New building aims to open doors to college, careers
Acequia and land grant archive finds home but needs material
Ahead of its annual Fall Fest and Open House on Saturday (Oct. 22), UNM–Taos held a grand opening ceremony in front of the College Pathways to Careers Center, a new multi-purpose building that was paid for in large part by $4.3 million in general obligation bonds that were issued in 2018.
Construction on the $6 millionplus, 12,000 square-foot building, the latest addition to the university’s Klauer Campus, began last spring.
“Beautiful buildings can inspire us; they create space that tells us that the work we have set out to do is important, that learning is important and that learners are important,” said Dr. Mary Gutierrez, UNM–Taos chancellor. “The pathways building manifests our values, demonstrating that education is a way of building and securing the future while protecting the past.”
The new building houses a small library and the Taos Education and Career Center, the university’s decades-old High School Equivalency (HSE), basic literacy education and career training program that was previously located on the downtown UNM–Taos campus. The building also contains a repository and research center meant to house land grant and acequia archives.
But the Senator Carlos Cisneros and Healy Foundation Land Grant and Acequia Archives, named after its main proponent, the late District 6 state senator, and the Taos-based philanthropy organization, got off to a somewhat rocky start due to some oversights when it came to invitations to its dedication.
Nascent archive
Judy Torres, executive director of the Taos Valley Acequia Association, said she and several other prominent members of the acequia and land grant communities weren’t initially invited to the event. Torres said she was invited at the last minute, “when RSVP was over,” and only after the intervention of acequia commissioner and Taos Valley Acequia Association board member Sylvia Rodriguez. Torres said Rodriguez realized there were gaping holes in the university’s guest list as the event drew near.
“We weren’t even notified,” Torres said. “As much as I could, I reached out to our acequia commissioners and land grant people I knew. It’s just kind of hurtful, because where do they think their archives are going to come from if it’s not coming from Taos Valley acequias? It’s disappointing.”
Currently, the archive has just one collection “to seed the whole thing,” according to Dave Mansfield, library services coordinator.
“We have the Phil Lovato collection,” he said. “We also have a
bunch of his paperwork and a lot of land grant information.”
Mansfield noted that scanners and computers are ready to digitize everything that comes into the archive, but said the process and staff for maintaining and digitizing the archive aren’t in place yet.
Francisco “El Comanche” Gonzales, a local land grant activist and spokesperson for the La Serna Land Grant, was peeved that he and other land grant heirs and board members were also not invited to the dedication of the archive/research center.
“We weren’t notified, that’s why many of the [land grant] members aren’t here,” Gonzales said, sitting outside the entrance to the room that is intended to house the archives.
UNM–Taos Chancellor Mary Gutierrez acknowledged that “our event outreach and invitation lists were incomplete, despite our best intentions to include all interested parties, and said that the university is “addressing this, in part, by building a more complete contact list for local acequia and land grant leadership.”
“We appreciate everyone who has reached out to provide us with recommendations we will use in future communications and events,” she added. “People are welcome to visit the UNM–Taos Library between 8 a.m.-5 p.m. or call 575-737-6242 to provide additional contact information for our esteemed acequia and land grant constituents, whom we are proud to serve with the addition of these new community resources.”
Gutierrez noted that the public invitation to the dedication ceremony was distributed largely through email. Event attendees did include a bevy of elected officials, UNM faculty, staff and students, people involved directly with the design and construction of the building, as well as acequia parciantes and commissioners like Cynthia Patterson, Hank Saxe, Carlos Arguello and David Munoz, along with Taos Soil and Water Conservation District supervisor and former acequia commissioner Steven Trujillo.
Along with Cisneros and Ed and Trudy Healy, Trujillo participated in the first meeting, held at least five years ago, to discuss a central archive for land grant and acequia documents. He said the initial idea was to house original documents, but now the plan is to digitize everything, avoiding the need for permanent donations.
A complete repository of regional acequia documents, some going back hundreds of years, would contain a unique historical record of “names of the original commissioners and their efforts, their infrastructure improvements, legal history [and] their issues with kind of controversial challenges within the communities themselves,” Trujillo said.
Education and career
The main feature of the College Pathways to Careers Center is the Taos Education and Career Center (TECC), which offers free educational services to those aged 16 years and older and includes small-group basic literacy instruction, English Language Acquisition classes — typically serving adults aged 25-65 whose native language is Spanish — and HSE and college preparation classes, according to Kylee Shipp, TECC programs manager. Program wide, 74 percent of the program’s participants are age 24, but adults of all ages are eligible.
Shipp said the new building will not only allow the popular program to expand to accommodate more students, but it also connects them to secondary education opportunities that weren’t available outside of the Klauer Campus. A total of 74 percent of the program’s students are below the age of 25.
“Most definitely we are able to accommodate larger class sizes right now,” Shipp said, noting that, like public schools, TECC receives funding in proportion to its student enrollment numbers. “We do collaborate with faculty and administration to develop Integrated Education and Training courses where students start training for a career while perhaps working on their HSE or growing their academic skillset for the workforce.
“Integrated Education and Training courses, such as the 13-credit IT Support Certificate where Information Technology training content is woven in with academic skill building and professionalism skill development,” Shipp continued. “Being on campus, the collaboration opportunities are more readily available as we are all working in the same spaces. Forty-eight percent of our graduates last year enrolled in post-secondary coursework while working on their HSE or after graduating.”
Shipp said that, anecdotally at least, “our staff has noted higher attendance and retention rates” during the first, now-completed session of the TECC Program in the new building.
Mark Flores, president of the Taos Municipal Schools District Board of Education, said the College Pathways to Careers Center will open doors for Taos County youth.
“Having this institution so close to our smaller, outlying communities and Taos allows them to be informed about what career options are out there and allow them to get technical training and career-minded goals,” he said. “I believe that it shows them what the world has to offer; you know, in a small town sometimes we don’t always see what else is out there. This is very important because it opens up their eyes to work, college or careers.”