able to do it. Her parents pay what they would if she was attending a Bolivian university and Moscoso works to pay the rest. Even though she lost a year in credits with the transfer and will be 25 when she graduates, Moscoso is delighted with her choice. “I enjoy so much being independent,” she says. She shares a house close to campus with other international students— women from Venezuela, Ethiopia and Madagascar—and she has more freedom than she would as a young woman in Latin America. “Self-reliant, confident. I have freedom here to express myself,” she says. “Here, your voice is heard.”

Moscoso intends to use her degree to work for an international NGO and she believes an American degree will help her in the job market. “There is a prestige, a status, to that degree,” she says.

Developing confidence

Jaylee Caruso graduated in 2016 with a B.S. in nutrition and dietetics and is working on a B.A. in Spanish and chemistry. She hopes both degrees will help her as she applies to medical school. But what the 24-year-old has found most rewarding about her time at UNM have been the opportunities to learn about other cultures through programs that took her to El Salvador, Ecuador and Costa Rica. When she was a sophomore, Caruso, who is from Albuquerque, went along with 14 other UNM students on a twoweek trip to help support medical brigades that traveled to small communities in rural El Salvador. The next year she returned and spent much of the trip acting as a translator. “Before going to El Salvador, I had never left the country before and that motivated me to see other places,” Caruso says. “It really opened my world view and showed me that there are so many different ways of life and people.”


Bryna Milligan

As a junior she spent the fall semester as an exchange student in Costa Rica, learning how to navigate on her own completely in Spanish and often being the only foreign student in her classes. “You really learn a lot about yourself when you put yourself outside your comfort zone,” Caruso says. “It really developed my confidence.” And last summer Caruso traveled to Ecuador on a faculty-led UNM trip, living with an Ecuadorean family in Quito and taking advanced Spanish grammar classes. “It started off just to improve my Spanish,” she says. “But when you live with people in their culture it increases your empathy toward other people in general, I think.” Caruso frequently recommends studying abroad to other UNM students—and not just because it’s fun. “Especially now,” she says, “people are afraid of what’s different. It’s harder to demonize people when you know them. I think it’s important for advocating understanding and a peaceful society.”

Making it possible

Bryna Milligan had always wanted to study in Europe, which is natural given that her undergraduate degree (BA ’15) was in history with a minor in medieval studies.

But the Albuquerque native never had the financial resources to do so in high school or as an undergrad. Going abroad for a year or a semester comes with added costs— airfare and often higher housing and tuition costs. But thanks to two generous scholarships, the 24-year-old is pursuing a master’s in medieval history at Trinity College in Dublin without financial worry. Milligan received the Joseph C. Gallagher Scholarship, which covers tuition, travel and living expenses to a UNM student to study Irish history and culture in Europe, preferably in Ireland itself. “I’m so grateful that this scholarship exists, because there really wasn’t any other way I could have afforded to go to a graduate program in Europe without it,” Milligan says. She also received support from the Benjamin Sacks Endowment Fund, which also helps students studying history in Europe, Great Britain, Ireland or Africa. “UNM students are so fortunate to have these kinds of resources, because they’re not overly common,” Milligan says, “and I think most of us could never hope to fund a study-abroad trip without such generous scholarship programs.” She has found Dublin drastically different than Albuquerque. The cost of living is

much higher and housing is in short supply. But Milligan loves it and she is learning about her passion—medieval history— where it took place and is being opened to a global perspective, thanks to discussions with the Irish and other students from abroad who study in Dublin. “I consider myself very lucky to be able to have those conversations with people from all over the world, because it has given me a more nuanced idea of how our world is and should be,” she says. “More than anything," she says, “I’m hoping that this experience will help me to grow as a scholar and to become a more well-rounded person in general.” ❂

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To The Rescue

Alumnus Jason Williams trains first responders to reach sick and injured in the wilderness By Leslie Linthicum

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Photo: Trevor Mayschak


A

rock breaks loose in the Sandia Mountains, shattering the arm of a climber below. A hiker aiming for a mountaintop is overcome by high-altitude pulmonary edema. A backcountry runner loses track of time, gets stuck in a forest after dark and hypothermia sets in. The response to these and other outdoor emergencies has long been to scramble a search and rescue team to hike, ski or helicopter in and hurry the victim out to where high-level medical care is waiting. Jason Williams (BS ’07) doesn’t think that makes sense. “You might have the medical equipment and know-how, but you can’t get out of the

Rim and the southern San Juan Mountains as classrooms. The class that started the program this January includes an Australian and a Chilean. Physicians from Italy, Brazil, Slovakia and the Netherlands have also come to UNM for training. One of the draws is the ability to practice in some high mountains and excellent rock-climbing routes. Another is that the UNM program is based out of an emergency department with a Level I trauma center and teaching hospital with professionals who practice the latest critical care standards. Williams has developed a reputation in the field; last year he was asked to give

at the Sandia Peak Tramway and learned rock climbing. Since earning his bachelor’s degree in EMS, Williams has taught at UNM and has climbed around the world. “I’ve been in some hairy situations climbing,” Williams says. As we talk he is nursing a hairline fracture of his femur from a fall on the trail. He knows that mountains can be unforgiving in all seasons and that medical episodes, as well as injuries, can become much more serious the longer it takes for medical care to arrive. Williams ticks off what he and other mountain rescuers often see: “Head injury. Trauma. Broken bones. Cardiac arrest. Heat illness. Altitude illness. People become

Photo: Marc Beverly

parking lot. Or you might be able to get to the person, but you don’t know what to do,” he says. Williams, who trained as an emergency medical technician at UNM and ran the university’s EMS Academy for years, now heads up UNM’s International Mountain Medicine Center, a program that aims to train doctors, nurses and paramedics in mountaineering so they can administer high-level medical care as soon as the rescue team gets there. “Our goal is to bridge those skills together,” Williams says. UNM is the only American university to offer an International Diploma in Mountain Medicine and it attracts medical professionals from around the world to its nine-day field programs, where participants learn how to wield an ice axe and sleep in a snow cave, how to rappel from a hovering helicopter and how to practice medicine while roped up on the side of a cliff or in an ice crevasse. The diploma program includes 50 hours of online lectures and two of the field programs, which use the Sandias, Enchanted Tower near Datil, the Grand Canyon’s South

a refresher course in medical response to 20 members of the American Mountain Guides Association—the most elite climbing and mountaineering guides. “Jason is an internationally recognized expert in mountain medicine and the UNM Health Sciences Center is so incredibly lucky to have him on our faculty,” says Steve McLaughlin, M.D. the chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at UNM. For Williams, a former paramedic and lifelong rock climber, spending his workweeks immersed in studying the efficacy of different harnesses, ropes or carabineers or developing curricula for the on-site administration of blood replacement or the treatment of frostbite is a dream come true. “I’m super excited,” says Williams, 31. “My passion has always been the mountains and rescue. With this program, all of the skill sets that I’ve developed come together.” The son of a volunteer firefighter, Williams remembers waiting in the car at trailheads while his father helped on search and rescue teams. In high school he worked

stuck or lost. They slip. They fall. The mountains have a great amount of danger in them.” The International Mountain Medicine Center also offers a rotation in wilderness medicine to fourth-year medical students and collaborates with an Italian university every two years to bring European physicians to the U.S. to train. And it runs its own search and rescue outfit, the 10-person Reach and Treat team. Because they are affiliated with UNM Hospital, Reach and Treat rescuers can order and carry in blood or medication that helps blood clot, which can mean the difference between life and death for someone suffering a massive hemorrhage. Even the ability to prescribe and deliver pain medications can be a game changer for someone stranded with a broken bone, Williams says. “You reach them,” Williams says, “but then it may be a six-hour carry out. In that situation, pain medication can be very important.” ❂

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Photos: Roberto E. Rosales (‘96 BFA, ‘14 MA)

BiRd Biology prof climbs high to understand hummingbirds By Leslie Linthicum

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he air is thin up in the Peruvian Andes, but dozens of species of hummingbirds don’t seem to mind. They dart, hover and expend fantastic amounts of energy feeding their insatiable appetite for nectar at elevations of 13,000 feet and above. Christopher Witt, an associate professor of biology at UNM, has chosen the mountains surrounding Lima for his extensive field study of the evolution of hummingbirds and their adaptation to high altitudes. “We like to push the boundaries of altitude,” says Witt, who scouts locations to gain the trust of local Peruvians, then packs in equipment on mules and sets up camp for weeks at a time. His research in Peru, home to 125 different species of hummers, has yielded some scientific breakthroughs in the understanding of how the smallest birds on the planet take in and expel oxygen and how they adapt genetically to thinner air. “We seek to understand why animals live where they live,” says Witt. “The first question is how do they thrive in the mountains when they’re living on the brink metabolically? And then the question is, with higher temperatures, will they be shifting up slope and how will they adapt to lower pressures than they’re used to?” Last year was a big one for Witt. He and his UNM team were featured in the PBS Nature documentary “Super Hummingbirds,” where Witt—wearing loads of Lobo gear—showed off his highmountain, high-tech field laboratory that allows him to fly hummingbirds under variable oxygen levels while he observes their behavior. Witt and his team worked at about 13,000 feet elevation (roughly the height of Wheeler Peak, New Mexico’s tallest mountain), where oxygen pressure is only about 40 percent of what it is at sea level. To test how well various hummingbird species are adapted to low-oxygen environments, Witt lowered the oxygen level even further inside his flight chamber to mimic higher and higher elevations. Only when the oxygen level reached the equivalent of just under 42,979 feet, a

staggering 14,000 feet higher than Mount Everest, was Witt’s tiny test subject forced to stop hovering. Recovery was quick after the trial. The bird flew away unfazed. A paper based on Witt's Andean bird research was published in Science last October. Witt and Jay Storz of the University of Nebraska studied hemoglobin proteins to see whether the evolution of molecules is predictable when species shift in elevation. They found that hemoglobin nearly always bound to oxygen more readily after bird lineages ascended the mountains, but that the DNA sequences underlying those changes were unpredictable. All of the research was based on frozen tissue samples from the ultra-cold archives at UNM's Museum of Southwestern Biology. Commenting in The Scientist, Joel McGlothlin, who studies evolution at Virginia Tech, said Witt and Storz’s work provides “a beautiful example of how we can make sense out of unpredictability by looking at deep evolutionary history.” Unpredictability is on Witt’s mind. How climate change will affect the world’s bird population is central to his research. Global warming will definitely have an effect on where birds live in the future, Witt says, but just how is hard to predict. Already hummingbird distribution has changed, with some species dramatically expanding their ranges. Other hummers are shifting their ranges to higher elevations and an important question, Witt says, is whether more dominant species will displace others. Witt, curator of birds in the Museum of Southwest Biology on campus, proudly opens cabinet after cabinet and pulls out trays of stuffed birds—owls, cranes, parrots and of course dozens and dozens of brightly colored hummingbirds. Some of Witt’s earliest memories involve birds. Raised in urban Philadelphia, his bird watching was confined to what was on the streets—pigeons, starlings and house sparrows. Though neither of his parents were birders, “I was always interested in birds,” he says. Two fortuitous events helped start him on his path to ornithology. The father of

one of his friends in middle school was an avid bird watcher and took the boys on birding trips all over the Mid-Atlantic states. And Witt happened to live near the Academy of Natural Sciences, the oldest natural history museum in the Americas and one of the world’s best. He got a summer job there when he was 15 and became smitten by the world of birds. “It’s such an exciting diversity,” says Witt, who came to UNM in 2007 after a post-doc at the University of California, Berkeley. “Form, function, color, sound—birds are absolutely spectacular!”

After an ecology degree from the College of the Atlantic, Witt got his Ph.D. at Louisiana State University, where he started focusing on hummingbirds and doing field research in the Andes. At age 42, he has already confirmed that the hummingbird—the smallest bird—has the smallest and least variable genome among bird families and that different species of hummingbirds have similar evolutionary changes as they adapt to new elevation zones. “The science is getting more exciting all the time,” Witt says. His personal life has seen a bit of an uptick in excitement since his starring role in “Super Hummingbirds,” which was shown across the country on PBS stations. Although he is happily married with two kids, “I’ve got groupies!” Witt says, and he pulls out his cell phone to confirm the fact by showing a gushing email from a fellow bird-lover. “Of course,” he says, “they’re all over 70.” ❂

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Shelf Life

Books by UNM Alumni

Girl in Pieces Kathleen Glasgow (’97 BUS) Delacorte Press, 2016 Glasgow’s first novel jumped onto The New York Times best-seller list in the category of young adult fiction and she has been welcomed into the world of publishing with enthusiastic reviews. Her protagonist, Charlotte Davis (known as Charlie), tells her story in short journal entry-style snippets. “I cut because I can’t deal,” Charlie writes. “It’s as simple as that.” After she nearly bleeds to death from a suicide attempt in a drug den in Minnesota, she winds up in a psychiatric hospital, then on the road to Tucson to find a boy. Drawn into more dysfunction and pain, she works her way toward self-love. About the author: Glasgow lives in Tucson, Ariz., where she raises two children and takes Polaroid photos with her Land Camera.

Follow the River Home Corran Harrington (’79 BA, ’85 JD) Arbor Farm Press, 2015 The life of Daniel Arroyo – husband, father, Vietnam veteran, hydro technician—is woven like a braided river with the lives of others in these stories that all find a common place on the Rio Grande. Arroyo, besieged by PTSD and guilt that he may have played a role in his infant sister’s death, is in middle age with a marriage that is ending. He works in the river from Taos to Elephant Butte while going back in his mind to the adobe house and cottonwood tree in the North Valley where his boyhood was shattered one August afternoon. About the author: Harrington, a former lawyer, lives in Albuquerque.

Exit, pursued by a bear Joseph Mills (’92 MA) Press 53, 2016 In this, his sixth published collection of poems, Mills is inspired by William Shakespeare’s stage directions. Short and concerned with the ordinary, each poem is titled with a stage direction. “Exit at one door with the body of his father,” a 45-word poem about the practical and emotional aftermath of a parent’s death, begins “A dead parent is difficult to move but it has to be done.” Some of his pieces concern Shakespeare; others deal with romantic breakups, ghosts, modern teenagers, the death of a child. About the author: Mills is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

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The Flapper, the Scientist, and the Saboteur Charlene Bell Dietz (’70 BA, ’74 MA) Quill Mark Press, 2016 The scientist is Beth Armstrong, a biomedical researcher seeking a cure for multiple sclerosis. The flapper is her elderly Aunt Kathleen, difficult, chatty and Beth’s responsibility. And the saboteur? Well, the mice in Beth’s research lab have died. And so has a colleague of the zoologist at her research institute. Missing research material, an overly attentive male colleague and then the disappearance of a lab tech combine for a mystery that intertwines with an exploration of family and aging. About the author: Dietz, a retired schoolteacher and administrator, lives in the mountains of Central New Mexico. This is her first novel.

Shadowprints Kim Zabel (’93 BA, ’96 MA) Plain View Press, 2016 North Country woods, frost-covered trees and shadows on the forest floors; rock ledges, humming water, soft high grass; drenching clouds, a philandering sun, the sound of crows. Nature and a deep sense of place are the currents that run though Zabel’s poems, collected in book form through a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council. From the poem, “Rapture”: “In this quiet country, voice is a gift of the wild, nothing is deeper than sound.” About the author: Zabel lives in Minnesota, where she writes for Rochester Women and the Post Bulletin/507 Magazine.

Waking Up in Medellin Kathryn Lane (’80 BAFA) Pen-L Publishing, 2016 On a break from binge-watching “Narcos” on Netflix, readers might want to pick up this suspense novel and immerse themselves in a different kind of dirty dealing in Colombia uncovered by an unlikely heroine of the crime genre—an auditor. Corporate auditor Nikki Garcia, fresh off the plane from Minneapolis to look into financial irregularities at a steel mill, quickly finds herself caught up in fraud, intrigue, machismo, romance and possibly murder. About the author: Lane, formerly an international finance executive, is a native of Mexico. She has published poetry and short stories since 2010.


Let’s Roll This Train Lenton Malry (’68 PhD) University of New Mexico Press, 2016 The second part of the title of Malry’s memoir—“My Life in New Mexico Education, Business and Politics”—only begins to describe where his remarkable life has taken him. Raised in segregated Louisiana and educated in a two-room schoolhouse, Malry went on to earn degrees from Grambling College and Texas College and, on a whim, took a teaching job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Navajo reservation. That brought Malry to New Mexico, where he started in the Ph.D. program at UNM and began his life in politics. Campaigning on an education platform, he was the first African American elected to the New Mexico state Legislature and served for 10 years, ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor and then was elected to the Bernalillo County Commission, where he used the title of this book “Let’s roll this train,” to signal it was time to stop debating and vote. About the author: Malry was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in education from the University of New Mexico. He and his wife, Joy, live in Albuquerque.

Shifting Views & Changing Places Rick Dingus (’78 MA, ’81 MFA) University of Oklahoma Press, 2016 Dingus is a photographer of landscapes, but that should not conjure up pretty scenes of sunsets and beaches, empty of meaning. His landscapes are stark, often photographed in black and white, and documents of conflict and inevitable change. For two years at the end of the ‘80s, for example, Dingus traveled to India to photograph temples, shrines and other religious places, studying tensions between the sacred and the secular. In the early 2000s he focused on West Texas and Eastern New Mexico, looking, as he says, “for vernacular markers of conflict and unresolved issues.” About the author: Dingus is a professor of photography at Texas Tech University’s School of Art. He is also the author of “The Photographic Artifacts of Timothy O’Sullivan.”

Jennifer L. Troup (‘92 BSNE, ‘94 MS, ‘00 PhD), Albuquerque, is a manager at Sandia National Laboratories’ discrete math and optimization area. She was honored as a distinguished alumna by the UNM School of Engineering. Gayle Diné-Chacon (‘93 MD), Corrales, N.M., founded the Center for Native American Health and served for two years as the surgeon general for the Navajo Nation. She is a family medicine faculty member at the UNM School of Medicine and director of the Pueblo of Laguna Health Board. Christopher Lambie (‘93 BA) is a mortgage loan officer for Ag New Mexico’s Belen branch. Ag New Mexico is a borrower-owned, rural lending cooperative. Suzanne Wood Bruckner (‘94 MBA, ‘05 JD), Albuquerque, a shareholder at the Sutin, Thayer & Browne law firm, was recently honored by the 2016 Chambers USA guide. Janet M. McHard (‘94 BA, ’97 MBA), Albuquerque, was honored with the New Mexico Society of CPAs “Women to Watch: Experienced Leader” award. She is the founding partner and president of McHard Accounting Consulting Janet M. McHard LLC, a boutique accounting firm with offices in Albuquerque and San Diego. Levi Romero (‘94 BAA, ‘00 MARCH), Albuquerque, was part of the “Lowriders, Hoppers and Hot Rods: Car Culture of Northern New Mexico” exhibit at the New Mexico History Museum and participated in the Lowrider Poetry Slam. He was joined by Damien Flores (’09 BA). Yelena Gene Temple (‘94 MS), Ruidoso, N.M., has retired after teaching science for 25 years.

Healthy, Happy Pregnancy Cookbook

Greg Brown (’96 BUS, ’01 MS), Albuquerque, was honored by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter for his athletic leadership.

Stephanie Clark and Willow Jarosh (’03 BS) Atria Books, 2016

Loren T. Dils (‘95 MBA), Albuquerque, continues to coach tennis and share his love of the sport as a volunteer for the Jefferson Middle School Jets tennis team.

Everyone tells pregnant women what they can’t eat, say dieticians Clarke and Jarosh. In their guide, they offer recipes and advice to give women great nutrition and solutions for nausea, heartburn, cankles and cravings throughout their nine months. Morning sickness? Try an antidote of avocado toast. Constipated? Green lentil and kabocha squash stew has 20 grams of fiber per serving. There’s no reason the unpregnant won’t also enjoy recipes for Cheddar-Quinoa Egg Muffins, Roasted Lemony Asparagus or Figs in a Blanket, all among the 130 recipes included.

Kenneth Anthony Nava (‘95 BUS), Rio Rancho, N.M., is a brigadier general with the New Mexico National Guard. He commanded the 515th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion while deployed to Iraq in 2009.

About the authors: Clarke and Jarosh provide nutrition consulting and workplace wellness training from their offices in New York and Washington, D.C.

Katrina Hart Parks (‘97 BAFA), Los Angeles, is director-producer of “The Women on the Mother Road,” a documentary highlighting women’s history along Route 66.

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Shelf Life

Books by UNM Alumni

Afraid of the Dark

Hoe, Heaven & Hell

Gary Repetto (’67 BA) Mouse Gate Press, 2016

Nasario Garcia (’62, BA, ’63 MA) University of New Mexico Press, 2015

What if the Chicago Cubs had a chance to go back in time and replay those last two months in the season in 1969, when they went from unstoppable to completely beatable and blew a nine-game lead in their division, dashing the city’s World Series hopes? Repetto puts the season in 12-year-old Chicagoan Tommy Hartnett’s hands as he walks through a time warp on a trip to Disneyland with his grandfather and finds himself a star on the team in that fateful September. A book for young readers, this story contains a life lesson that extends beyond baseball.

An adobe home, corn in the fields, chickens in the yard, water from the river and wood from the mountains. Garcia subtitles this memoir of his childhood in the Rio Puerco Valley “My Boyhood in Rural New Mexico” and it opens a window on lost traditions of Hispanic life in rural New Mexico in the 1940s. Back then, chicharones didn’t come in a bag: “I’m sure the squealing pig could be heard back at Aunt Taida’s house,” Garcia writes, “where she and Mom stoked the fire nearby to make sure that the lime water in the tin tub would be ready to facilitate removal of the pig’s bristle.”

About the author: Repetto, who died in Arizona last fall, lettered in baseball and football while at UNM and worked as a football coach at UNM and as the executive director of the Young America Football League.

About the author: Garcia, a prolific folklorist, has explored many aspects of New Mexico Hispanic life, including faith, food and humor. He lives in Santa Fe.

Amazing Paper Airplanes

Apache Adaptation to Hispanic Rule

Kyong Hwa Lee (’71 MS, ’76 PhD) University of New Mexico Press, 2016

Matthew Babcock (’01 MA) Cambridge University Press, 2016

Just as the title promises, this is a book —all 170 pages—about paper airplanes. Specifically, it is a guide to making paper airplanes. Lee, an engineer whose lifelong hobby has been constructing and flying paper airplanes, delivers lessons in the physics of flight (thrust, drag, lift) as well as what type of paper to choose—lighter for smaller, faster planes; heavier paper for jumbo jets. Then he offers detailed folding instructions for aircraft from the most basic gliders fifth graders might launch when the teacher’s back is turned to twin-engine airliners to the most advanced fighter jets. The one word review of this book would be: “Fun!”

In 1786, after more than a century of war, the Spanish crown issued its “Instructions for Governing the Interior Provinces of New Spain.” Those northern provinces included what have become the states of Arizona and New Mexico, home today to Apache reservations. The seeds of those Apache communities were sown when three distinct groups of Apaches decided to cooperate with the Spanish, give up their independence and settle on reservations. Babcock’s academic tome explores and explains how power was balanced in this new era of Apache-Hispanic relations.

About the author: Lee works in the aerospace industry and has tutorials on how to make airplanes at his website AmazingPaperAirplanes.com.

About the author: Babcock is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Texas at Dallas.

HELP US BUILD OUR LIBRARY If you are a UNM graduate and a published author, we would like to add your book to the alumni library in Hodgin Hall and consider it for a review in Shelf Life. Please send an autographed copy to: Shelf Life, UNM Alumni Relations 1 UNM, MSC01-1160, Albuquerque, NM 87131

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Journey To A Straw Bale House F. Harlan Flint (’59 JD) Sunstone Press, 2016 This is not a how-to that will guide readers through the steps to building a house out of straw bales, although readers will finish with a good road map to how a straw bale house comes together. It is more a memoir of a meaningful time in Flint’s life—the years he and his wife spent constructing a home in an isolated Hispanic village in Northern New Mexico with the help of a neighbor. Flint, a lawyer from the East Coast, and Baudelio Garcia, a native of the Santa Rita Valley, find common ground in digging trenches, plastering walls and making too many trips to the local hardware store. About the author: Flint, an attorney, served as an assistant Attorney General in New Mexico and the general counsel for the New Mexico State Engineer.

The Book of Creativity Freydoon Rassouli (’69 BAA) Blue Angel Gallery, 2016 Rassouli, who like Prince and Madonna goes by one name, is an abstract surrealist painter. He is also a mystic and a poet. In this meditation on the creative mind, Rassouli writes about his own journey toward a life filled with creativity and meaning and shared with others through art. “Life’s purpose is not something we can think our way to discovering,” he writes. “We align with it by taking steps in the direction of what we truly want, and removing the obstacles that are in the way. I did that when I gave up a successful architectural practice to follow my heart’s desire. I was finally able to move toward my life purpose when I took the steps fearlessly, one after another to explore my dream.” About the author: Rassouli is also the author of “Rumi Revealed: Selected Poems from the Divan of Shams” and “Fusionart.”

Junkyard Dogs Damien Flores (’09 BA) West End Press, 2016

Bert R. Parnall (‘97 JD), Albuquerque, has joined the Albuquerque Public Schools Education Foundation. He is principal of the Parnall Law Firm. Jason W. Harrington (‘98 BS), Albuquerque, president and CEO of HB Construction, was honored by UNM School of Engineering with a Distinguished Alumni Award. Teresa K. Deras (‘99 BUS), Albuquerque, is executive director of the Osteoporosis Foundation of New Mexico. Previously, she was communications and marketing director for the Greater Albuquerque Medical Association. Kelly Eckel (‘99 BAFA, ‘09 MA), Albuquerque, an artist, was included in the New Mexico Museum of Art’s Alcoves 16/17 #5 series. Kenny Thomas (‘99), Sacramento, Calif., is part owner of the taqueria El Rey. The former NBA player continues to be the Lobos’ all-time leader in rebounding. He created the Kenny Thomas Foundation focused on education awareness and was honored by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter for his athletic leadership. Theresa Ann Valerio (‘99 BSN, ‘16 DNP), Ranchos de Taos, N.M., is interim chief nurse officer at Holy Cross Hospital in Taos. She obtained her Ph.D. in nursing and has the nurse executive advanced certification from the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

2000s Ryan Kennedy (‘01 JD), Albuquerque, is of counsel in the intellectual property practice of Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie law firm. Previously, he was a senior patent counsel at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Arif M. Khan (‘01 MA), Albuquerque, is the new director of the University of New Mexico Art Museum. Virginia Necochea (‘01 MA, ‘15 PhD), Albuquerque, is executive director of the Center for Social Sustainable Systems. Margaret Toulouse Oliver (‘01 BA, ‘05 MA), Albuquerque, was sworn in as New Mexico’s Secretary of State in December.

Flores’ biography in this book of poetry leaves no guessing at the inspiration of these 31 poems. “Damien Flores hails from nowhere but Albuquerque, Alburque, the Duke City, El Duque, La Plaza Vieja, La Ruca, Old Town, New Mexico, United States of Atzlán.” He writes about Johnny Tapia and Danny Romero, a cousin’s wedding at the American Legion hall, gunshots in the streets, his grandmother’s devotion at San Lorenzo, his grandfather’s Chevy, driving through Albuquerque and noticing how much it’s changed. From “Angel the Junkyard Dog Escapes”: “I feel like that dog every day/ content with a life/ tied to the spike in the dirt/ in that big yard/ running around in circles,/ chasing nothing.”

Lawrence C. Tafoya (‘01 BS, ‘11 PhD, ‘11 MD), Corpus Christi, Texas, is practicing ophthalmology at South Texas Eye Consultants.

About the author: Flores is an adjunct faculty member of the UNM Chicano and Chicana Studies Department. He was named "Poet of the Year" in 2007 and 2008 by the New Mexico Hispano Entertainer's Association. He is also an Albuquerque and national poetry slam champion.

Hannah Victoria Mattson (‘02 MA, ‘15 PhD), Albuquerque, presented “Personal Ornaments from Pueblo Bonito and Aztec Ruins: An Examination of Social Identity, Ritual Practice and Demographic Reorganization” during the Aztec Ruins Summer Lecture Series.

Brook A. Christopher (’02 BA), New York, N.Y., is an executive film producer. Her latest film, “Interlude City of a Dead Woman,” was selected for the Santa Fe Film Festival. Sean Thomas Jimenez (‘02 BA, ‘10 MA, ‘16 MBA), Albuquerque, is the boys basketball coach at Cleveland High School in Rio Rancho.

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Introducing Mike Bradbury UNM’s Up-Tempo, Turnaround Man By Chelsea Pitvorec

Sports Story

T

he UNM women’s basketball team is under new management this season as Mike Bradbury, only the sixth head coach in the history of the program, takes the helm. Bradbury comes to UNM with a winning record, a history of turning around losing programs and an exciting, fast-paced, ballpushing style that has ignited the squad and Lobo fans alike. Bradbury, who spent the last six seasons at Wright State University in Dayton,

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Ohio, packed up his wife, Cristy, and two children, son Alex and daughter Sena Nicole, and made his way to Albuquerque shortly after being named to the position in March 2016. He also brought a goal: to get the Lobos into the Top 25 and keep them there. “The opportunity to coach at New Mexico is an honor,” Bradbury said. “UNM has such a rich tradition and the history of the venue that we play in in The Pit is outstanding. The Pit is known worldwide, New Mexico

is known worldwide and I think that’s a big deal. It’s an honor to be a Lobo.” A native of Chattanooga, Tenn., Bradbury played basketball through high school before making the transition from player to coach in college somewhat by accident. “In college I took a class that was taught by the women’s basketball coach. He asked me to help out and it started from there.” Bradbury said. “I started as a student assistant at Chattanooga, then a graduate assistant. Then, when the other assistant at


Karen K. Chase (’03 BUS, ’06 BA, ’12 JD), Albuquerque, received the 2016 Moonbeam Bronze Medal Award for Children’s Board Books for “Sammie and Toby Story Box”. Donna Jeanne Thompson (‘03 MA), Tijeras, N.M., and her husband Jack celebrated their 50th anniversary.

Chattanooga got the head position at East Tennessee State, I went with her.” That was in 1994. After 14 years as an assistant coach including stops at Virginia Commonwealth University (1995-1996), the University of Cincinnati (1996-2002) and Xavier University (2002-2006), Bradbury accepted his first head coach position at Morehead State University for the 2007-2008 season. In three seasons he turned an 11-19 team into a 22-win team and then moved to Wright State, taking on the challenge of a program that had enjoyed just one winning season in the previous 22. There, Bradbury led the Wright State Raiders to five 20-win seasons, a benchmark the program had hit only once in the previous 37 years. In Bradbury’s final three seasons, the team amassed a 75-28 record, the best among the 13 Division I programs in Ohio. Bradbury was named Horizon League Coach of the Year in 2014-2015 after a 25-9 season that saw his squad lose its Horizon League Preseason Player of the Year less than two minutes into the season opener. The Raiders just missed a second straight NCAA Tournament appearance, falling in overtime in the conference championship game. When asked about the keys to success in his tenure at Wright State, Bradbury largely credited his staff ’s recruiting efforts. “I had been in that area for 15 years and we had established some strong recruiting relationships,” Bradbury said. “We really worked hard on finding some young, fresh talent that could really shine in my preferred style of play.” Following his tremendous, recordbreaking success at Wright State, Bradbury

signed a five-year contract with UNM, where he believes he can really make a difference. “The biggest draw to New Mexico for me was the fans,” Bradbury said. “Not many people draw (crowds) like UNM so that was the most intriguing thing about it. Seeing the success they had eight to 10 years ago and knowing that it could be done, it was all very exciting.” Not only is Bradbury looking to return the New Mexico women’s basketball program to its days of glory, the veteran coach is also eager to see UNM studentathletes succeed off the court. “My favorite part about coaching is seeing our players and our kids get their degree, grow up and see them mature through their time here,” Bradbury said. “Seeing them learn how to work and learn how to be productive in society is important and one of the highlights of my job. It’s not all fun and games, and the world is tough out there. Helping them through that and seeing them succeed— that’s the biggest thing for me.” In his first season as a Lobo, Bradbury has had his share of challenges, but he is excited for the future. “I’m hoping we can get into the Top 25 and then be there consistently,” he said. “I think that’s the way it should be here. I don’t see any reason down the road that it can’t be like that. We just have to continue to recruit and bring in those kids that are capable of taking this program to the next level, where I know it should be.” ❂ To follow the Lobos as they enter the Mountain West Tournament, go to GoLobos.com

José D. Viramontes (‘03 BA), Albuquerque, is CEO of MediaDesk New Mexico, a professional communications firm for nonprofits. He is president of the board of directors for Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless, board chair of the Future Fund of the Albuquerque Community Foundation and president of the Los Duranes Neighborhood Association. Robert W. Atcher (‘04 EMBA), Los Alamos, N.M., is a communication specialist in the community and public affairs division of Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is one of 35 Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging fellows recognized for his distinguished service and exceptional achievement in the field of molecular imaging. Arellana D. Cordero (‘04 BBA, ‘13 MBA), Albuquerque, is executive vice president and chief financial officer for Southwest Capital Bank. Claire T. Cote (‘04 BA), Questa, N.M., was a panelist in the Taos Environmental Film Festival. She is an artist, educator and curator. She also founded Land, Experience and Art of Place. Brian M. Etheridge (‘04 MD), Silver City, N.M., is president of the New Mexico Pediatric Society. He is a member of the Gila Regional Medical Center and shareholder with Silver Health CARE. Andy Lim (‘04 BBA), Albuquerque, founder of Lavu, recently demonstrated a new app, “Addmi,” for the Anderson School of Management Executive and Professional Education Center. Ying-Bing Jiang (‘05 PhD), Albuquerque, is a chemical engineering research professor at UNM who is collaborating with scientists at Sandia National Laboratories to develop thin filters that may revolutionize carbon dioxide removal from power plant smokestacks. Juan Jose Morales (‘05 MFA), Pueblo, Colo., author of poetry collections, “The Siren World” and “Friday and the Year that Followed,” participated in the SOMOS poetry reading in Albuquerque. Elizabeth B. Driggers (‘06 JD), Las Cruces, N.M., is director of the Kirtland Partnership Committee, a nonprofit organization of civic leaders organized to preserve and expand Kirtland Air Force Base. Kendal L. Fortson (‘06 BA), Los Alamos, N.M., is a punk rock musician who has three classical music compositions produced into YouTube videos. The videos can be found at klfortson.com.

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UNM PEOPLE CHANGING WORLDS

Accessible To All Susan Hudson’s Gift Improves Quality of Life for Popejoy Hall Patrons and UNM Students By Michelle G. McRuiz

From left, Jack, Susan, Keith and Scott Hudson pose for an impromptu family portrait.

S

usan Hudson used to patiently wait outside the men’s room at Popejoy Hall, counting the men who exited, trying not to draw attention to herself. She wanted to make sure the restroom was empty before she would enter. Over the years, Susan learned more about Albuquerque’s public restrooms than she ever wanted to. She knew which places had easily accessible, universal restrooms meant for one person plus a helper, if needed. And in her world, help was always needed. Only she was the one helping—either

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her husband or her son, both of whom were confined to wheelchairs. At UNM, unfortunately, the restrooms her family found were not what they needed. So Susan decided to make an unusual gift to UNM’s Popejoy Hall. Her generous donation has funded the construction of the Jack and Scott Hudson Universal Restrooms at Popejoy. Now, UNM students and Popejoy patrons will not need to go through the inconveniences that the Hudsons did whenever nature called when they were away from home.

“It seems like a strange thing to be excited about,” said Susan, “but having these bathrooms is going to be a major thing, especially for students who are handicapped.”

Rapid Adapter

Susan and Jack Hudson had two sons, Scott and Keith. Scott was born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a disorder characterized by progressive muscle degeneration and weakness and began using a wheelchair when he was 10.


Despite his disability, Scott—“the apple of my eye, an intelligent kid,” said Susan— played Challenger Little League baseball, skied with the Adaptive Ski Program, sang in the New Mexico All-State Chorus, served as an elder at Albuquerque’s First Presbyterian Church, was a spokesperson for Make-A-Wish and was a Goodwill Ambassador. He was also Man of the Year for the New Mexico Muscular Dystrophy Association. After high school, Scott attended UNM and finished his bachelor’s degree in history in four years, graduating summa cum laude. “By the time he got to UNM,” said Susan, “all the movement he had left in his hand was his index finger and thumb. He had to have notetakers and assistance for everything.”

A Fitting Tribute

Scott passed away at age 26, shortly before earning his master’s degree in history; UNM awarded him the degree posthumously in 2008. He was a Regents’ Scholar who “had so many honors and awards hanging around his neck” at graduation. Scott’s tuition, room, and board were paid in full, but he lived at home and put his UNM reimbursement for room and board into an account to pay for his graduate studies. That, and the earnings from his job as assistant editor of the New Mexico Historical Review, went toward establishing the Scott Andrew Hudson Endowed Scholarship, established to pay tribute to his remarkable achievements and character. The scholarship will assist UNM undergraduate or graduate history majors with a particular interest in Scott’s favorite history topics: the Civil War and World War II.

Deserving Dignity

Jack Hudson, who earned his Ph.D. at UNM, became confined to a

wheelchair after a stroke in 2003 and passed away in 2014. “Having two people in wheelchairs at the same time makes you very, very aware” of mundane things that many people don’t give a second thought to, such as the ability to enter a restroom comfortably with a family member who needs extra help, Susan said. “A father needs a place where he can take his daughter,” she said, “and a mother needs a place where she can take her son, and not be embarrassed.” Jack and Susan enjoyed attending performances at Popejoy, but she admitted that the perk that spurred them to become Popejoy donors was the donor’s lounge restroom, which offered exactly the specifications the Hudsons needed. And although Scott had an aide with him most of the time while a UNM student, if the aide was ill, Susan stepped in. She quickly discovered that the nearest accessible restroom was in the Honors Department. “The bathroom issue is near and dear to my heart,” Susan said. “It has become a joke to me in a way, but it’s a serious issue. These two men were very important to me.” The bathroom door plaques with Jack’s and Scott’s names would have made them laugh, Susan said. But she doesn’t want Jack and Scott to be forgotten with the passage of time. In creating this gift, Susan is providing untold Popejoy patrons and UNM students with just the space they need to have the comfort and dignity they deserve. ❂

If you would like to support Popejoy Hall or any program, scholarship or research area at The University of New Mexico, please contact the UNM Foundation at (505) 313-7600 or visit UNMFund.org.

Catherine Lyn Kurland (‘06), Santa Fe, N.M., has co-authored the book “Hotel Mariachi: Urban Space and Cultural Heritage in Los Angeles.” Orlando G. Sanchez (‘06 BA), sports director for KOAT-TV in Albuquerque for four years, is now with KGW, an NBC affiliate in Portland, Ore. Taffeta Elina Troutner (‘06 BSN), Farmington, N.M., is a certified nurse practitioner with the San Juan Regional Spine Center. Katharine C. Downey (’07 BA), Albuquerque, is a litigator with the Sutin, Thayer & Browne law firm and has earned her AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell. The peer-review rating is one of the legal profession's most prestigious honors, reflecting high regard from Katharine C. Downey the legal community for strong legal skills and impeccable ethics. Jeremy D. Johnson (‘07 BS, ‘11 MS), Albuquerque, won the La Luz Trail Run for the second year in a row. Duane E. Arruti (‘08 MBA), Albuquerque, is interim head of information technologies for UNM. Jaycee Beyale (‘08 BFA), Albuquerque, a Native American contemporary artist, was featured in the Taos FaraHNHeight Gallery show “Civilized and Savage.” Jessica Marie Jaramillo (‘08 BA, ‘12 MPA), Las Vegas, N.M., is the director of recruitment and admissions for New Mexico Highlands University. Joseph A. Moreno (‘08 MA), Bernalillo, N.M., is the historian for the Bernalillo La Danza de los Matachines. The traditional dance began in 1693 and continues each August. He is an academic program manager at UNM. Laura M. Oest (‘08 BUS), Arroyo Seco, N.M., is owner of Stella’s 210 restaurant and was co-owner of The Downtown Bistro in Taos. Mark R. Paz (‘08 BAA), Mesilla Park, N.M., is an associate and project designer with Laguarda.Low Architects and was one of the lead project designers for the Aeon Okinawa Rycom Mall in Okinawa, Japan. This project was awarded the silver medal from the international Council of Shopping Centers for the Asia/Pacific region. Glover F. Quin (‘08 BBA), Richmond, Texas, plays for the Detroit Lions and has started 105 consecutive games, the longest active streak by a safety in the NFL. Phillip M. Robinson (‘08 BBA) is assistant finance director for WESST in Albuquerque. Julio C. Romero (‘08 BA, ‘14 JD), Albuquerque, joined Martinez, Hart, Thompson & Sanchez PC law firm.

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“Giving is not just about making a donation. It is about making a difference.” – Kathy Calvin

Every gift to UNM can change worlds. You can create a gift that will make a lasting impact at UNM by including the University in your will or estate plans. Legacy gifts help students succeed, advance research, aid patients, and assist health care providers for years to come. For more information about how you can create a legacy gift, please visit www.unmgift.org

Whose World Will You Change? Visit unmfund.org to learn more or make a gift today. @UNMFund

UNMFoundation

@UNMFund

505-313-7600


From Dana’s Desk

Carrie K. (Colquitt) Rubalcaba (‘08 BA, ’10 MPA) and Joaquin A. Rubalcaba (‘12 BA, ‘14 MA), of Albuquerque, were married in the UNM Alumni Memorial Chapel.

Loyal Lobos

I

n our last issue, I shared with you our quest to learn more about your professional accomplishments and personal experiences through our business card project. I’m pleased to report that we heard from hundreds of you. And as this issue of Mirage highlights, we are truly a global community with alumni the world ‘round. I received cards from alumni living and working as far away as Austria. Thank you to all who participated. And if you haven’t yet, you still can—just send us five of your Dana Allen business cards so that we can share the success of our alumni with current and future students. Also since last fall, I’ve had an opportunity to travel across the country to meet and talk with a number of you about your experiences and how UNM influenced you. I’ve enjoyed hearing your stories, both heartwarming and funny, and have been struck by the themes that have resonated throughout. There’s a spirit of pride, resiliency, accomplishment and warmth that defines a Lobo. I look forward to interacting with more of our great alumni! As we work to ensure that your Alumni Association stays in tune with the modern era while staying in touch with you, be on the lookout for more information to be shared electronically and for enhancements and updates to our website. We’ll produce fewer hard copies of Mirage and deliver it electronically to an increasingly digital world. If you’d like to forgo the print magazine and start receiving Mirage in your inbox (and read the great stories in each issue even earlier!), just send a note to alumni@unm.edu with your name, current mailing address and preferred email or follow the instructions on our back cover. While you’re at it, take a moment to register with the online community so that we can keep in touch with you about events and services that we think you’ll find interesting. Our monthly e-newsletter highlights association news, alumni accomplishments and University priorities and is delivered to your inbox the first Thursday of every month. We’ll share more information through this medium, so make sure you’re not missing out on the latest. Next issue, we’ll preview Homecoming 2017, highlight a new Alumni Association president and share the changing landscape of the University. And by then, we’ll have grown our alumni network by almost 5,000 new alumni. I can’t wait to meet you all. Until then,

Dana Allen Vice President for Alumni Relations

The Rubalcabas

Marc Shuter (‘08 BA, ‘12 JD), Angel Fire, N.M., has joined the Butt Thornton & Baehr law firm.

Jarrin M. Solomon (‘08 BA), Albuquerque, represented Trinidad and Tobago in the 2016 Olympics in Rio and qualified as a member of the 4x400 relay team. Darren L. Cordova (‘09 BBA, ‘11 MBA, ‘12 JD), Albuquerque, is partner at the Roybal Mack & Cordova law firm. Felicia A. Gabaldon (‘09 BAFA), Albuquerque, is an artist who paints denim. Her work was shown at the Indigenous Fine Art Market in Santa Fe. Charles B Kraft (‘09 BA, ‘13 JD), Albuquerque, has joined the Butt Thornton & Baehr law firm. Gertrude Lee (‘09 JD), Gallup, N.M., is the Navajo Nation chief prosecutor. Dionne Marsh McDonald (’09 BA, ’15 MHA), Albuquerque, a former member of the women’s basketball team, was honored by the UNM Black Alumni Chapter for her leadership in athletics. Grace O. Mishkin (‘09 MSN, ’16 NURCP), Albuquerque, is with the Lovelace Women’s Hospital. Jillion P. Potter (‘09 BS), Denver, joined the U.S. women’s rugby team in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Tanna L Taylor (‘09 BSED, ‘11 MS), Albuquerque, is the financial controller for the Improve Group, an innovation consulting firm.

2010s Matice M. Iverson (‘10 BAA), Albuquerque, is director of property management for Allen Sigmon Real Estate Group. Surpreet S. Arora (‘11 BS) has joined All Smiles Dentistry in Carlsbad, N.M. Elizabeth Cuna (‘11 BA, ‘15 MPA), Santa Fe, N.M., a community organizer, has created social justice initiatives UndocuHealing, UndocuResearch, The (Un)documented Story Project, and NM DREAMZone. She is a member of the board of directors for the Center for Civic Policy. Allegra S. Love (‘11 JD), Santa Fe, N.M., formed New Mexico Dreamers in Action, a nonprofit providing a free mobile immigration legal clinic that travels throughout New Mexico aiding individuals with their immigration and work permits.

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Alumni Events Calendar MARCH

1

CONGRESSIONAL RECEPTION MAR Washington, D.C.

4

DALLAS GAME WATCH

MAR

MBB vs. SDSU, 9 p.m. at Social House, Addison

4

AUSTIN CHAPTER LOBO DAY

MAR

6 p.m. at Ronald McDonald House Charities

8

LAS VEGAS CHAPTER

MAR

MWC Fan & Alumni Event at Pink Taco in the Hard Rock, 6-8 p.m.

MAY

8-11

2017 MWC BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT MAR in Las Vegas, Nev.

16

PHOENIX CHAPTER

23

LOBO LIVING ROOM: PROJECT ECHO

MAR MAR

Networking Event at Mother Bunch Brewery, 6 p.m.

UNM Health Sciences Center

1

DALLAS/FORT WORTH CHAPTER Networking Event & University Update

NORCAL CHAPTER

20

LOS ANGELES CHAPTER

23

LOS ANGELES CHAPTER

24

SAN DIEGO CHAPTER

APR APR APR

25 APR

26 APR

LOS ANGELES CHAPTER­­

11

NEW GRAD RECEPTION

12

CLASS OF 1967

MAY MAY MAY

13

Alumni Weekend

National College Fair, Pasadena Convention Ctr.

National College Fair, Anaheim Convention Ctr.

College Fair for San Diego District

SAN DIEGO CHAPTER National College Fair at San Diego Convention Ctr.

LOS ANGELES CHAPTER National College Fair, Camarillo Airport

Explore Downtown L.A. on the Metro

Hodgin Hall Alumni Center

dinner at 5 p.m. at Hodgin Hall Alumni Center

MAY

UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE COMMENCEMENT

9 a.m. at WisePies Arena

20 MAY

LAS VEGAS CHAPTER Spring Preserve Ice Cream Festival

JUNE

6-8 APR

6

8

CHAPTER LEADERS

JUN

Council Meeting

9

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

JUN

APRIL APR

9

Meeting

ALUMNI VOLUNTEERS

JUN

Appreciation Reception

9

14TH ANNUAL UNM LAW SCHOLARSHIP

JUN

9

JUN

Golf Classic UNM Championship Golf Course

COLLEGE OF NURSING Alumni Breakfast 7:00-8:30 a.m., Barbara and Bill Richardson Pavilion

AUGUST August 20

LAS VEGAS CHAPTER

Green Chile Roast

August 26

Green Chile Roast

August 27

Green Chile Roast

SAN DIEGO CHAPTER GREATER LOS ANGELES CHAPTER

Go to UNMAlumni.com for updated information on alumni activities and events. Events, dates and times are subject to change. You can also contact the Alumni Relations Office at 505-277-5808 or 800-258-6866 for additional information.

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ALUMNI ASSOCIATION AWARD WINNERS Matthew A. Barstow (‘12 BAA, ‘17 MARCH), is CEO/Team Leader at Keller Williams, Albuquerque. Ben T. Dunbar (‘12 BA, ‘15 MS), Albuquerque, is the head coach of the UNM men’s tennis program after serving as the assistant coach for the last two years.

From left to right: David Campbell, Loren Kieve, Stephen Ciepiela and Amy Brandzel. The UNM Alumni Association is proud to announce the recipients of its prestigious 2017 Winter Awards to alumni and faculty who have made outstanding contributions to their communities and to UNM. This year’s recipients were honored at a dinner in February.

James F. Zimmerman Award

Erna S. Fergusson Award

David Campbell (MPA ’81, JD ’86) Following service as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, Campbell worked in the Albuquerque Mayor’s Office as special assistant to Mayor Harry Kinney, the chief city attorney for Mayor Louis Saavedra and the chief administrative officer for Mayor Richard Berry, as well as an attorney in private practice. After a lifetime of service to New Mexico, Campbell again looked to serve abroad. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 2011, serving as vice consul at the U.S. Consulate General in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and as political officer for the U.S. Embassy in Mauritius and Seychelles. He now serves as East Africa Affairs Desk officer at U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C.

Stephen Ciepiela (BA ’77, MPA ’80) Ciepiela is president of and co-founder of Charles Stephen, one of the oldest and largest independent financial planning firms in New Mexico. One of the first 75 certified financial planners in the U.S., Ciepiela was named by his peers one of the top 200 financial planners in the country in Money Magazine and named in Wealth Manager Magazine as one of the top wealth managers in the country. Ciepiela is also the author of “When A Partner Dies.” Ciepiela received an athletic scholarship to UNM and has been a valued member of the UNM Alumni Association for more than 34 years.

Bernard S. Rodey Award Loren Kieve (JD ’73) Kieve practices law in San Francisco. He is listed in The Best Lawyers in America and as a “Super Lawyer” in the Bay Area. He attended Stanford University and has law degrees from Oxford University and UNM. He was inducted into Stanford’s Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame. Kieve chairs the board of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe as a U.S. Presidential appointee. During Kieve’s terms as chair, the IAIA built its first campus, greatly expanded its campus and curriculum, renovated and expanded its museum and embarked on a new Performing Arts Center.

Faculty Teaching Award Amy Brandzel Brandzel, an associate professor of American Studies and Women Studies at UNM, works to build the University’s offerings in postcolonial, feminist and queer studies. A faculty member since 2007, she is an intersectional, interdisciplinary scholar. Brandzel works closely with graduate and undergraduate students and aims to challenge and inspire her advisees. In addition to being captivating in the classroom, Brandzel is a faculty advisor at UNM’s LGBTQ Resource Center. She also is a member of the editorial board for “Feminist Formations.” Brandzel received her B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, her master’s from New York University and her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Neill Goggin (‘12 BA), Albuquerque, has joined the Vigil Group LLC as a payroll specialist. José A. Perez (‘12 BA), serves as a special assistant to the global water coordinator at USAID. He was recognized by the Huffington Post in its list of “40 Under 40” Latinos to watch in the realm of foreign policy and international affairs. Jesse W. Rogers (‘12 BSNE), Los Lunas, N.M., graduated from naval flight school and received his wings at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fla. Nyika A. Allen (‘13 BBA), Albuquerque, is the executive director of the New Mexico Technology Council and active with Albuquerque Economic Development. Lindsay J. Mapes (‘13 MPA), Taos, N.M., founded Turquoise Tours, specializing in creative, authentic tours of Taos and other locations throughout New Mexico. Sarah Minnich (‘13 BA, ‘15 MA), is an Albuquerque-based filmmaker who starred as Brenda in “Better Call Saul.” She also had roles in the films “Priceless” and “Space Between Us.” Evan Thompson (‘13 BA), Los Lunas, N.M., has created “Senior.One,” an online clearinghouse for senior services, with information and reviews about local providers. Cameron David Bairstow (‘14 BS) joined the Australian Olympic Basketball team and competed in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. John J. Clark (‘14 BAA, ‘16 MARCH), Albuquerque, joined the Hartman + Majewski Design Group. Marissa Q. Le (‘14 BA), Las Cruces, N.M., is an account executive at The Waite Co., overseeing public relations campaigns for Taos tourism, UNM Health Sciences Center and other major clients. Harry Craig Pappas (‘14 MS, ‘16 PhD), Hopkinton, Mass., helped develop an antimicrobial cleaning wipe he will market through BioSafe Technologies LLC, a startup company. Chantale Lanae Riddle (‘14 BLA), Albuquerque, was honored as the Female New Mexico Athlete of the Year by the New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame. The City of Roswell sponsored a Chantale Riddle day to honor her. (continued on page 45)

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Alumni Network Snapshots from Alumni events

Louie and Lucy put on the dog at Homecoming with James Lewis and Dana Allen

Newly-minted graduate Omar Ruiz

2016 Homecoming king and queen Jordan Torres and Jess Marrello are crowned

Ryan and Lisa Lindquist give a woof at the All Alumni weekend in Dallas

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Elvan Silas celebrates his graduation at the U

Sean Petranovich ('09, '11) and 3-week-old son Owen catch a Lobo game


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In Memoriam We remember alumni who recently passed away. 1930 - 1939 Lowell E. Orrison, ‘36 Marion (Rohovec) Fleck, ‘37, ‘70 C. Ruth (Fouts) Horn, ‘39 1940 - 1949 Florence E. (Cline) Lister, ‘41 Frances (DeHuff) Barry, ‘42 Helen J. (Griffith) DeLayo, ‘43 Viola R. (Luna) Easley, ‘43 Dorothy P. (Mace) Ancona, ‘44 Genevieve O. Carlisle, ‘44 Earl P. Harrison, ‘44, ‘49 Harriet (Walls) Heltman, ‘44, ‘71 Dorothy (Cornelius) Crist, ‘46 Edith M. (Davenport) Raybould, ‘47, ‘51 George C. Hughes, ‘48, ‘55 Maxine (Krohn) Friedman, ‘48 Jean (Stampfer) Wallis, ‘48 1950 - 1959 Lila (Glass) Chidichimo, ‘50 Clyde B. Mackenzie, ‘50 Bradley Mitchell, ‘50 Charles A. Sandoval, ‘50 George R. Stewart, ‘50 Lyle H. Talbot, ‘50 Mary (Jolley) Grantham, ‘51 William L. High, ‘51 Jose S. Llamas, ‘51 Robert D. Odell, ‘51 Paul D. Sjodal, ‘51, 62 Daniel Sosa, Jr., ‘51 Anne (Richardson) Speer, ‘51 Frances (Bennett) Stevens, ‘51 Roger E. Sylvanus, ‘51 Richard J. Tischhauser, ‘51 Rudolph D. Woolf, ‘51 John Zutavern, ‘51 Richard M. Kernodle, ‘52 Jack L. Love, ‘52 Ronald V. Norman, ‘52 Buddy M. Adams, ‘53 Joe F. Boehning, ‘53, ‘61 Arthur L. Bernstein, ‘53 Frances H. (Jordan) Christy, ‘53 Philip M. Ciofalo, ‘53

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Daphne (Blachley) Holden, ‘53 Paul M. Wighaman, ‘53 Judith H. Dettre, ‘54, ‘58, ‘70 Cameron J. Mactavish, ‘54 Paul H. McCament, ‘54 Murl B. Moore, ‘54 William N. Collins, ‘55 Horace R. Simms, ‘55, ‘62 Carol A. Montgomery, ‘56 Earl Parker, Jr., ‘56 Dwain W. Parrack, ‘56 Donald W. Roberson, ‘56 Robert C. Blatchford, ‘57 Marcella (Gutierrez) Gilchrist, ‘57 Jack L. Stahl, ‘57 Harrison J. Gruschus, ‘58 Floyd H. Mathews, ‘58 Charles W. Durrett, ‘59 Ted Foster, ‘59 Richard I. Ledbetter, ‘59 Marilyn (Trussler) Reynolds, ‘59 Joseph M. Stuart, ‘59, ‘62 1960 - 1969 Turner W. Branch, ‘60 Myrl M. Goodwin, ‘60 Philip C. Lovato, ‘60 Ross L. Ramsey, ‘60 Sonya C. Burke, ‘61 Patricia (Jenkins) Elder, ‘61 Bill D. Fickel, ‘61 Arthur R. Horsch, ‘61 Paul W. Lambert, ‘61, ‘68 David K. Reitzel, ‘61, ‘64 John A. Baxter, ‘62 Bert N. Brown, ‘62 Mary Lou (Butler) Frazier, ‘62 Aura J. (Burchan) Smith, ‘62 Romeo C. Di Lallo, ‘63 Anne C. (Sewadei) Stranczek, ‘63 Mary (Adams) Summers, ‘63 Milton R. Canon, ‘64 John T. McMahon, ‘64 Johnny L. Stockdill, ‘64 Carole (Crosley) Guynes, ‘65 Clarence J. Howard, ‘65 Dionisia (Mallet) Roth, ‘65 William L. Stevens, ‘65

Jimmy H. Barker, ‘66 John D. Ellis, ‘66 Jane H. (Scott) Idso, ‘66 Joel M. Jones, ‘66 Allan R. Pratt, ‘66 Lynn (Abrams) Allensworth, ‘67 James R. Hodges, ‘67, ‘69 Thomas E. Malloy, ‘67 Gary J. Repetto, ‘67 Esther Y. (Ma) Stuart, ‘67 Judith E. Taylor, ‘67, ‘71 Paul M. Greenberg, ‘68, ‘75 Timothy J. Holcomb, ‘68 David E. Mercer, ‘68, ‘75 George H. Peacock, ‘68 Walter J. Phair, ‘68 Mary E. (Mckenzie) Rushton, ‘68 John D. Schelberg, ‘68 Christopher Silleroy, ‘68 Les Zavadil, ‘68 Charles K. Davis, ‘69 Henry Esquibel, ‘69 E. Ruth Geisler, ‘69 Jean F. Hedberg, ‘69, ‘78 Jane (Osburn) Howard, ‘69 Perry Trujillo, ‘69 1970 - 1979 David R. Casias, ‘70 Stephen J. Cohen, ‘70 Rae D. Perls, ‘70, ‘74 Alexander J. Souter, ‘70, ‘73 Barbara P. Swanson, ‘70 Lemmie B. Christensen, ‘71 Bobby G. Coggins, ‘71 Roy A. Haarman, ‘71 James B. Casias, ‘72, ‘73 Barbara M. Hodock, ‘72 Joseph L. Lopez, ‘72 Fredric T. Morelle, ‘72 Cathy S. (Llewellyn) Ryan, ‘72 Peter D. Vigil, ‘72 James R. Bewley, ‘73 Daniel T. Eglinton, ‘73, ‘78 Stephen K. Fitzgerald, ‘73 Audrey E. Kern, ‘73 David P. Nollet, ‘73 Gail H. Parker, ‘73


Ralph C. Pike, ‘73 Larry E. Spalding, ‘73 Michael W. Walls, ‘73 David W. Bridewell, ‘74 Carol L. (Skoog) Henson, ‘74 Virginia "Toots" R. Obenshain, ‘74 Wanda R. (Lewis) Zellmer, ‘74 Jesus B. Sosa, ‘74 Gertrude M. (Helline) Braig, ‘75 Richard M. House, ‘75 Pearl C. Reid, ‘75 Barbara C. Van Dongen, ‘75 Charles H. Chassot, Jr., ‘76 Alfredo Gurmendi, ‘76 Anacita A. Martinez, ‘76, ‘81 Vici L. (Crump) Shoemaker, ‘76, ‘80 Judith M. Bernhard, ‘77 Gary O. Concannon, ‘77, ‘78 Van G. Cook, ‘77 Shirley L. Davies, ‘77 Kenneth J. Jackson, ‘77 Jesse R. Cosby, ‘78, ‘79, ‘81 Debra A. (Harvey) Herman, ‘78, ‘03 Carol J. Nagle, ‘78 William J. Logue, ‘79, ‘84 Elnora J. McMurray, ‘79 Eileen M. Yellin, ‘79, ‘87 1980 - 1989 Brad T. Manny, ‘80 Jeffrey G. Mortensen, ‘80

Elizabeth C. Spellman, ‘80 Richard T. Suttle, ‘80 William B. Bopp, ‘81 Barbara A. Sedillos, ‘81 Nadine Spurlock, ‘81 Douglas D. Swift, ‘81 Olga G. Varoz, ‘81 Bruce W. Donisthorpe, ‘82, ‘85 Lydia L. Larson, ‘82 Marilyn Sasser, ‘82 Joan Redford-Lowe, ‘83 Ernestine L. Vandevender, ‘83 John K. Bower, ‘84 Ching Fong Chen, ‘84 Julian A. Saenz, ‘84 Jeanette J. (Braun) Stuart, ‘84 James R. Cole, ‘85 Teena L. Duffey, ‘85 Barbara A. (Baca) Reichmuth, ‘85, ‘91 Ronald V. Cordova, ‘86 Jay E. White, ‘86 Julia A. Arrington-Torrez, ‘87 Stephen A. Suazo, ‘87, ‘91 Ilyse M. Kusnetz, ‘88 Betty L. Newville, ‘88 John W. Turner, ‘88 Alice G. Binkert, ‘89 Gail A. Diamond, ‘89 Sara L. Hauge, ‘89 Julianne North, ‘89

Ryan A. Shell (‘14 EMBA), Albuquerque, is president of New Mexico Gas Co., and continues to serve on the boards of United Way of Central New Mexico, Western Energy Institute, Midwest Energy Association, Albuquerque Economic Development and the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce. Michelle Urban (‘14 MBA), Santa Fe, N.M., is CEO of Pressure Analysis, maker of the SmackCAP skullcap that monitors blows to the heads of athletes. Lorena Blanco-Silva (‘15 MPA), Albuquerque, was keynote speaker for the Go Latinas Conference in Roswell, N.M. She is the diversity program manager for the Division for Equity and Inclusion at the University of New Mexico. Julian Gallegos (‘15 BBA, ‘16 MACCT), Questa, N.M., is a business manager for the Vigil Group, LLC. Gavin Green (‘15 BLA), Albuquerque, competed for the Malaysia Golf Team in Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Olympic Games. He continues his professional golfing career. Cindy Nava Ontiveros (‘15 BA), Albuquerque, has joined the New Mexico Voices for Children board of directors. Alfredo Rivera (‘15 BBA), Albuquerque, has started Sterling Metrics, a community-based lending firm. Xochitl Torres (‘15 JD), Las Cruces, N.M., has joined Kemp Smith LLP‘s litigation department. She is a member of the board of directors for Mountain View Market Co+op and the New Mexico Strategic Leadership Institute. Jennifer L. Vigil (‘15 BBA), Chama, N.M., has joined The Vigil Group, LLC payroll specialists. Dominic E. Aragon (‘16 BA), Grants, N.M., is an assignment editor for KOB-TV in Albuquerque. Jacob R. Candelaria (‘16 JD), Albuquerque, joined the Garcia Law Group LLC. Anna E. Murphy (‘16 MBA), Santa Fe, N.M., is an associate advisor for Universal Advisory, a fee-only wealth management firm. Mikayla R. Ortega (‘16 BA), Albuquerque, is prime-time assignment editor for KOB Eyewitness News 4 in Albuquerque.

Have a Good Howl Our monthly email newsletter, The Howler, keeps Lobos up-to-date with Alumni Association news and events, as well as additional alumni profiles not published in Mirage. You can read it online at UNMAlumni.com/howler or subscribe to the email version by sending a request to alumni@unm.edu.

Karra H. Shimabukuro (‘16 PhD), Albuquerque, created a Wiki page, “How to Prep for Grad School While Poor” to help students provide hints and tips for getting through grad school. Amie E. Sims (‘16 BA), Aztec, N.M., is social media and digital strategist at M Marketing, managing digital campaigns for new clients. Heather Ewing Veitch (‘16 MSN), Albuquerque, joined the Lovelace Medical Group as a certified nurse midwife at the Lovelace Women’s Hospital.

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In Memoriam 1990 - 1999 Dale A. Fuqua, ‘90 Nancy E. Krantz, ‘90 Charles L. Mader, II, ‘90 Gary L. Papenhagen, ‘90 Linda G. Sappenfield, ‘90 Eric Walters, ‘90 Roy W. Fetter, ‘91 Larry R. Smith, ‘91 Robert E. Yoder, ‘91 Katharine H. Downer, ‘94 Benny J. Bodo, ‘94, ‘98 Julie E. Flanagin, ‘94 Eric D. Bottomly, ‘95 Frank Martinez, Jr., ‘96, ‘00 Frank J. Lopez, ‘97, ‘05 Ronald L. Welch, ‘97 2000 - 2016 Chandra Perera, ‘01 Bryon K. Cloer, ‘02

Ella M. Perry, ‘02 Jon K. Robbins, ‘03 Janet R. Cowan, ‘04 Misti D. Wall, ‘06 Richard W. Ford, ‘09 Vernon J. Roanhorse, ‘10 Randall W. Valdes, ‘10 Joseph J. Duran, ‘11 Andrew J. Vega, ‘11 Scott M. Hargis, ‘14 Franklin E. Martinez, ‘14 Andrew C. Rawson, ‘14 Alysia Romero, ‘16 OTHER ALUMNI Taylor S. Baird Anna C. Benakis Tillie G. Benavidez James B. Briscoe Sheldon L. Bromberg Donald R. Buxton, Jr.

Ray L. Camp Walter F. Carlson Hollis O. Cummins Wayne W. Dallas Sylvia De Onis William M. Ela Jocelyn (Koch) Fisher Lou Ann (Jones) Graham Marjorie (Fife) Hines Martin D. Johnson Andrew W. Myers Norman C. Pacheco Charles E. Parker Wendel A. Scarbrough Alpha L. (Stickham) Shepherd Rodney W. Shoemaker James B. Thorsen Susan (Balsley) Tully John H. Walker J. Vaughan Westaway

Pack Your Bags The UNM Alumni Association gives Lobos with wanderlust the opportunity to continue their education by traveling the world through the Alumni Travel Program. The Alumni Travel Program sets you up for success on your journey by handling all travel plans and arrangements while also offering amazing discounts. To view our full 2017 Alumni Travel Program options and book, visit UNMAlumni.com/travel. Barcelona Immersion April 15-23, 2017 Spain

Switzerland July 5-15, 2017 Thun, Kandersteg, Brienz, Zermatt

Cuba: People, Culture, Art April 16-24, 2017 Havana, Cienfuegos, Trinidad

Awe-Inspiring Alaska July 14-21, 2017 Seattle to Seattle cruise

Palms In Paradise April 24-May 10, 2017 Florida, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico featuring Panama Canal Transit

Baltic and Scandinavian Treasures August 22-September 2, 2017 Copenhagen to Stockholm

England's Castles, Cottages & Countryside June 22-July 2, 2017 Canterbury, Broadway, London

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MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Christmas on the Danube December 2-17, 2017 Featuring six-night Danube River Cruise


My

ALUMNI STORY

Why do I keep in touch with UNM through Alumni Association events? Because getting my degree from UNM changed my life. I was a Valley High School graduate, class of 2003. The only reason I

®

went to college was because of the Lottery Scholarship. I would never have been able to afford college if it weren’t for that program. My father encouraged me to give college a try, to just sign up for some classes that might interest me. I started at Central New Mexico Community College and four years later I had a finance degree from UNM’s Anderson School of Business! Today I manage the group sales department for Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies in Denver, concentrating on community growth through ticketing initiatives. Working for the Rockies I have made connections with many local colleges and am proud to say that the University of New Mexico has a rich tradition that cannot be duplicated. As a huge basketball fan I’ve attended many games here in Colorado and always try to stand out wearing my Lobo gear! I am a Lobo for life. Reuben Donnelly (’07)

Stay in touch with your Alumni Association at UNMAlumni.com. Click on “Connect.”

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Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 1260 Liberty, MO 64068

M A G A Z I N E

The University of New Mexico Alumni Association MSC 01-1160 1 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001 CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED

Paper’s nice, but so is a device… You’re holding a glossy paper copy of Mirage right now and we hope you enjoy it. We print and mail more than 150,000 copies of Mirage twice a year and we want every single alumnus who wants a paper copy to have one. We also know that people’s reading habits are changing. Like a lot of us, maybe you have become fast friends with an iPad or addicted to your Kindle. Maybe you like to read on your desktop or on your phone. And maybe you would just like to reduce your carbon footprint and the amount of paper in the world.

If you would no longer like to receive a paper copy of the Mirage magazine in the mail and would prefer an emailed version, please let us know by visiting UNMAlumni.com/Mirage and completing the digital opt-in form. Simply confirm your email address and the Fall 2017 edition will be sent directly to your email inbox and not your curbside mailbox. If you opt for the electronic version only, rest assured you will see the same magazine—great color photos, engaging articles, news of alumni events and updates on your classmates—only in a digital format with easy-to-use page-turning features.


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