NMSU gets feedback to aid in chancellor search
New Mexico State University’s next chancellor should understand and promote the institution’s land-grant mission. He or she should have creative strategies for boosting revenue and listen to ideas from faculty, staff and students.
The new chancellor of the state’s second-largest university should also speak Spanish and “(ride) with cowboy ethics.”
That’s the feedback NMSU Regent Mike Cheney heard Tuesday during a “listening session” in Albuquerque — an exercise he says will inform NMSU’s search for Garrey Carruthers’ replacement. The regents have opted not to keep Carruthers as chancellor after his contract expires next summer.
Albuquerque was the fifth of six sessions regents hosted, following stops in Carlsbad, Alamogordo, Las Cruces and Grants. They concluded with a Las Cruces event for NMSU faculty and staff on Tuesday afternoon.
Cheney, chair of the chancellor search committee, told the Albuquerque audience of about 20 that NMSU’s next leader will face a series of challenges that include declining state funding, enrollment and research dollars. The state has cut higher education appropriations by about 8 percent in two years, while NMSU’s enrollment has sunk more than 20 percent from its 2010-11 high. Cheney said the input gathered at listening sessions will help as NMSU fashions a job description that will guide the search committee, contracted search firm and regents in evaluating candidates.
Cheney said NMSU’s regents aim to select a new chancellor before the 2019 fiscal year starts in July.
“One of the challenges is we’re not going to find an individual who is 100 percent strong in all these areas, so we’re going to have to balance it out and figure it out what it means,” he said.
Several in the Albuquerque crowd stressed that the new leader should understand NMSU’s
role as a land grant institution and its importance to the statewide agricultural community.
Dina Chacon-Reitzel, alumnus and rancher, said there are faculty and students inside NMSU who don’t know about the land grant designation.
“That is to me astounding,” she said.
Other speakers said the new leader should see beyond NMSU’s Las Cruces campus, better communicating both with the growing population along the U.S.Mexico border and people across the state. Jane Moorman, an NMSU communications employee based in Albuquerque, noted as an example Rolando Flores, who has visited every New Mexico county since becoming dean of the university’s agriculture college a year ago. She suggested the next chancellor “should understand that a road trip is a good thing.”