During Monday’s forum in the SUB, students looked to hold President-Elect Robert Frank to his promises to promote diversity at UNM, fix the ailing advisement system and keep tuition low. Frank said he had more to learn about UNM before making any firm decisions.
Ethnic Studies and Faculty Diversity
President of the Kiva Club and Native American Studies major Makhpiya Black Elk called on the president to protect ethnic studies programs.
Black Elk spoke about Arizona law HB 228, which effectively shut down ethnic studies programs at K-12 schools across the Arizona in 2010.
Frank said because of budget cuts during the last three years, he can’t promise the programs will always flourish, but he said ethnic diversity is integral to the success of the University.
Frank said that when more money becomes available he hopes to increase funding to ethnic centers.
“I can guarantee you that I see these types of programs as a strength of the University and something that distinguishes the University of New Mexico from the rest of the universities in the country,” he said. “We should hold them up as a point of excellence.”
Christopher Ramirez is the co-chair of La Raza Graduate Student Association, an organization that supports Latino/a graduate students. Ramirez said although the University prides itself on diversity, its staff is not as diverse as its student body. He pointed to recent allegations of a hostile environment on campus by African Americans and a title VI civil rights complaint filed in November. The University is still investigating the allegations.
Frank said more diversity within the faculty is one of his top priorities, but said he has no concrete plans to make this happen. Only 23 percent of UNM’s tenure track faculty are people of color.
Advisement
During the forum, Frank addressed the concerns of what students called “a bottleneck effect” when it comes to advisement. Students said there are not enough career advisers and when they do receive advisement, they are often given incorrect information, which sometimes leads to longer stays in their programs.
Frank said most big universities don’t have a routine and have to find ways of dealing with growing student populations and too few advisers.
“They don’t establish common practices, so a student gets different advisement in two different colleges; they don’t hold students to a pathway to graduation,” he said.
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Frank said he and Provost Chaouki Abdallah have come up with a few possible solutions to the advisement problem. He said these include a program similar to the one at Kent State University, where Frank is currently provost. Each student has a graduation pathway and progress on that path is measured. He also suggested a coaching program that will look at how advisement is designed at UNM.
“(We will) probably look at something around mandatory advisement for every student that focuses not just on ‘Are you in the right classes?’ but, ‘Is this the right path in life for you?’” he said.
Before he can make any real changes, Frank said he has to learn how advisement works at UNM and wants to make sure advisement is more than what he called “curriculum management.”
“I know the problems, I’m not sure I know all the things that have to be done here, but I agree we need to work harder at it. We will and it’s going to be big on my agenda,” he said.
Tuition Rates
Frank said keeping tuition low is a high priority.
“The more we raise tuition, the more debt you have; the more debt you have, the harder it is to establish your career, so the University wants to work with you on it,” he said.
But Frank also said the University depends on state funding and when the cost isn’t offset by state, the University has to increase tuition.
“What we can do and what we work hard at doing is keeping our costs as low as we can, so that our cost part of our equation doesn’t go up,” he said.
