FACES & PLACES
National Dance Institute of New Mexico Executive Director Russell Baker recently received the 2019 Spirit of Vassar Award from the Vassar College alumnae association. A member of the school’s Class of 1991, Baker is a dedicated dancer and dance educator.
While pursuing his bachelor’s degree in English from Vassar, Baker began dancing and received his Master of Fine Arts in ballet teaching and choreography from the University of Utah. Baker danced professionally with the Kansas City Ballet for 10 years, performing a variety of principal, soloist, corps de ballet and character roles.
At the same time, he taught ballet at many schools, including the Kansas City Ballet School, and choreographed dances for a wide range of dancers and many venues in the Kansas City area. Baker attended NDINew Mexico’s Teaching Excellence training program in 2001 and taught with Kansas City Ballet’s Reach Out and Dance residency program before moving to Santa Fe.
New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Cabinet Secretary Jackie Lindsey has been appointed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Advisory Committee, established by federal law to ensure effective coordination of federal emergency management activities.
The Life Center Foundation has announced its finalists for 2020 Leadership Award. The selected nonprofit will be presented with $10,000 in recognition of its services to New Mexico children: The Food Depot, Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, May Center for Learning, Cañones Early Childhood Center, St. Elizabeth Shelters & Supportive Housing, and Solace Crisis Treatment Center.
The 2020 LCF Leadership Award will be presented later this year.
The National Park Service and the International Dark Sky Association have announced
Fort Union National Monument in Mora County is now an International Dark Sky Park. The certification recognizes the exceptional quality of the park’s night skies and provides added opportunities to enhance visitor experiences through astronomy based interpretive programming.
The monument’s full program of activities can be viewed at nps.gov/foun/planyourvisit/ upload/2019-annual.pdf.
Los Alamos National Laboratory astrophysicists Benjamin Ryan and George Wong are members of the Event Horizon Telescope team that won the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for creating the first image of a black hole.
“The image was the result of worldwide coordination of radio telescopes, along with some surprisingly good weather across the globe for the few days when the observations took place,” Ryan said. “It was a pleasure to provide simulated data for these observers while they were carrying out this epic task.”
Wong noted: “We were all very fortunate that the final data exhibited such strong geometric features and thus that the comparison enabled us to make clear predictions about underlying physical parameters.”
The $3 million prize will be shared equally with 347 scientists co-authoring any of the six papers published by the team April 10.
The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, also known as New Mexico Wild, has announced Garrett VeneKlasen is its new northern conservation director.
VeneKlasen was a candidate in the Democratic primary for state land commissioner in 2018 and then worked as a political advocacy strategist for Conservation Voters of New Mexico. Before running for office, VeneKlasen was executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation.