Daily Lobo new mexico
wednesday April 29, 2015 | Volume 119 | Issue 150
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Med school returns to top 10 Adjuncts By Moriah Carty The UNM School of Medicine made a comeback this year and was recently ranked one of the top 10 schools in the nation by the American Academy of Family Physicians. UNM made the top 10 from 2011 to 2013 but didn’t make the cut in 2014. This year however, UNM made the list once more, according to a press release. The award recognizes the school’s efforts to foster student interest in family medicine and produce graduates who enter the specified field. According to the AAFP, nearly 16 percent of UNM SOM graduates over the past three years have entered an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-accredited family medicine residency program. UNM, ranked 10th on the list, followed University of North Dakota which had a 20.8 percentage rate of graduates entering family medicine. UNM’s ranking is down almost two percentage points from last year’s 18.3 percent of graduates entering the family medicine. The percentage is based on a three-year rolling average of medical students matriculating to family medicine residencies and therefore is based on the current academic year’s incoming residents, according to the AAFP website. According to UNM’s press release, the AAFP award comes at a time when the United States is facing a shortage of primary care physicians. Schools that contribute
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AAFP page 2
2015 Top Ten Awards: Medical Schools for Family Medicine Medical School
Percent of Graduates Entering Family Medicine
University of North Dakota
20.8%
University of Kansas
19.7%
By Matthew Reisen
University of Minnesota
18.8%
East Carolina University
18.5%
University of Washington
17.6%
Oregon Health and Science University
16.9%
Florida State University
16.2%
University of Missouri - Columbia
16%
University of Wisconsin
15.9%
University of California, Irvine
15.8%
University of New Mexico
15.8% Source : AAFP
Men’s Golf
Team’s tweaks lead to improved play By Thomas Romero-Salas
An epic collapse changed the entire season for the New Mexico men’s golf team. In March, the Lobos blew a 12-stroke lead in the final round of the San Diego Classic and finished in third place. After the tournament, UNM had a team meeting and decided to change its approach. “We had a team meeting to see what we could do as a team to make ourselves better. We decided that we’re going to be a little more like basketball so we know what the score is at all times,” senior golfer Sam Saunders said. “Now we had started to know what the score is and know how everybody is doing. We got some momentum going, and everyone started playing well.” The change in strategy has helped the Lobos play some of their best golf of the season in anticipation of the Mountain West Championship, which begins this Friday in Tucson, Arizona. UNM won its last stroke play event at the 3M Augusta Invitational earlier this month. The team also tied No. 2 Texas and No. 30 TCU in match play two weeks ago. UNM has won the past two MW titles and is looking to become the second team in MW
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Golf page 5
on lower end of income
Denise Gallegos / Daily Lobo
Gavin Green practices for the Mountain West Tournament at the Championship Golf Course on April 15. Green and the UNM golf team will travel to Tuscon, Arizona to play in the Mountain West Championships. The conference tournament starts Friday.
Part-time faculty pay has long been a subject of criticism among community colleges and universities, and UNM is no different. According to a report by the American Association of University Professors in 2013, adjuncts typically earn between $20,000 and $25,000 annually, compared to the average salary of $84,303 for full-time instructors and professors. Carol A. Parker, senior vice provost at UNM, said on main campus there are 1,600 faculty, 25 percent of which are adjunct or part time. “They really are an important part of our faculty,” she said. “That is vital; it’s substantial also for us to be able to rely on adjuncts to increase or decrease the number of course sections that we can offer.” Steve Borbas, lecturer and adjunct associate professor, said he has been teaching at UNM for 30 years and always saw an unfair situation for many adjuncts and lecturers around him. “I would say 99 percent of universities in this country, and probably even more community colleges, they treat these people very unfairly,” Borbas said. “Those are the people that I feel terrible about.” Parker said adjuncts take temporary roles for many different reasons. Some are experienced practitioners or UNM staff members who like to teach and are happy to help UNM fill temporary needs for their expertise. Others may want to get teaching experience for permanent faculty positions. “Some simply wish to only work part time,” Parker said. “However, part-time, temporary adjuncts’ positions are not well suited to be a sole source of long-term employment.” According to a study by UC Berkeley Labor Center of low-wage occupations, 25 percent of parttime university faculty in the United States needs government aid to supplement salary and rely on public assistance programs. There have been movements in the last three or four years to make changes to adjunct/lecturer faculty, Borbas said. Parker said a full-time faculty course load varies by discipline, but “the faculty handbook definition of a full-time teaching load for main campus regular faculty is three courses.” Adjuncts on main campus teach an average of two and a half courses and some adjuncts will take on up to four classes. “These guys work twice as hard as a lot of the full-time faculty, and we have a lot of old, full-time faculty who are just not pulling their weight,” Borbas said. The turnover rate for adjuncts on main campus is 13 percent, compared to six percent for full-time faculty, Parker said. Average adjunct longevity is six and a half years, but some, like Borbas, have been with the University for decades.
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Pay page 2