by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
A breakfast on Friday in the SUB Ballroom gave administrators and faculty a chance to think about the future of UNM.
UNM President Louis Caldera said the breakfast was meant as a more social alternative to a "state of the University address."
"We should strive for better communication, and that was part of the reason for this breakfast," he said. "To use it as a way to provide better communication to our faculty and our staff and our students and others in our University community."
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The breakfast was effective, said Michael Thomas, a member of Faculty Senate who attended the breakfast.
"If this was an address you'd just be sitting here, and then you'd get up and leave," he said. "This is better. There are people at tables talking and sharing ideas."
About 60 people attended the breakfast, including University and hospital administrators and the presidents of the undergraduate and graduate student governments.
Speakers at the breakfast discussed a number of topics.
Christopher Smith, Faculty Senate president, spoke about the role faculty members play in graduation rates.
"When I was an undergrad I knew how to affect graduation rates - give everybody an A," he said. "If everybody gets A's, they never fail a class, they never struggle, and everyone graduates. But of course that's not realistic."
Since that solution is unrealistic, faculty members should help students navigate their path through college, he said.
"Faculty are not the barriers. We are the facilitators," he said. "We are the ones that give students the education that gets them through to their degree."
According to the UNM Web site, 41.1 percent of freshmen who enrolled in 1999 earned a bachelor's degree by 2005.
Provost Reed Dasenbrock said that number is not high enough.
"I view every student at UNM who does not graduate as a failure on our part," he said. "And I want to beat us up over it."
One reason students do not graduate from UNM is because they have had an unpleasant experience at the University, he said. Faculty and administrators need to work to find out what those experiences are and prevent other students from having them, he said.
"We need to focus attention from the administrative side, from the academic side and from the student's side, and say, 'What can we do to make this system for graduating students that much more successful?'" he said.
Dasenbrock's speech was the most interesting part of the breakfast, Thomas said.
"I was particularly interested in the whole question of retaining students," he said. "Because we really are, as faculty, supporting students in succeeding and graduating, so it was really nice to hear Dasenbrock address that."
David Harris, executive vice president for administration, spoke at the event about the University's priorities during the legislative session.
"We've got an ambitious set of priorities for the University," he said. "We probably won't achieve total success, but I think that we will do very well."
Jamie Koch, president of the UNM Board of Regents, also attended the breakfast. He said UNM has a responsibility as a public institution to make all of its processes open to the public.
