UNM takes on ‘grand challenges’
University hopes to play a bigger role in solving issues
For the better part of Wednesday morning, about 200 people convened at the University of New Mexico Student Union Building to talk problems.
Not campus crime or athletic department scandals, but rather sweeping societal problems.
At one table, representatives from the biology department, the law school and the university’s Center for High Technology Materials raised topics like water scarcity and child hunger.
At another, the conversation touched on homelessness, the student debt crisis and educational access.
The discussions were part of a
new initiative meant to get UNM thinking bigger and thinking together. In kicking off what they’re calling UNM’s “Grand Challenges Initiative,” President Garnett Stokes and other top leaders actively encouraged discussion about what plagues the state, the country and even the world — and how New Mexico’s largest university can harness and direct its brainpower to identify solutions using a collective approach.
“Grand challenges are ideally grand partnerships — ones that will involve collaborative interdisciplinary research and collaborations with community organizations, industry and government,” Stokes said at Wednesday’s launch event. “The Grand Challenges Initiative is an important expression of the value, and how we serve the public and the public good.”
UNM is soliciting proposals from across campus to identify specific areas of emphasis. Stokes will ultimately select three “Grand Challenge Conceptual Goals” early next year after the proposals go through internal and external reviewers, and a program steering committee.
The university will then form research teams and institutional committees around the goals and provide planning grants. The idea is that the work will ultimately bring in outside funding.
Universities around the country have launched similar programs, and Stokes said the larger New Mexico community expects UNM to play a bigger role in solving problems — something she heard repeatedly while on her introductory statewide tour.
“The state of New Mexico wants the University of New Mexico to do more, and this kind of thing is actually doing more for New Mexico,” she said in an interview.
The three Grand Challenge Goals will include two led by main campus and another by the UNM Health Sciences Center.
“I’m really looking forward to finding more joint programs in the Health Sciences Center and main campus,” Dr. Paul Roth, the HSC chancellor, said at Wednesday’s event. “We have a strong record of that already, but this is going to catapult those efforts to a whole new level.”