Daily Lobo: What are you going to be doing under this new position?
Peter White: I'm going to have responsibility for several areas concerning undergraduate education. I'll be working on building our Research Service Learning Program for undergraduates to get credit for studying and working in the community. I am going to be working with the Teaching Enhancement Committee, which is a Faculty Senate committee. The committee is studying ways to help our faculty develop teaching methods and skills and is looking at various kinds of teaching evaluations. We have to get a new means of evaluating teaching. I'm also going to be working with Faculty Senate Curriculum Committee and assisting with our accreditation efforts. I will be taking care of undergraduate student grievances if they can't be resolved at a lower level.
DL: What is the main thing you would like to work on?
PW: The main thing I'm going to really try to strengthen is the undergraduate education at UNM. I'll be involved in a lot of things that have to do with teaching and learning. I will also be co-chair of a committee to work on improving graduation rates. There are about 42 percent of entering freshman who graduate in five years, and we need to improve those graduate rates substantially.
DL: Why do you think you are qualified for the position?
PW: I started my 30th year teaching at UNM this year and have always had a very strong interest in undergraduate education. I think I know our students pretty well.
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DL: What changes would you like to make?
PW: I am very interested in having our students study and make a contribution to our committee. I'm very interested in service learning and finding ways to better prepare students to come to UNM. I'm also very interested in working with faculty to improve the lower division courses.
DL: What will be the hardest part of the job?
PW: Making changes at UNM, because like all universities, change comes slowly.
Daily Lobo: What are you going to be doing under this new position?
Amy Wohlert: I will be fulfilling all the duties that the dean of graduate studies does, but the new part is the cross-cutting initiatives from the Provost's Office. Those include graduate degree approvals and representing graduate programs to the New Mexico Higher Education Department. I'm also directing the University's academic program review process and leading UNM's accreditation process, which includes academic outcome assessments. I'm really interested in all aspects of graduate education at UNM.
DL: What is the main thing you would like to work on?
AW: I want to make sure that students in graduate programs at UNM are able to understand the requirements of both their degree program and the University and make good progress toward achieving their degrees.
DL: Why do you think you are good for the position?
AW: I'm interested very broadly in everything that UNM has to offer to students.
DL: What changes would you like to make?
AW: I would like to see graduate studies continue with improvements to be more responsive to students and to program needs.
DL: What will be the hardest part of the job?
AW: I think the hardest part will be making sure that we make good progress on all initiatives that I'm overseeing at this time, but I have excellent new and continuing staff in order to make sure that we do succeed.
