2018, Fall

FALL 2018

M A G A Z I N E THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO I ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Jami Porter Lara’s Vessels / Alumna Kerry Perry Brings USA Gymnastics Back to its Roots Susan Ressler’s “Executive Order” / United Way’s Steven Taylor Keeps Roots in Albuquerque Track and Cross Country Teams Driven to Win / Alumna Gives Back to Sociology Department

Contents 22 THE POWER OF GIVING United Way’s Steve Taylor works to help those in need

By Leslie Linthicum

24 PEACE, LOVE AND LOBOS

Your Homecoming Events Calendar

Photographer Susan Ressler at home in Taos.

Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (’96 BFA, ’14 MA)

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LETTERS

5 ALBUM

Keeping current with classmates

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MESSAGE

From UNM President Garnett S. Stokes

8 CAMPUS CONNECTIONS

What’s going on around campus

12 BEHIND THE LENS

The social commentary of alumna Susan Ressler’s photos

By Leslie Linthicum

16 A TURNING POINT

FOR USA GYMNASTICS And alumna Kerry Perry is at the helm

By Benjamin Gleisser

18 VESSELS Conceptual artist Jami Porter Lara’s ceramics blur borders

By Leslie Linthicum

On the cover: One in a series of blackware sculptures by Jami Porter Lara (’13 BFA) Photo: Addison Doty

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MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Mirage was the title of the University of New Mexico yearbook until its final edition in 1978. The title was then adopted by the alumni magazine, which continues to publish vignettes about UNM graduates and news of the University.

M A G A Z I N E

26 BOATS, PLANES AND PASSION FOR UNM John Brown is new Alumni Association president

By Leslie Linthicum

28 LOBO RUNNERS

ARE DRIVEN And their coach Joe Franklin works to ease the pressure

By Leslie Linthicum

30 ILLUMINATING INJUSTICE

Alumna Maxine Baca Zinn endows

32 SHELF LIFE

Fall 2018, Volume 38, Number 2

The University of New Mexico

Books by UNM alumni

38 HONORING ALUMNI

Garnett S. Stokes, President

Meet the Awards recipients

Dana G. Allen, Vice President, Alumni Relations

41 FROM THE VEEP

UNM Alumni Association Executive Committee

A message from Alumni Association’s Dana Allen

42 ALUMNI NETWORK Did our cameras catch you at an alumni event?

43 IN MEMORIAM

professorship in sociology

By Hilary Mayall Jetty

John Brown (’72 BBA) President Alexis Tappan (’99 BA, ’17 MA) President-Elect Harold Lavender (’69 BA, ’75 JD) Past President Daniel Trujillo (’07 BBA, ’08 MACCT) Treasurer Dana G. Allen Secretary Appointed Members James Lewis (’77MPA, ’17 LHD) Rosalyn Nguyen (’03 BBA, ’07 MBA, JD) Jaymie Roybal (’12 BA/BS, ’16 JD) Chad Cooper (’01 MBA) Jim Novak (’96 MBA) Mirage Editorial Dana G. Allen, Vice President, Alumni Relations Leslie Linthicum, Editor Wayne Scheiner & Company, Graphic Design Address correspondence to MirageEditor@unm.edu or The University of New Mexico Alumni Association, MSC 01-1160, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131-0001. You can also contact us at (505) 277-5808 or 800-ALUM-UNM (800-258-6866).

Web: UNMAlumni.com Facebook: Facebook.com/UNMAlumni

Steven Taylor outside the U.S. Capitol where he lobbies on behalf of United Way. Photo: Aaron Sweet (’15 BA)

Twitter: @UNMAlumni Instagram: Instagram.com/UNMAlumni Flickr: Flickr.com/UNMAlumni

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editor LETTERS TO THE

FROM THE EDITOR:

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hen you check out the 2018 Homecoming calendar of events in this issue (it’s the centerfold) you’ll find a Lobo version of a tradition that goes back to the turn of the century. Our theme this year is Wolfstock: Peace, Love & Lobos, and, really, who can argue with wanting a little bit more of all three of those things in one’s life?

Homecoming always makes me think of family—spending a few nights in that narrow childhood bed when you’re home to see the game or attend a reunion, reconnecting with the people from a freshman dorm or senior year off-campus apartment who have come to act and feel like family as the years and decades after graduation roll by.

The Alumni Association lost some members of our family in untimely deaths in recent months: Jennifer Riordan, a beacon of light and positivity who served on the association’s board of directors and helped out in so many ways, and Larry Abraham, an entrepreneur and public servant who was a former board member, a recent Zia Award winner and the beloved little brother of former Alumni Association Executive Director Karen Abraham.

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In each issue of Mirage we take a few pages and list the names of alumni who have passed away. Each name represents a favorite fraternity brother or sorority sister, a teammate or a classmate, a study buddy or a mentor to classmates who look through In Memoriam and recognize a name.

The college experience is intimate and encourages relationships that last lifetimes and help form those unofficial families we rely on to get us through our summers of love and loss.

When treasured members of the Lobo pack are lost too early, it’s a good time to reflect on the value of UNM and the ties that bind graduates together for life in this extended family.

Peace, Love & Lobos,

Leslie Linthicum MirageEditor@unm.edu

TO THE EDITOR:

I

am a UNM graduate (PhD, American Studies, 2000) and former resident of Albuquerque’s South Valley (19901998). These days I am a lecturer for the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at Northern Arizona University, and I also serve as president for the Northern Arizona Organic Beekeepers Association, a non-profit group.

Just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed reading your interesting and informative essay about President Garnett Stokes in the Spring 2018 Mirage magazine.

I hope that she turns out to be an excellent and effective leader for UNM. Her style sounds quite collaborative.

You are doing good work! Thank you. As an UNM alumnus, I should also mention my profound thanks to some of the professors who deeply influenced me during my years as a grad student at UNM: Vera Norwood, A. Gabriel Melendrez and Margaret ConnellSzasz, among many others.

Patrick G. Pynes (’00 PhD) Flagstaff, Ariz.

Look for a friend on every page!

Send your alumni news to Mirage Editor, The University of New Mexico Alumni Association, MSC 01-1160, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 871310001. Or better yet, email your news to UNMAlumni@unm.edu. Please include your middle name or initial and tell us where you’re living now.

T

he Spring 2018 Mirage is the best ever.

It makes me proud to be an alumnus.

Frank Hall (’74 EdD) Sun Valley, Nev.

SPRING 2018

M A G A Z I N E THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO I ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

UNM’s New President Garnett S. Stokes is Battle-Tested and Ready to Lead

Meet the Presidential Partner / Son of Chile Farmers Solves Problems With Engineering Business School Grad Helps Pro Athletes Build Wealth / Fueling America’s Soldiers New Athletic Director Laces Up / Like Acai Berries? You Can Thank This Alumnus

UNM-017-A-Mirage-Spring-2018-Single-pages-final.indd 1

2/20/18 10:00 AM

Deadlines:

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hough I haven’t been currently as active as I might in the Chicago UNM Alumni Chapter, I sure would like you to devote more print and online coverage to the activities of the chapters.

Maybe a designated contact from each chapter can provide you and your staff a write-up of what actually occurred at one of the dinner meetings. What was said, who was there, what was said about changes at the campus if they visited and future plans.

As a retired journalist—a proud graduate of the old Journalism School in 1961, I certainly hope to contribute what I can to you and your Mirage staff when I attend the next chapter meeting in May. And I would love to read about what sorts of things other chapters are doing this spring and summer to promote UNM.

Jamie Rubenstein (’61 BA) Niles, Ill.

Editor’s Note: Jamie, we hear you. In the past few issues we have dedicated more space to listing chapter events. You’ll find our expanded listing on Page 40. To stay up to date on activities, make sure we have you current contact information by visiting the “Connect” menu at UNMalumni.com and clicking on “Stay In Touch!”

Spring deadline: January 1; Fall deadline: June 1

1950s Irwin Z. Frank (’56 BS) and Sherrill Eckhouse Frank (’57 BS) celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary with their children and grandchildren on a Caribbean cruise in June. Sherrill retired as a professor from the Los Angeles Community College District after 36 years. Irwin is a vice president of American HealthCare Capital in Los Angeles.

1960s Rudolfo A. Anaya (’63 BAED, ’69 MA), Albuquerque, was honored when the North Valley Library was renamed the Rudolfo Anaya North Valley Library during a ceremony in March.

Linden Blaschke (’65 BA), Albuquerque, was a 2017 inductee in the New Mexico Music Hall of Fame for his performing and music production and publishing career. Known by his stage name Lindy Blaskey, he headed Lindy & the Lavells and worked on the West Coast for Liberty Records, Paramount Pictures, Motown and ABC Dunhill.

John R. Cooney (’65 BA, ’65 JD), a shareholder with Modrall Sperling, was recognized by Chambers USA in its 2018 legal rankings for New Mexico in the Environment, Natural Resources & Regulated Industries practice area.

John Cooney

Francelle E. Alexander (’66 BAED, ’77 MA), Placitas, N.M., published a two-volume history of Albuquerque’s North Valley, “Los Griegos & Los Candelarias,” and “Alameda & Los Ranchos.”

D. F. “Duffy” Swan (’68 BA), Albuquerque, received the University of New Mexico Alumni Association’s 2018 Erna S. Fergusson Award.

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A UNM Legacy

“When an institution provides a creative and stimulating environment, then it earns financial support to ensure its future.

We are pleased to give back to UNM as an acknowledgement of the reward we have received from our education.”

– Nancy Lutz (BS ‘58, MA ‘65) and Raymond Lutz (BS ‘58, MBA ‘62)

Every gift to UNM can change worlds. Nancy and Raymond have chosen to make a lasting impact at UNM by including the University in their estate plan. Legacy gifts help students succeed, advance research, aid patients, and assist health care providers for years to come. For more information about how you can create a legacy at UNM, please visit unmgift.org.

Look forward by giving back.

@UNMFund

UNMFoundation

@UNMFund

505-313-7600

Making Connections Dear UNM Alumni –

W

hen I came to UNM, I quickly learned that I am not just leading a university; I am leading a community that extends far beyond our campuses. To do that, I am making connections throughout our state to better understand its people and discover ways in which we can work together to advance the University for New Mexico.

I have stated before that this is not only The University of New Mexico, but also the University for New Mexico. We serve as the flagship institution with promise and pride.

I also believe we serve the world. While our impact on the state is immense, our students, faculty, staff and alumni—Lobos everywhere—are changing the world around us through innovation, education, patient care and more.

We have so many ways to share our stories today through words, photos and videos— each a small window into the Lobo experience. I have been taking advantage of sharing the connections I have made in the past few months on Twitter and a statewide tour blog as strategies for building on common themes and soliciting new ones. I encourage you to take advantage of the many digital and social platforms we use to stay connected, including our web sites and social media platforms.

Making connections is an important responsibility for any president. Maintaining connections is even more critical. My commitment to you, Lobos for life, is to stay connected and support opportunities for you to become even more involved in the success of The University of New Mexico.

Warmest regards, and Go Lobos!

Garnett S. Stokes President, The University of New Mexico

1970s Felipe de Ortego y Gasca (’71 PhD), Silver City, N.M., received the 2018 Premio Estrella de Aztlán—Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Texas Chapter. Western New Mexico University also honored Ortego by naming the newly established campus cultural center— formerly the MEChA Building—the Felipe de Ortego y Gasca Cultural Center.

Anne M. Hillerman (’72 BA), Santa Fe, N.M., was the featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Friends of the Bosque Redondo Memorial.

M. Christina Armijo (’73 BA, ’75 JD), Albuquerque, retired to senior status from the U.S. District Court.

Lynn H. Slade (’73 BA, ’76 JD), a shareholder with Modrall Sperling, was recognized by Chambers USA in its 2018 legal rankings for New Mexico in the Native American Law and Corporate/ Commercial practice areas, and in Nationwide Native American Law.

Lynn Slade

Rocky J. Long, Jr. (’74 BAED), San Diego, Calif., had his contract extended through 2022 as football coach for San Diego State University.

Dennis A. O’Hearn (’75 BA), Bryan, Texas, is the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Meridel Rubenstein (’75 MA, ’77 MFA), Santa Fe, N.M., had her photography featured at the UNM Art Museum in a show entitled, “Meridel Rubenstein, Eden Turned On Its Side.”

Joy Harjo (’76 BA) received the University of New Mexico Alumni Association’s 2018 James F. Zimmerman Award.

Anthony C. Porter (’76 BA, ’79 JD), Las Cruces, N.M., was named the 2018 Public Lawyer of the Year by the State Bar of New Mexico’s Public Law Section.

Karen Moses Oltmans (’77 BA), Albuquerque, is the president of New Mexico Foundation for Open Government board.

Diane Reyna (’78 BUS), Santa Fe, N.M., participated in “Work by Women Round Table,” a talk at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos.

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Campus Connections BEER HERE Study breaks and late-night munchie runs on campus may now come with an adult beverage. Beer and wine sales in the Student Union Building have been on tap since the UNM Board of Regents approved alcohol sales and a $650,000 bill to build out a bar, called the UNM Taproom, in the SUB food court.

Located behind WisePies Pizza, the Taproom is on track to be pouring soon. It will rotate selections of beer and wine and have guest brewers. The Taproom operates under an existing liquor license at the SUB and will adhere to state liquor laws, which prohibit serving alcohol to patrons under 21.

Chartwells, UNM’s food service partner, will be responsible for enforcing beer and wine service laws.

The Taproom design was part of a Spring 2017 class project in the School of Architecture & Planning.

UNM’s Planning, Design and Construction Department worked with Studio Beccone Architecture & Design, and students to fabricate pieces of the pub.

“The UNM Taproom will expand on recent initiatives to transform our campus into a ’destination university’ where our students, faculty and staff can live, learn, work and play," said Chris Vallejos, associate vice president of Institutional Support Services. "We see the Taproom as a collaborative space and an amenity that our community currently has to leave campus to find.”

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ENGINEERING GIFT

Another $500,000 will allow the Department of Civil Engineering to The legacy of Dana C. Wood, an create state-of-the-art lab spaces in alumnus of the School of Engineering 3D concrete printing and computerwho succumbed to cancer in 2013, aided design in its structures and will live on in the newly remodeled materials lab, located on the ground and expanded Farris Engineering floor of Centennial, as well as the Center and the Centennial Engineering civil engineering computer lab.

Center. Wood’s estate recently gave The lab will be named the Dana $3 million to UNM for programs C. Wood Materials, Structures and in civil and mechanical engineering.

Computer Lab. It is the largest cash gift in the School The rest of the gift, $1 million, will of Engineering’s history. create an endowed position within the The largest part of the gift, Department of Civil Engineering, which $1.5 million, will go toward a will be named the Dana C. Wood Chair 7,000-square-foot space on the for Advanced Construction Materials ground floor of Farris that will be and Technologies. dedicated to the UNM Formula Wood, a native of Gallup, N.M., Society of Automotive Engineers, received a bachelor’s degree in 1977 which designs and builds a race and a master’s degree in 1990, both in car that annually competes in an civil engineering. He died after a long international contest. It will be battle with cancer in 2013. named the Dana C. Wood FSAE Wood’s first job out of college was Racing Lab. for Bohannan Huston Inc., where he

Margaret S. Elliston (’79 MA), Corrales, N.M., was elected to serve as chairwoman of the state Democratic Party.

helped a spinoff company called Diginetics write software that was sold to other engineering firms in the U.S. He eventually rose to lead Diginetics and later developed a software called PowerMerge, which would sync a user’s files on different computers before the Internet and “cloud” were pervasive. He and his associates also launched Leadertech, a company that had offices in Albuquerque and Los Angeles.

The Wood family previously donated $150,000 for an endowed scholarship for School of Engineering students and $750,000 to The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center, where Dana received treatment.

DORM LIFE’S THE NORM LIFE

After two years of discussion and planning, the requirement that all freshman students live on campus ­—with some exceptions—goes into effect this fall.

Why the change? A University review found advantages to living on campus include better student engagement, personal safety, proximity to academic and

recreational resources and a deeper sense of community and belonging.

“Requiring our youngest and most vulnerable students to live on campus is common sense,” said Terry Babbitt, associate vice president for enrollment management. “Placing 18- and 19-year-olds in a safe campus environment where they don’t have to drive and park and have academic and social support within a few steps will allow them to quickly gain momentum for success.”

Studies show students who live on campus have better grades, are more likely to re-enroll as sophomores and eventually graduate at higher rates than students who live off campus.

“I have a strong belief in the value of students living on campus and its impact on retention—the research supports the effect it has on freshmen choosing to continue their studies into their second year,” UNM President Garnett S. Stokes said. “Living on campus allows our students to more fully engage in the campus community.”

Administrators estimate the new requirement will bring in approximately 300 additional students to University housing.

The requirement allows a number of exceptions, including ones for students who live with a parent, guardian or family member within 30 miles of Main Campus, students who are at least 20 years old at the beginning of the academic year or those who are married or in a domestic partnership or have legally dependent children.

Steven R. Fitch (’79 MA), Peña Blanca, N.M., had his photography displayed at an exhibit at photo-eye Gallery entitled “Vanishing Vernacular.”

Tim C. McCorkle (’79 BA, ’94 MA), Albuquerque, principal at Albuquerque High School, retired after 39 years as an educator, including 11 years leading the Bulldogs.

1980s Edward L. Chavez (’81 JD), Albuquerque, retired from the New Mexico Supreme Court.

Maya Sutton (’81 PhD), Albuquerque, addressed the Albuquerque International Association on “The Great Mother Goddess Around the World.”

Luci Tapahonso (’81 BA, ’83 MA), Santa Fe, N.M., read her poems at the Farmington Public Library as part of the library’s National Poetry Month celebration.

Enriqueta L. Vasquez (’81 BUS), San Cristobal, N.M., was honored by the Las Pistoleras Instituto Cultural de Arte’s during National Women’s History Month.

Melvyn S. Montaño (’82 MPA), Albuquerque, delivered the commencement address at New Mexico Highlands University in May. Christopher G. Carian (’83 BAA. ’86 MARCH), Rio Rancho, N.M., architect and senior project manager for UNM’s Office of Planning, Design and Construction, received the Distinguished Service Award.

Paula A. Getz (’83 BBA), Los Ranchos, N.M., was a New Mexico Technology Council 2018 Women in Technology winner.

Gary L. Gordon (’83 BBA, ’86 JD), Albuquerque, received the 2018 Hall of Fame Award from the UNM Anderson School of Management.

Andrew L. Lovato (’83 MA, ’00 PhD), Santa Fe, N.M., is the city’s third historian.

Alice L. Wagoner (’83 BA), Las Vegas, N.M., is a reporter for the Las Vegas Optic.

Dennis P. Davies-Wilson (’84 BM, ’91 MA), Santa Fe, N.M., received the UNM-LA Faculty Initiative Award.

Caryl L. Trotter (’84 MA, ’01 MPA), Corrales, N.M., is the executive director for the Corrales Arts Center.

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Campus Connections To document what happened to mammals as early humans left Africa, researchers compiled extensive data on climate and on mammal body size, extinction status and geographic location over time. The researchers also investigated the role of body size and diet on the likelihood of extinction and then evaluated the data in light of climate change and human migration patterns over the same time frame.

Because megafauna have a disproportionate influence on ecosystem structure and function, past and present body size downgrading is reshaping Earth’s biosphere. By comparing extinction events with the entire record of mammal turnover over the past 65 million years, the AND THEN THERE researchers demonstrated that WERE NONE body size and diet did not influence The 40,000-pound hornless rhino, extinction risk for mammals for most the elephant-sized ground sloth and of their evolutionary history. the 10-foot-tall short-faced bear all Typically, larger land masses house succumbed to extinction, along with a larger mammals, so Smith was host of other large terrestrial mammals. surprised to find that 125,000 years ago Now, an academic team led by the average body size of mammals in UNM Biology Professor Felisa Smith Africa was already 50 percent smaller has demonstrated the link between than on other continents. humans—from Homo erectus to Homo “We suspect that this means that sapiens—and biodiversity loss in archaic humans and other hominins mammals. The team showed, through had already influenced mammal data review spanning 125,000 years, diversity and body size in the late that as humans migrated around Pleistocene,” said Smith who has the globe, extinctions of the largest studied megafauna extinction for mammals followed. more than 15 years.

Their study, “Body size downgrading The researchers also projected 200 of mammals over the late Quaternary,” years into the future. Their conclusion? in the prestigious journal Science, is If the loss of large-bodied mammals the first to quantitatively show that continues and all the currently size-selective extinction is a hallmark threatened animals are lost, the of human activities and not the norm largest mammal on earth may be in mammal evolution. a domestic cow.

The average monthly cost for a one-bedroom apartment, not including utilities, in Albuquerque is $650, while the average cost of a dorm room is $559 per month, including free utilities.

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Megafauna—large animals—play an important role in ecosystems, Smith says. They change the structure of vegetation through their browsing and help maintain open grasslands, compact the soils, emit methane and influence the distribution of nitrogen and phosphorous on the landscape.

“We are not entirely sure what the potential loss of these ’ecosystem engineers’ could lead to,” she says.

“I hope we never find out.”

BLACK LUNG

“In New Mexico, black lung patients are pretty fatalistic,” says Akshay Sood, MD, a pulmonologist and professor at the UNM School of Medicine.

As the disease intensifies, its victims feel weak and can’t do the things they used to do. “That’s about the time they come to see me,” Sood adds. “Miners usually present with a persistent cough, shortness of breath and increased phlegm production. They’re coughing

Nickay Manning (’85 BA, ’88 JD), Corrales, N.M., joined Giddens + Gatton Law, P.C. Paul J. Fensterer (’86 BSCE), Albuquerque, joined Eberline Services Inc. as the chief operating officer.

so much they can’t lay flat. Most end up trying to sleep in the living room recliner, but with little success.

Sometimes depression takes hold.”

Akshay Sood

Sood has been working with Miners’ Colfax Medical Center in Raton, N.M., for the past several years to address pulmonary diseases associated with the coal and uranium mining industries. He specializes in caring for patients with black lung and now holds a recently endowed chair focused on researching and treating the deadly disease, thanks to a $1.5 million gift from Miners’ Colfax.

The gift will help the partnership, which dates back more than 20 years, sharpen its focus on black lung disease, caused by the inhalation and trapping of coal dust in miners’ lungs.

The dust particles activate the body’s immune response, but because the invaders are not bacterial or viral, the response spirals. Consequently, tissue is damaged over time, ultimately degrading lungs and depriving victims of air.

“Several New Mexico counties have among the highest rates of death per capita nationally from lung disease,” Sood says. “This commitment from Miners’ Colfax will greatly advance patient and community engagement, health screenings, education and so much more in our mining communities. At the same time, our pulmonary disease programs will intensify at the UNM School of Medicine and UNM Hospital.”

Miners’ Colfax opened in 1906 in Raton to provide acute and long-term care and related services to the beneficiaries of the Miner’s Trust Fund of New Mexico and the people of northeastern New Mexico.

The medical center is known for its treatment of miners with lung disease.

Sood commutes to Raton monthly to see patients and helps with a mobile screening service that travels to mining communities, holding town halls and performing pulmonary tests, and chest and lung imaging.

The screening service connects via satellite to experts in miners’ diseases across the globe.

“Our collaborative program is unlike any in the U.S.,” Sood notes. “This endowment will build on our existing relationship with Miners’ Colfax and strengthen community engagement to include counseling of miners’ benefits. It also will help attract faculty of national stature to work in clinical research and community aspects of miners’ diseases.”

Carol M. Pierce (’86 MAPA), Albuquerque, was appointed as director of the Albuquerque Family and Community Services Department.

Sandra A. Price (’86 BA, ’89 JD), Aztec, N.M., retired as district judge for the 11th Judicial District.

Ed J. Lopez, Jr. (’87 JD), Albuquerque, is the CEO of Delta Dental of New Mexico, which donated $30,000 to the UNM Health Sciences Center to support a program that provides dental services to Albuquerque Public Schools students.

Christopher P. Muirhead (’88 BA, ’93 JD), a shareholder with Modrall Sperling, was recognized by Chambers USA in its 2018 legal rankings for New Mexico in the Corporate/Commercial practice area.

Stuart R. Butzier (’89 JD), a shareholder with Modrall Sperling, was recognized by Chambers USA in its 2018 legal rankings for New Mexico in the Environment, Natural Resources & Regulated Industries practice area.

Chris Muirhead

Stuart Butzier

Anna C. Hansen (’89 BFA, ’92 MA), Santa Fe, N.M., was elected chair of the Santa Fe Board of County Commissioners. She also serves on the Buckman Direct Diversion Board, Metropolitan Planning Organization, Santa Anna Hansen Fe County Housing Authority, the Solid Waste Management Authority and the Santa Fe County Audit and Investment Committee. (continued on page 27)

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Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (’96 BFA, ’14 MA)

Behind the Lens

The photos of Susan Ressler (’77 MA, ’86 MFA) interrogate humanity

By Leslie Linthicum

In her studio, a spare whitewashed converted garage with a panoramic view of the mountains that loom over Taos, the subjects of photographer Susan Ressler’s career are displayed in color along with black and white prints hung on the walls.

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Shoppers carrying designer bags stroll through sun-drenched American shopping malls. Stiff executives loom over their massive desks in sterile corporate suites. A storefront in Tel Aviv displays beach towels and inflatable toys marked with the blue and white flag of Israel.

Ressler, now 68, arrived at the University of New Mexico in 1975 with an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts from the University of Pittsburgh. She was a self-taught photographer who, after graduation, had spent three months embedding in a Canadian First Nations reserve and a year working on the staff of the Gallup Independent newspaper in the border town in western New Mexico.

The UNM photography program was competitive and prestigious. Seventy-five to 100 people applied to the graduate program each year and it accepted only four or five.

Ressler arrived as an unknown as the incoming master’s cohort was just about to be chosen.

She still remembers the lucky break that set her career in motion. “I showed them my Indian pictures and (professor) Rod Lazorik took one look and said, ‘Let’s see what we can do.’”

UNM was one of the first universities in the country to offer a PhD in the history of photography and to treat photography as a serious academic subject and a fine art with its own traditions.

Ressler found herself taught and mentored by giants in the field—Thomas F. Barrow, Betty Hahn, Anne Noggle, Van Deren Coke, Beaumont Newhall and others.

Barrow, now professor emeritus, remembers Ressler as different from other students—in her academic background, her subject matter and her work ethic.

“She could write and she had a good university education,” Barrow recalls. “But she was not a picture maker in the beginning. I think what she brought was this grittiness. She had an edginess about her.

She was very ambitious, and I don’t mean it in a bad way.”

Because she was photographing people—first at cattle auctions and then in banks—often her work as a student wasn’t taken seriously as “art.” In critique sessions, when asked why she made a particular photograph—of a cowboy at a cattle auction—Ressler might answer that the subject had a beautiful face.

“And everybody would look at me like, ‘That’s not a good reason for making a photograph.’ It was such a high-powered conceptual program,” she says. “Even though as a documentary photographer I was constantly being challenged, that repartee made for such a stimulating environment in which to grow and mature as a photographer.”

And Barrow says she did just that.

“She did what students who come to graduate school should do.

She worked. And she’s had a really good career.”

She graduated with her MA in art in 1977, and with the start of a body of work that now—nearly 40 years later—has been published as Ressler’s first monograph.

“Executive Order: Images of 1970s Corporate America,” published by Daylight Books, contains 50 black and white

photographs Ressler shot in offices in the West in the 1970s.

She began the series in Albuquerque, walking into banks with her camera.

“I had no trouble getting into these places,” she says. “This was way before 9/11. There wasn’t all this fear of terrorism. It was another world. You could never do these kinds of pictures today.”

She expanded her scope to offices in Denver and then Los Angeles, winning a National Endowment of the Arts grant under the Los Angeles Documentary Project and focusing her lens on the power lobbies and executive offices of large Fortune 500 corporations headquartered there.

“I tried to make them look very sterile,” Ressler says. And she succeeded. The architecture and decor are Mad Men-esque and the men and women look dour and often frozen.

“I can make people very uncomfortable if I want to. I like to do that when I’m photographing,” Ressler says with a hint of a smile. “I’m very persuasive. I can convince people to do almost anything.”

The cold, austere and geometric images in “Executive Order” are a commentary on corporate power that Ressler hopes resonates today as the power of corporations is ascendant and income disparity widens.

The “Mother and Child,” 2018, Nepal She is reminiscent of various madonna images, especially that made by Dorothea Lange of “Migrant Mother” during the Great Depression. However, there is a difference, because whereas Lange’s mother and child were experiencing extreme hardship and the mother later said it was a time better forgotten and she did not want people to see her in that condition, my picture shows a mother and child who are at peace. - Susan Ressler

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1. “Diver,” Los Angeles, 1979 from Executive Order.

Dive deep? Perhaps 20,000 leagues under the sea? Why these symbols, implying armor as well as achievement? This executive exuded confidence; self-possessed, he placed his hand on the table as if he owned it. And he did! - Susan Ressler 2. “Languid Blonde,” Albuquerque, 1977 from Executive Order.

I noted this “Languid Blonde’s” body language when I made this photograph. A perfect “S” curve amongst the circular tables, cushions and ashtrays—were secretaries put on display like furniture in the 1970s? She seemed sexualized and a part of the decor to me. - Susan Ressler

“I feel like it’s really subversive. It really relates to the era we’re living in today,” she says. “You look at the past and it kind of predicts the future.”

“Executive Order” never would have happened if it weren’t for a chance encounter Ressler had just after college. Although she owned a Brownie camera when she was girl growing up in Philadelphia and snapped some photos at the zoo, Ressler didn’t become immersed in photography until a friend of hers in college loaned her a Rolleiflex camera and taught her how to develop black and white film in a darkroom. The first photos she can remember taking were of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground when they came to Pitt.

By the time she graduated, she had her own equipment and she moved to Boston to try her luck as a freelancer. She took jobs typing at MIT and Harvard to pay the bills and met an anthropologist who suggested an adventure.

“It was a stroke of luck,” she says today. “I was 22 years old and he said, ‘Would you like to go up to Canada and live on an Indian reserve?’ And that was the first serious photography I ever did.”

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Ressler took the train to northern Quebec Province and arrived with nowhere to live and no knowledge of the languages spoken there, French and Algonquian.

“Nothing was really in place for this young woman to stay there,” she remembers. “I had no running water. I was sleeping on the floor of this little shack. I just was with them all day long and kind of was adopted by four families. I was just a young kid and they kind of took pity on me. So I had an amazing experience.

They just accepted me.”

The body of work she produced in those three months included images that could launch a documentary photographer’s career— powerful, intimate portraits of poverty, alcoholism and struggle.

But Ressler has never showed or published them.

“I felt ambivalent about the Indian work,” Ressler says. She was concerned about the power dynamic inherent when an educated, better-off photographer trains her lens on people who are lesseducated and poor.

“It was so personal and so intimate. And I had to think, is it really right to show this work?” she says. “Do these people really want to be seen in these ramshackle, really rundown houses,

standing with the beer bottles? I didn’t want to be seen as exploiting these people.

It’s a very touchy situation about how you would present the work, how these images would be seen and how it would be contextualized. I see now that there’s so much empathy in those pictures that I took.

They’re not sensational at all. But it took me a really long time to see it.”

That ambivalence eventually led Ressler to corporate America and the work that fills “Executive Order.”

“I had this idea,” she says. “What would happen if I photograph the wealthy and powerful?”

When she was finished in Los Angeles, Ressler got a job teaching at Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, and that led to a faculty position in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Purdue University in Indiana, where she taught photography from 1981 to 2004.

Like a lot of people, especially artists, Ressler was in love with New Mexico and wanted to return. She also came to realize that a master’s in fine arts would help her advance in academia. So she strung together some leaves of absence and came back to UNM for an MFA. Ressler had always shot with a small 35-millimeter camera and most of her photos were taken without the use of a tripod or a flash. When she returned to UNM, digital photography was beginning to take hold.

Ressler was suspicious of the quality of digital and resisted making the transition. (She didn’t start shooting digital until the 2000s.)

But she was open to experimenting in other ways and using other tools.

She created a series called “Missed Representations” during her MFA. She took photographs of women from “Women’s Wear Daily” magazine and photographs of famous masterwork paintings that featured women and created collages, and then photographed them. In addition to those colorful mash-ups, some of which hang in Ressler’s home today, she also used video cameras to take screen captures, pieced those in with still images and photographed those.

She completed her MFA in 1986, penning a dissertation on combat photographer Robert Capa.

While exploring new technologies in her second stint in graduate school, she was also exploring New Mexico and finding the area around Taos especially captivating.

Ressler bought property there and today, retired from Purdue and a full-time New Mexican, she lives with her tabby Fiona in a house in Upper Des Montes outside of the village of Arroyo Seco.

It is minimal but warm, and filled with light from windows that frame views of mountains and mesas.

Her commute to work is quick—a short walk across the driveway to the studio where she is in the process of organizing a career’s worth of prints and negatives and digital collections while continuing to pursue new projects. She shoots today with a small Panasonic Lumix, a Micro Four-Thirds camera that allows her to work unobtrusively.

Recently returned from three weeks in Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan, Ressler is researching indigenous Buddhist communities for a return trip to focus on isolated communities and traditions.

Putting together “Executive Order” gave Ressler an opportunity to review some of her earliest work, and she was surprised to find forgotten and never-

printed images—and to see familiar images in a new light with the benefit of age and experience.

“I started going through boxes of work discovering pictures I didn’t even remember I had taken. It was an amazing experience.

I had hundreds and hundreds of images.

Some of them I had rejected and some of them I just didn’t see how interesting they were. Sometimes you get so much insight into things after time has gone by.”

Although she never had a big-name New York art career and became represented by a major gallery only a few years ago, Ressler looks around the work displayed in her studio with satisfaction.

“I’ve had a full career,” she says.

“I’ve done so many kinds of work which has really been about humanity and sometimes social commentary about issues that I think are important and I often find disturbing. The Canadian Indian work, the corporate work—it’s all the same thread. I love photographing the humanity of people.” ❂

Executive Order: Images of 1970s Corporate America is available at amazon.com

Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (’96 BFA, ’14 MA)

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“At A Very Important Crossroads” Business grad takes over USA Gymnastics at critical time

By Benjamin Gleisser

Kerry Perry (’86 BA, ’91 MBA)

Kerry Perry (far left) with the U.S. Rhythmic Gymnastics National Team and Caroline Hunt, senior director of rhythmic gymnastics. Photo: USA Gymnastics/Tom Connor

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W

hen Kerry Perry (’86 BA, ’91 MBA) was named the new president and CEO of USA Gymnastics last December, she knew she was accepting a role that would test her. But she welcomed the challenge of helping to heal an organization that had been rocked by scandal.

USA Gymnastics, the national governing body for the sport that represents more than 200,000 athletes, instructors, administrators and club members, was reeling from the revelation that Lawrence Nassar, a doctor of osteopathic medicine who worked at Michigan State University, and also volunteered at USA Gymnastics for almost 20 years, sexually abused young women under the guise of medical treatment. Among those alleging abuse were Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas and McKayla Maroney.

Nassar pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on child pornography charges, and another 40 to 175 years on criminal sexual conduct charges. A total of 156 survivors, including some Olympic gymnasts, testified in open court during Nassar’s sentencing hearing. Their stories of betrayal were raw and emotional and captivated news coverage and social media for weeks.

The scandal led to the resignation of the CEO of USA Gymnastics. And under threat from the United States Olympic Committee that the organization would be stripped of its standing as a governing body if all board members did not quit—its entire board of directors resigned.

The fallout has continued to reverberate. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun resigned and an independent body, the U.S. Center for Safe Sports, was formed to adjudicate sexual abuse cases. At Michigan State, its president resigned and the school agreed to a historic $500 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by 332 women.

Amid all the turmoil, Perry, who was serving as vice president of business development at Learfield Communications, which manages multimedia rights for collegiate sports entities, was recruited to take over the troubled organization.

“I felt compelled to take this opportunity because I saw an organization at a very important crossroads,” says Perry, who has always been a fan of gymnastics.

“Because of my educational background, my outlook and the skill set I bring to the position, I knew I could make a difference,” Perry said from her office in Indianapolis. “Many organizations today are facing lots of challenges, and I want people to look at USA Gymnastics down the road and say, ‘That organization got it right.’”

The business and communications veteran knows she has challenges ahead as she works to rebuild trust and ensure USA Gymnastics fosters a safe environment.

Reflecting on a famous quote from Eleanor Roosevelt—“A woman is like a tea bag—you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water”—Perry says, “It’s a great quote, and it’s very similar to my situation.”

Positive Change

Perry’s chief duty is to develop USA Gymnastics’ strategic direction, with a focus on transforming the organization’s culture. She and her staff of more than 60 oversee day-to-day operations: implementing safety initiatives, monitoring athlete and competitive programs, membership, staffing, marketing, event operations, communications and revenue generation. She will also serve as a USA Gymnastics representative to the USOC, the International Gymnastics Federation and other organizations.

“My job is to ensure our culture here is highly empowering, by making sure everyone feels like they have a voice and are part of the positive change forward,” she says. “I want us to hold ourselves to the highest standard of care.”

Since taking the post, Perry’s mission has been two-fold: she has been examining USA Gymnastics’ organizational structure, systems, policies and staffing to make sure it is poised to meet its mission and goals and move forward into a new era in which it regains the trust of all constituents.

She has also been crisscrossing the country, meeting with gymnastics clubs, parents and athletes to reassure them that USA Gymnastics aims to provide the best services and programs to its members.

“We’re making sure athletes understand that we’re their advocates,” Perry says. “We’re doing a number of things in the area of athlete safety, like creating a task force to examine policies and procedures, making reporting of abuse easier, incorporating best-in-class education that aims to prevent sexual abuse and other forms of misconduct, amending bylaws to reflect the highest standards of care and establishing the Athlete Assistance Fund through the National Gymnastics Foundation for victims of sexual abuse to help pay for counseling services. But mostly, I spend a lot of time listening, trying to help people understand that our goal is to empower our members.”

In these meetings, she says she has found people­—especially parents of children

in USA Gymnastics programs—are very receptive to the changes it is making.

“People in the gymnastics community are very engaged,” she says. “They have such a love of the sport, and they want to be part of our progress. I listen to the athletes, coaches and parents, and I’m welcomed with lots of great ideas.”

She has also met with abuse survivors, and plans to keep reaching out to those who want their voices to be heard.

“It’s an incredibly important effort that we will continue to do,” she says. “I feel honored to represent all of our incredible athletes, which include the survivors and all those athletes who want to achieve their dreams for tomorrow. They all compel me to hold our organization to the highest standards possible.”

As Perry does her job, she uses the voices of abused gymnasts to guide her.

“I want to apologize to all who were harmed by the horrific acts of Larry Nassar,” Perry said at a Congressional hearing into sexual abuse in Olympic sports in May. “I was in the courtroom to listen to the incredibly courageous women explain in vivid and painful detail the damage he did to their lives. Their voices will not be forgotten. I commit to you that I will keep their words and experiences at the core of every decision I make every day as the leader of this organization. Their stories have broken my heart but they’ve also strengthened my resolve. Let there be no mistake; those days are over.”

Mark McCreary, chief administrative officer for USA Gymnastics, believes the group has the right leader.

“Kerry’s leadership skills are invaluable for guiding our organization forward,” he says. “She has been impressive in her ability to understand the business of an Olympic sport governing body that is a membership organization, which is different than most organizations, and in handling major decisions and tasks that had to be addressed immediately after her arrival. She has had a clear vision for our future since Day One and

is steadily moving us toward a culture of empowerment at all levels.”

Leadership Roles

Perry says her professional life was partly shaped by strong role models she had while growing up in Indianapolis. She particularly admires her grandparents, because of the adversity they overcame in their lives.

“My grandparents grew up during the Depression,” she remembers. “My grandfather on my mother’s side was separated from his siblings and placed with different relatives because his parents couldn’t afford to raise all their children.

Yet he became successful later in life, and he and my grandmother were married more than 70 years.”

She also studied Abraham Lincoln. “He was faced with the most challenging times, when our country was at a crossroads, but he took them on,” she says. “I’ve always been attracted to individuals who take on insurmountable odds. I’ve learned a lot from people like that.”

Perry enjoyed playing volleyball and softball and has been an avid runner since high school, where she was also a cheerleader. She received an academic scholarship to the University of New Mexico, where she studied business and communications, earning a BA with honors in Communication and Marketing, and an MBA with an emphasis in Marketing and International Management from the Anderson School of Management.

“The campus impressed me, and the administration made me feel welcomed during orientation,” she remembers.

“I knew attending the school would be a positive experience.”

She credits Professor Emeritus George C. Hozier Jr., an Anderson School instructor, with helping her navigate her career path.

“He was very empowering, and very supportive of his students,” she says. “He encouraged us to think for ourselves, to look at the world in a way that would take us out of our comfort zones. And he gave us a lot of practical real-world experience that (continued on page 35)

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Bending Border Lines Ceramic vessels created by Jami Porter Lara (’13 BFA) carry thousands of years of migration history

By Leslie Linthicum

Photos: Roberto E. Rosales (’96 BFA, ’14 MA)

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O

nce you see one of artist Jami Porter Lara’s black ceramic pieces, you may never look at a plastic water bottle in the same way.

She calls her sculptures simply “vessels” and uses ancient pueblo pottery techniques to mold them from clay she digs out of an arroyo. Coiled clay, rounded and smoothed by hand, is cooked to 1,200 degrees in a backyard fire pit and emerges blackened and luminescent.

What do the vessels hold?

The span of human history and migration along what is now the border between the United States and Mexico, according to Porter Lara, whose inspiration for the vessels came from a trip to southern Arizona and the Casa Grandes region of Chihuahua, Mexico, while she was a student at the University of New Mexico.

During a trip to the border in 2011 as part of the Land Arts of the American West field program, students camped near Douglas, Ariz., and Porter Lara spent a lot of time walking along the international boundary, marked in that area by a vehicle barrier, and taking note of the signs of human migration—piles of large empty plastic water bottles, many held in burlap slings.

The group then crossed into Mexico, visiting the Paquime archaeological site and studying ancient pottery techniques with Graciela and Hector Gallegos in the town of Mata Ortiz.

“I was there for one week and I learned the techniques that I use now,” Porter Lara says. “I learned how to forage clay and build with coils and burnish with the stone and to fire in a pit.”

And as important as the technique, she also formed the concept of what would become her first major project and put her work in museums, galleries and collector’s homes.

Finding potsherds on the ground— the broken remains of puebloans’ water vessels—and seeing maps of the Chaco Meridien that recognized no border between the pueblo settlements of what is now Mexico and those in what is now the United States, sparked an interest in exploring cultural connections and the iconography of the plastic water bottle.

“I started to think about the continuity of the culture that had inhabited that area,” Porter Lara says. “This is a place of thousands of years of continuity. And flow. And there’s been movement for all of this time. It goes north and south and backwards and forwards. And despite this militarized attempt to cut it off, it keeps moving. It can’t be stopped. It was in that context that I started to think about the plastic bottle as a contemporary artifact.”

When she returned to UNM, Porter Lara had the framework for the vessel project and she started to bridge the past and present by coaxing clay coils into iterations of water bottles.

“I knew I wanted to struggle with the difficulty of object making and see how much can an object hold,” Porter Lara says.

“What can it contain? And I realized it can hold a lot. This project felt very potent.”

Birth of an artist

Porter Lara’s path to art school was a bit like a coil of clay.

The daughter of an FBI agent father and a social activist mother, Porter Lara was born in Spokane, Wash., and moved around until settling in Albuquerque after her parents’ divorce.

“I was not an artistic kid who was the star in high school art class,” Porter Lara says. But when she was in college at the University of Massachusetts majoring in feminist ethics she took two drawing classes.

“That was just a really transformative experience,” she says. “It’s not like I went in and felt like, ‘Oh I found myself.’ It was really laborious, but it was really about determination and, I guess, desire. I just really wanted to do it and I felt free because there were no expectations that I would be good at it.”

After leaving college one honors thesis short of a degree, she worked as a pastry chef, an advocate on behalf of affordable energy and a software developer. She and her now wife, Kathy Brown, quit their jobs and traveled around the world for more than a year, and Porter Lara made illustrated journals of their trips.

When they returned to Albuquerque, they bought a lot in the Duranes neighborhood and built a small straw bale home, which, with its soft lines and bountiful gardens, is a work of art in itself.

“Once we’d built it and we paid it off and we had no mortgage, there was this moment where we asked, ’What do you want to do?’ There was this great freedom.

That was the moment when I decided that I wanted to go back to school to get a BFA.” That was eight years ago. Since enrolling at UNM in 2010 and graduating with her

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She has built fine arts degree in 2013, Porter Lara has had the kind of success that most artists only dream of.

Her thesis show was well received and led to acceptance into a Harwood Arts Center program for emerging artists, which connected her to a gallery owner.

Her first show sold out on opening night and people started talking about Porter Lara’s vessels.

When curators at the National Museum of Women in the Arts were looking for a contemporary artist to pair with a show featuring famed San Ildefonso Pueblo potter Maria Martinez and Southwestern photographer Laura Gilpin in 2016, they contacted Porter Lara.

In 2017, the Washington, D.C., museum opened “New Ground”—the Martinez/ Gilpin exhibit—paired with “Border Crossing,” Porter Lara’s vessels show.

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In introducing her work, curators wrote, “Conceptual artist Jami Porter Lara explores connections between ideas that are typically set at odds: nature and artifice, art and trash, and past and present. Her works urge viewers to rethink these divisions by combining processes of the past with iconography of the present day.”

Porter Lara was four years out of art school with a solo show of her first major work, an experience she calls “amazing.”

“It was very fast,” she says. And it led to a cascade of opportunities.

She has shown in practically every New Mexico museum, including a show at the New Mexico Museum of Art in the heady company of Bruce Naumann, Agnes Martin and Sol Lewitt. She also had a show at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles and was part

a neon sign that, in pink, flashes between “witness” and “whiteness”...

of a vessels show at the Peters Project Gallery in Santa Fe (where she is represented) that included works by

Jeff Koons, Ken Price and Robert Mapplethorpe. Her vessels were also featured in a solo show, “In Situ,” at the Peters gallery.

Molding ideas into objects

While Porter Lara is known as a ceramicist because of her vessels, she thinks of herself as a conceptual artist.

Her intellectual approach is partly just who she is and partly formed by her time at UNM. “There were definitely some formative experiences when I was in school that made me understand things about the kind of artist I wanted to be. It was really the art historians who were the most influential for me.” She cites professors Kirsten Buick, Mary Tsiongas and Ligia Bouton as influences.

Connected to her straw bale house by a pathway through the gardens is a handbuilt modest studio, sheathed in pallet wood, where Porter Lara spends her days forming vessels of varying shapes and sizes, all connected in some way to an ancient

past and the modern water bottle. Porter Lara sketches out design ideas on a dry erase board in the studio.

“In the plastic bottle you see a lot of ancient symbols,” she says. “The bottom is a pentagram. The top is the spiral.”

Porter Lara is still making vessels every day and her studio is filled with chalky-colored vessels that are drying so they can be burnished with stone or shiny brown vessels that have been burnished and are awaiting a turn in the firing pit.

But there is also evidence of Porter Lara’s newest avenue of inquiry—racial identity—specifically that of white women.

She has built a neon sign that, in white, flashes between “witness” and “whiteness” and she is printing flowery, ornate flour sacks.

Porter Lara’s father is second-generation Mexican American. Her mother is white and Porter Lara grew up with her mother’s mother, “who was a vocal racist, who also taught me how to bake, which is an important part of my life.”

Part of the project is a personal exploration of that mixed identity, but it is also an exploration of white racial identity in general and specifically among women.

“Part of the project that I’m working on has to do with really interrogating the role of white women and mothers and the domestic sphere in the reproduction of white dominance,” she says. “I’m particularly interested in white women because I think there’s this preoccupation with innocence, this idea that we are innocent and fragile.”

Part of the project will be constructing a lace body armor made of porcelain, a ceramic that appears fragile but is actually as hard as granite or a knife blade.

As with her vessels, Porter Lara hopes her witness/whiteness project challenges the people who experience it to see beyond the object.

“For me it’s always concept first,” she says. “It’s about how the idea intersects with the medium.” ❂

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A Taxing Challenge

United Way’s man on Capitol Hill tries to rescue charitable deduction

Photos by Aaron Sweet (’15 BA)

By Leslie Linthicum

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F

orty years have passed since Steve Taylor (’87 BA, ’92 JD) graduated from Sandia High School in Albuquerque, and it’s probably safe to say none of his fellow Matadors would have picked him as the guy in the class to be roaming the halls of the United States Capitol and taking meetings with members of Congress.

Taylor would have been the first to laugh at the idea.

“I did not have a plan when I graduated from high school,” Taylor says. “I worked at a gas station. I did construction. I worked in an auto parts store. I worked in an air conditioning supply warehouse. I didn’t have a plan to go to college. I have to say that I’ve probably had a journey that not many people would’ve predicted.”

After a couple years working those jobs, Taylor decided he had better give college a try if he wanted something more.

“Lucky for me,” he says, “UNM was there.”

He only lasted one semester, driven out by a lack of maturity and the difficulty of juggling work and school. But by the time Taylor was 20 he was ready to come back, and that time it stuck.

He joined a fraternity—FIJI—and found his way into Philip Roeder’s Soviet policy course and discovered a love for political science.

“I don’t think I appreciated at the time that UNM is a nationally recognized major research university, with all of the resources and reputation that any other university of that stature would have,” Taylor says today.

“I was just this Albuquerque boy who went there because it was there. And I pursued political science because it was just really interesting to me, not because I thought that I would ever get to work in the field.

I just really loved it.”

Taylor is speaking from “inside the Beltway,” that high-powered zone that is the center of politics in this country.

His title is senior vice president and counsel for public policy for United Way Worldwide, the world’s largest privately funded non-profit.

United Way is in 1,800 communities across the country—and the world—and along with the Red Cross is probably the best-known charity. It serves more than 61 million people a year through funding programs targeted toward education, health and income inequality.

United Way relies on charitable giving from millions of individual Americans and corporations. It partners with a coalition of charitable organizations, government agencies, businesses and other entities to meet community needs.

As its point person on Capitol Hill, Taylor is always monitoring proposed legislation that could help or hurt United Way’s mission, especially changes to the income tax code.

Lately Taylor has been sounding the alarm about what he calls an unintended consequence of the federal tax code overhaul passed late last year.

Until the end of 2017, the roughly 30 percent of people who itemize their taxes

likely that far fewer people—only about 10 percent—will itemize their taxes.

That means that the same $500 donation to charity will be taxed for most people.

Someone in the 20 percent tax bracket would be out $600 on a $500 donation.

“Philanthropy in America has been built on this really democratic idea of millions of middle-class people making donations to the charity of their choice,” Taylor says. “They will still give. Americans are incredibly generous and nobody who’s worked on this has said that middle-class Americans will stop giving to charity. But because they’re being taxed on the money they’re donating, they’re just going to give a little bit less. Not all of them. But if some people give a little bit less and you’re talking about millions of people, that is actually billions of dollars in reduced charitable giving.”

Taylor has been interviewed on national television and in newspapers about the change. And behind the scenes he has been

...“UNM is a nationally recognized major research university, with all of the resources and reputation that any other university of that stature would have”... were able to deduct donations to charities. That meant, for example, if you made a $500 donation to United Way or any other charity, your taxable income would be reduced by $500 and you would effectively be out of pocket $500.

“That strikes us as a pretty fair thing,” Taylor says. “We don’t think anybody who gives money to charity should have to pay tax on that money.”

The new tax bill preserves that charitable deduction, but other changes make it

lobbying for a provision that would create a special deduction for people who don’t itemize their taxes that will allow them to take a charitable deduction.

United Way is a non-partisan organization and Taylor has members on both sides of the aisle interested in backing the fix.

And it actually could encourage more giving among the 100 million people who prior to 2018 didn’t itemize their taxes.

“The thing that is really astounding,” Taylor says, “is that Americans give out of (continued on page 37)

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WOLFSTOCK

PEACE, LOVE & LOBOS! UNM HOMECOMING WEEK 2018 ACTIVITIES RUN FROM SEPT. 24 THROUGH SEPT. 29.

Updates to the schedule of events, merchandise orders, and registration details and deadlines can be found at UNMAlumni.com/homecoming.

ALL WEEK

Community Service Project – The UNM Homecoming Committee will collect pet food, supplies, and toys to support the UNM Staff Council Happy Tails Drive Monday through Friday, 8 p.m to 5 p.m., at Hodgin Hall Alumni Center. immerman Library Tower Tour – Z Each guided behind-the-scenes tour is limited to 10 people. Register soon at Zimmerman-tower-tours.eventbrite.com

tudent Activities – Check Lobospirit.

S unm.edu for details on student events during Homecoming Week.

NM Bookstores – Homecoming U specials all week at all locations. See store or Bookstore.unm.edu for hours and details.

Support Homecoming Week by joining the Alumni Homecoming Club at UNMFund.org/fund/alumnihomecoming-club.

MONDAY, SEPT. 24 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.

ampus Sculpture Tour – Meet at C Hodgin Hall Alumni Center.

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. Peace, Love and Puppies – Southwest Canine Corps of Volunteers in the Cactus Garden west of Zimmerman Library.

4 p.m. - 6 p.m. Latin@/Hispan@ Alumni – Lobos en Comunidad Homecoming Social, Canvas Artistry, 3120 Central Ave. SE. 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. Veteran Chapter Happy Hour – Bombs Away Beer Company, 9801 Acoma Road SE. 5:30 p.m. - 7 p.m. Professor Chris Duval on the biogeography of cannabis at Hodgin Hall Alumni Center. Reception at 5:30; lecture at 6:00 p.m.

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5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Lobo Women’s Resource Center & Women’s Studies invite Lobo women for pizza and pints at Bow & Arrow Brewing Co., 608 McKnight Ave. NW. Family friendly event.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 25 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. Picnic on the Plaza – Enjoy a green chile cheeseburger lunch on the new Smith Plaza. $5/person, pay at the door.

11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. Staff Council Ice Cream Social at Picnic on the Plaza.

4 p.m. - 6 p.m. Rainbow Alumni Happy Hour – The Soch – get details from LGTBQ Resource Center – 505-277-LGBT (5428) 5 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Architecture & Planning – Tour the newest (Farris Engineering) and oldest (Hodgin Hall Alumni Center) campus buildings. Building tours followed by a happy hour reception at Hodgin Hall.

5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Young Alumni Happy Hour – Canteen Brewhouse, 2381 Aztec Road NE. 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Native American Alumni Happy Hour – Bow & Arrow Brewing Co., 608 McKnight Ave. NW. 5:30 p.m. - 8 p.m. Daily Lobo Alumni and Student Productions Alumni Happy Hour – Dialogue Brewing, 1501 1st St. NW. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 26 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology “Hidden Collections” Tour – RSVP to mhermans@unm.edu.

Noon - 2 p.m. 2nd Annual Diversity Lecture at Hodgin Hall.

5 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Men’s Soccer Tailgate – Hosted

by Global Education Office and UNM Alumni Association, UNM Soccer Stadium.

5:30 p.m. - 8 p.m.

Office of the Medical Investigator Tour – RSVP required.

1 p.m. - 4 p.m. Alumni Lettermen Tailgate – Lettermen’s Lounge.

7 p.m.

1 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Homecoming Tailgate – Everyone is welcome at the biggest tailgate event at Dreamstyle Stadium. Alums and members of UNM Lobo Club, UNM Athletics, Anderson School of Management and Native American Studies are invited to gather under the large Homecoming Tailgate tent.

NM Volleyball vs. UNLV – U Johnson Center.

THURSDAY, SEPT. 27 1 p.m. - 3 p.m. HSC Homecoming – Peace, Love and Lobo Fun on Fitz Plaza.

3:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m. Tamarind Institute & Art Museum Tour 5 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.

Art Museum Reception with Arif Khan and Mary Statzer. RSVP to tamarind@unm.edu.

5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. College of Nursing Alumni and Clinical Educators Awards Reception – Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, 2401 12th St. NW. 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Lobo Living Room: Science of Beer – by the UNM Chemistry Department and Professor of Civil Engineering Mark C. Stone at the SUB Taproom.

6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. 80 Years of the Art Annex and Mattox Sculpture Center – Graduate Art Association reception at the Mattox Sculpture Center, 1524 Copper Ave NE.

2 p.m. - 4 p.m. School of Pharmacy Reunions – Classes of 1993 and 2008 at the Domenici Center, Room 3740.

2 p.m. - 4 p.m. Men’s Soccer vs Florida International, UNM Soccer Stadium.

4 p.m.

omecoming Game: UNM vs. Liberty – H Dreamstyle Stadium. Discount tickets for alumni and guests, $15/person. Purchase through UNMAlumni.com/homecoming.

For more information about events, updates to the Homecoming 2018 schedule, RSVP and ticket information, please visit UNMAlumni.com/homecoming or call 505-277-5808.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 28 10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. Heritage Club Brunch honoring the Class of 1968 followed by campus tour. $25/ person at Hodgin Hall Alumni Center.

12 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Black Alumni Living Legends and Trailblazer Awards – SUB Ballroom.

3 p.m. - 5 p.m. College of Education – Open House and current research projects by CCRCE, TAGs and STARS programs at Travelstead Hall.

5:30 p.m. - 9 p.m. Diner en Rouge – Rock your best red outfit and bring your favorite dinner and table decorations. $25/person at the Karen Abraham Courtyard.

Boxed Dinners available for purchase.

Reservations required.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 29 9 a.m. - 11 p.m. The All University Breakfast – Presentation of the Zia, Lobo and Inspirational Young Alumnus awards at the Doubletree by Hilton. $25/ person. RSVP required.

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. “Chaco Canyon” lecture in Anthropology Room 103.

11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Honors Alumni Chapter Reception featuring Distinguished Alumni Awards and Scribendi Silent Auction at Honors Forum.

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John Brown Docks at A New Port New Alumni Association president hopes to spread enthusiasm

By Leslie Linthicum

• John is the second Brown sibling to serve on the Alumni Association board of directors. His sister, Amy Boule (’68 BA, ’84 MBA), was a member for six years.

• Brown’s wife, Julienne, used to own a New Mexico foods company called The Brown Adobe that manufactured and sold salsas, posole mixes and other New Mexican staples, in all 50 states and abroad.

•T he Browns’ youngest son completed his last three years of high school through a correspondence program while the family sailed around the Caribbean.

•B rown won the Alumni Association’s Erna S. Fergusson Award in 2011.

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Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (’96 BFA, ’14 MA)

A

t 67, John Brown (’72 BBA) is on his third career.

The first, lasting several decades, involved high-level corporate finance and private equity on the East Coast. Fancy suits. Cushy boardrooms. International travel.

The second was a seven-year gadabout in the Caribbean on a 54-foot sloop named the Dulcinea. Boat shoes. Sunglasses. Immense amounts of fun.

His third act combines a little of both business and fun. He is founder and executive chairman of the board of Silent Falcon UAS, an Albuquerque startup that designs and manufactures solar-powered unmanned aircraft.

Silent Falcon’s mission is dead serious. The 16-person company aims for a big chunk of the market in drone usage for surveillance, mapping, product monitoring and disaster relief. But, like island hopping on a sailboat, running a company built around silently soaring carbon-fiber aircraft also delivers its share of whimsy and adventure.

As Brown tours Silent Falcon’s manufacturing facility and offices, which are tucked in between two mobile home parks on Albuquerque’s Southeast side, he can barely control his enthusiasm

about the venture that pulled him out of semi-retirement.

“It takes off with a catapult launcher and lands with a parachute,” Brown says.

“You’ve really got to see it. It’s really exciting.”

And then there’s Brown’s other venture— serving as the new president of the UNM Alumni Association.

Call it Career 3.5.

While it will only last a year, Brown is jumping in with the same enthusiasm that made careers No.1 through No. 3 such successes.

A graduate of the Anderson School of Management, Brown taught an entrepreneurial finance course and teamtaught in the Executive MBA program after he returned to Albuquerque at the end of his finance and sailing adventures. And he served on the Anderson Foundation board for a decade.

“I was very active in all things Anderson,” Brown says. But, he admits, he had little contact with the rest of the University.

“I suspect I was like a lot of UNM alums,” he says. “I had kind of lost touch with UNM.” Since joining the Alumni Association board and serving on its executive committee, Brown has begun to get

reacquainted with the campus and its breadth of programs. One of his top priorities as president over the next year is to spread that gospel.

“There’s a lot of cool stuff going on at UNM!” he says. “The more I learn about UNM the more I’m impressed by it.”

Brown landed at UNM as a freshman after an unusual high school trajectory.

Born in Albuquerque and mostly raised there, he enrolled in the Catholic seminary as a teenager and was shipped off to the Midwest. “I came to the conclusion that was not my calling,” Brown says.

He returned to Albuquerque and finished high school at Highland. “I was not the coolest guy in high school,” Brown says. He enrolled at UNM without a firm idea of what he would study, but he found two things that gave focus to his four years at UNM: business school and Sigma Chi. After graduation, Brown went to the University of Michigan for his MBA in finance and then he ventured off to New York City. It was the early 1970s and Brown found work in finance, managing long-term investments for some large companies.

He also met his future wife there on a blind date. The details are still seared into Brown’s memory: “At the corner of Sixth Avenue and 49th Street, July 17, 1974— at noon.”

Brown and Julienne married and moved to Long Island, where they began sailing and bought their first boat. It became a pastime that would come to define the family down the road.

Brown was recruited in 1981 to Philadelphia Capital Advisors and then became a founder and partner in Philadelphia First Group, a private equity and corporate finance advisory firm.

“All of my partners had about four more zeroes on their net worth than me, maybe five, and 20 years seniority. They were all these captains of industry,” Brown says.

“I got the most incredible education from those guys.”

The move to Philadelphia also meant new sailing opportunities, and the Browns moved their boat to Chesapeake Bay. Beginning in 1993, Brown joined what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers in a

new investment-banking subsidiary.

As chief operating officer, partner and managing director, he participated in hundreds of mergers, acquisitions and private equity transactions.

“That was just an unbelievably fantastic experience,” says Brown. “Just spectacular.

Then Enron happened.”

In 2000, in the wake of the Enron financial scandal, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a new regulation that would prohibit large public accounting firms from also being involved in investment banking. Rather than fight it, Brown took a leave of absence and spent a year sailing with his family in the Bahamas.

After a year anchoring off sandy islands, a new career was born. “That was my boat bum career,” Brown says. With Dulcinea, the family’s 54-foot sailboat, the Browns decided to sail to Trinidad and island hop.

They did it for seven years, riding out hurricane season back in Albuquerque each year.

Brown had turned 50 and he wasn’t retired, just refocusing.

“It was a terrific, terrific life,” he says.

In 2003, the couple anchored the boat and returned to Albuquerque, where Brown became a partner in Sandia Capital and, in 2008, became CFO of Bye Energy, a precursor to Silent Falcon.

Brown has stepped down as CEO of Silent Falcon but maintains an active role as board chairman. And he is digging into his role as Alumni Association board president.

Brown attended UNM on an ROTC scholarship and he is passionate about the Alumni Association’s role in helping students bridge the financial gaps that might lead to dropping out.

“For a lot of students, the difference between them staying and leaving is $500 or $1,000,” Brown says. The Alumni Association awards nearly $40,000 a year in scholarships and Brown wants to increase that pool by encouraging greater alumni donations.

His other role will be to bring his natural enthusiasm to cheerleading for his alma mater, which isn’t a stretch for Brown.

“It’s a terrific university with fabulous programs,” he says. ❂

Julianna M. Silva (’89 BBA), Albuquerque, is a member of Family Friendly New Mexico’s Business Leadership Council.

1990s L. Stephine Poston (’90 BBA), Sandia Pueblo, received a 2018 Hall of Fame Award from the UNM Anderson School of Management.

Sheila M. Mendez (’91 BBA), Rio Rancho, N.M., received a 2018 Hall of Fame Award from the UNM Anderson School of Management.

Nate Morris (’91 BUS), Albuquerque, is the girl’s basketball head coach at Santa Fe High School.

Maria O’Brien (’91 JD), a shareholder with Modrall Sperling, was recognized by Chambers USA in its 2018 legal rankings for New Mexico in the Environment, Natural Resources & Regulated Industries practice area.

Maria O’Brien Anthony D. Trujillo (’91 BBA), Albuquerque, was honored with a UNM Anderson School of Management 2018 Hall of Fame award.

Wes Wright (’91 MBA), San Diego, has been appointed chief technology officer at Imprivata, a health care IT security company.

He previously served as chief technology officer at Sutter Health.

Deana M. Bennett (’92 BA, ’94 MA, ’07 JD), a shareholder with Modrall Sperling, was recognized

by Chambers USA in its 2018 legal rankings for New Mexico in the Native American Law practice area.

Van J. Billops (’92 BBA), Deana Bennett Rio Rancho, N.M., is a tax professional at REDW Stanley Financial Advisors LLC. Stan Harris (’93 JD), an attorney and shareholder at Modrall Sperling, has been named to the firm’s Executive Committee.

Michelle Hernandez (’93, B.A.), an attorney and shareholder at Modrall Sperling, has been named chair of the 2019 International Association of Defense Counsel Convention.

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The Mind/Body Connection Holistic training—and lots of coffee talk—fuel UNM cross-country and track and field success

By Leslie Linthicum Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (’96 BFA, ’14 MA)

Joe Franklin

U

niversity of New Mexico runners are fast. How fast?

At the 2017 NCAA Division 1 Cross Country Championships, the Lobo women ran to their second national title in three years and their eighth-straight Top-10 performance—the longest active streak in NCAA history.

Ednah Kurgat notched a record for the six-kilometer race at the NCAA Championships, running the course in 19 minutes, 19.42 seconds.

Josh Kerr swept NCAA titles in the mile run and 1,500-meter run at the 2017 NCAA Indoor and Outdoor championships, bringing his NCAA titles to three. He also set a collegiate 1,500-meter record—3 minutes, 35.01 seconds, breaking a mark that had stood since 1981.

Joe Franklin, head coach of UNM’s six track, field and cross-country teams— (men’s and women’s cross-country, indoor track and field and outdoor

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track and field), knows his teams are in a great place. But like the middle distance runner he was at Purdue, he also knows there’s always another competitor breathing down your neck and ready to overtake you.

“The level of distance running and sprinting and jumping, it’s just gone crazy,” says Franklin, who has led UNM’s teams since 2007. “It just keeps getting better and better. And the expectation right now is there is no ceiling. The fastest times in the country just continue to accelerate.”

Much of UNM’s success on the track and cross-country course has built over time. As the program saw success, it attracted better athletes. And with better athletes came more success. That has been true among all six sports, but especially women’s cross-country and track and field.

“It’s organic and fluid and it kind of feeds off itself,” Franklin explains. “Right now,

the type of women who are considering UNM, five years ago they would have never considered us. We wouldn’t even have been in the conversation. Success builds on success. And now it’s an expectation.

It’s what we do.”

Franklin has coached 38 All-Americans, seven at Butler University in his home state of Indiana, where he coached from 1994 to 2007, and the rest at UNM. Thirty-one All-Americans in a little more than 10 years puts Franklin in rarefied company.

But you wouldn’t know it to talk to him or see him work.

He still runs to stay healthy (he survived acute myeloid leukemia in 2000) and to relieve stress and he’s comfortable in a uniform of running shorts and a T-shirt.

He relies on his iPhone instead of a stopwatch to time runners and his preferred method of coaching is long, easy conversations over a cup of coffee, not barked-out commands to go faster.

Deepesh K. Kholwadwala (’93 BSME), Albuquerque, president and CEO of Albuquerque-based Dreamcatcher and Sun Capital Hotels, was named chairman of the global board of directors for IHG Owners Association.

Phyllis P. Wilcox (’93 PhD), Albuquerque, received the University of New Mexico Alumni Association’s 2018 Bernard S. Rodey Award.

Josh Kerr

Ednah Kurgat

It was not a coaching style that Franklin was born with, but one he developed through trial and error.

“We’ve had some failures, that’s for sure. Disasters,” Franklin says. “We had some years where we had some pretty high expectations. And that was when I used to talk about winning, and that was wrong and it became a colossal failure. We were still good but they didn’t get near where they should have and that was my responsibility. I had Type A people and I added stress to them.”

Franklin’s approach to getting the best out of elite runners now is to understand personalities and apply a bit of psychology.

Track and field and cross-country athletes who choose UNM are smart, motivated and competitive, Franklin says.

“They’re Type A personalities who are incredibly driven,” he says. The disasters Franklin refers to were the result of adding expectations and stress to already driven young people—and throwing competitors together day in and day out at practice.

Put elite runners together to train, he says, and they race to win instead.

They over-run, go anaerobic when they should be staying in aerobic zones, beat their bodies up and get into each other’s heads.

He gives the example of three male runners who trained together with poor results. When he had them warm up and cool down together but work out separately in between, “they all ran massive lifetime bests.”

So Franklin and his associate and assistant coaches bring the chill.

“What we do very well is we relieve their stress,” Franklin says. “This is a release for them, it’s not another stress.

And we never talk about winning things.

We talk about getting in position to have a chance.”

Franklin’s team meetings before races tend to last a minute or two—“Remember your number. Remember your chip.

Be on time.”

He doesn’t call athletes into the office to talk. He takes them to coffee off campus.

And he and his coaches insist on recovery, including massage therapy, which Franklin calls his No. 1 tool, to keep athletes healthy.

“That is the No. 1 goal. And what I mean by healthy is minimizing bone issues, minimizing tendon issues, minimizing getting sick. Because if they’re healthy year after year they’re going to see incredible jumps in performance.”

Case in point is Alice Wright, who graduated in 2018, the only female to be a four-time All-American in the history of the sport.

“She was healthy for four years in a row. Never got hurt, never got sick at the wrong time. That in itself for a distance runner is huge.”

On that note, as the 2018 cross-country season looms this fall, Franklin likes his teams’ chances.

“If everybody stays healthy,” he says, “we’re in a position to do really well.” ❂

Ron Price (’94 MA), Farmington, N.M., recently published his first book, entitled, “PLAY NICE in Your Sandbox at Work.”

Stefanie Beninato (’95 PhD), presented “The Indian New Deal in the Southwest” as part of the Corrales Historical Society 2018 speaker series.

Bernadette M. Castillo (’95 BAED, ’97 MA), Lansing, Mich., received her PhD in Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education from Michigan State University.

Jennifer Kemp (’95 BA), Albuquerque, received her masters of science in Communication from Purdue University in August.

David M. Felberg (’96 MMU), Albuquerque, performed with his chamber-meetscontemporary music group, Chatter Sunday, at SITE Santa Fe. Gina Waymire (’96 MD), Albuquerque, is a pediatric hospitalist at Presbyterian Rust Medical Center.

Joel M. Carson, III (’97 JD), Roswell, N.M., serves as a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge. He is a founding partner of Carson Ryan LLC, an energy law firm serving southeastern New Mexico.

David J. Ley (’97 MS, ’01 PhD), Albuquerque, made an appearance on the “Dr. Phil” show to discuss what he referred to as “the myth of sex addiction.”

Robert T. Conley (’98 BSME), Albuquerque, was promoted to chief financial officer at Bridgers & Paxton Consulting Engineers.

William T. Mansfield (’98 BS, ’03 MD), Santa Fe, N.M., is a critical care cardiologist in the Intensive Care Unit at the Heart Hospital of New Mexico.

Joseph P. Peracchio (’98 BA), Pasadena, Calif., is on the writing team for ABC’s latest crime drama, “Deception.”

Gilbert A. Ramirez (’98 BA), Albuquerque, a licensed clinical social worker, was appointed deputy director for health programs at Albuquerque’s Department of Family and Community Services.

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U N M

PEOPLE

CH ANGING

WORL D S

Illuminating Injustice Endowed Professorship to Address Inequity from a Sociological Perspective

By Hilary Mayall Jetty

Maxine Baca Zinn

“The fascination of sociology lies in the fact that its perspective makes us see in a new light the very world in which we have lived all our lives.” This quote from the late Peter Berger, one of the luminaries in the field, greets visitors to the UNM Department of Sociology’s website.

This fascination ignited Maxine Baca Zinn’s lifelong explorations and inquiries. A Santa Fe native with Spanish

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and Mexican familial roots, Baca Zinn (’71MA) earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology at California State UniversityLong Beach. During her first week as a UNM graduate student in 1968, she met Peter Berger at a reception; she soon came to the realization that she was truly a sociologist.

I didn’t understand my place in society and why some people rejected me and others embraced me,” says Baca Zinn.

“I wanted to understand my parents and ancestors. I decided that sociology was the answer to all the important questions in the world.”

The recurring themes of Baca Zinn’s work center on issues of social inequality, especially for women, families and communities of color. Her scholarly pursuits led to new perspectives she shared as an acclaimed author, researcher and educator. A long-held desire to support UNM in a meaningful way inspired her to recently establish the first endowed professorship in sociology at the College of Arts and Sciences.

Baca Zinn appreciates the encouragement and mentoring she received at UNM. “It was a good time to be in sociology,” she says. “Universities were at the forefront of social change; our professors encouraged us to engage in social criticism using sociological research and theory. I was interested in looking at those who are marginalized in society.”

“My professors guided me to do good research,” she added, “and taught me the skills I needed to communicate well with students and the public. I only left UNM because there was no doctoral program.” Baca Zinn received her Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1978 and went on to a successful career in academia, eventually joining the sociology department at Michigan State University in 1990, where she was senior research associate at the Julian Samora Research Institute. Baca Zinn served as president of the Western Social Science Association and received the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the UNM Department of Sociology. Textbooks

Angie K. Schneider (’98 BA, ’01 JD), Alamogordo, N.M., a district court judge, was appointed to the Substitute Care Advisory Council, which examines policy, procedure and practices of the New Mexico Children, Youth & Families Department.

she created are also a vital part of many curricula.

Baca Zinn always thought she would return to UNM someday. Although she recently retired as professor emerita from Michigan State, and Boston is now her home, in a sense, this endowment fulfills that wish. “There are nationally known sociologists on the faculty at UNM,” she says, “and my hope is that this professorship will support more social inequalities research in this strong department.”

Sharon Erickson Nepstad, department chair of Sociology at UNM, noted that Baca Zinn’s priorities mesh with the department’s strengths. “At this moment, when our nation struggles to address issues of racism, poverty and sexism,” Nepstad says, “it is more important than ever to be teaching, researching and writing about these matters.

We are grateful that Dr. Baca Zinn recognizes our potential to contribute to a deeper understanding of the causes and consequences of social inequalities.”

UNM’s diverse student body also includes many first-generation and non-traditional students, and those in need of financial assistance.

“Student populations will become more like ours in years to come,” says College of Arts and Sciences Dean Mark Peceny, “because we are becoming a more ethnically and racially diverse nation, and our society is becoming more inequitable with each passing year. This professorship will help educate the next generations of scholars, public servants and community leaders dedicated to creating a more equitable society,

just as Dr. Baca Zinn has done in her own illustrious career.”

In another way, her gift also completes a circle—Baca Zinn’s parents attended UNM in the 1930s, but the Great Depression interrupted their studies; her husband, engineering/ graphics teacher Alan L. Zinn, is a UNM alumnus. Baca Zinn’s New Mexico roots inform her conviction that educational institutions are important arenas in which to struggle for social justice. “I am honored to be part of the UNM tradition,” she says, “doing work that can make for a better world.” ❂

“If you would like to support the UNM Department of Sociology or any program, scholarship, or research area at The University of

Melanie M. Archibeque (’99 BAA, ’02 MARCH), Albuquerque, is the executive director of facilities for Rio Rancho Public Schools.

David Correia (’99 BBA), Albuquerque, co-authored “The Police: A Field Guide,” a guidebook for activists.

Teresa K. Deras (’99 BUS), Albuquerque, is the fundraising coordinator for the New Mexico Wildlife Federation.

Sheri S. Milone (’99 MBA), Placitas, N.M., is the CEO of Lovelace Women’s Hospital, which has created a program to provide supportive care to women living with addictions during and after pregnancy.

Amy Pizarro (’91 BA), San José, Calif., is executive director of Happy Hollow Foundation, which supports Happy Hollow Park & Zoo. She is also the founder of the Pad Party, an annual fundraiser event that in Amy Pizarro four years has generated more than 133,000 pads and tampons, which are distributed to homeless women and teens in her community.

Rebekah Sanchez (’99 BA, ’17 MACCT), Rio Rancho, N.M., is a staff accounting for Nagel CPAs, LLC. She is also a volunteer with the local Volunteer Income Tax Assistance sites.

the UNM Foundation

Alesia M. Torres (’99 BBA), Albuquerque, director for applications in UNM’s Information Technology Department, was a New Mexico Technology Council 2018 Women in Technology winner.

at (505) 313-7600 or

2000s

New Mexico, please contact

visit UNMFund.org.”

Deanna Archuleta (’00 MA) was elected to the board of trustees of The Nature Conservancy in New Mexico.

Uyen T. Nguyen (’00 BSN), Albuquerque, is a co-owner of Coda Bakery.

Deanna Archuleta

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Shelf Life

Books by UNM Alumni

It is the 1940s and 1950s in the South Broadway neighborhood of Albuquerque, and the boy in these three dozen poems in More Musings of A Barrio Sack Boy (Lithic Press, 2017), is L. Luis Lopez (’85 PHD), now a professor emeritus at Colorado Mesa University. In simple language Lopez evokes a time when men were home from war and damaged, ladies rolled their hair in sardine can lids to get ready for church and the girls had a crush on the muscly ice delivery man.

“Poor bastard. What did he do to deserve this?” So begins Orchid of the Night (Mercury HeartLink, 2017), the award-winning thriller from J.S. Bodin (’98 PHD). Orchid moves deftly between murder scenes and arson, a judge with a secret and a mysterious orchid. Orchid of the Night won the 2017 New York City Big Award as “distinguished favorite” in LGBT fiction and the 2017 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award in LGBT fiction. The protagonist, Kyle, flees Maui after a threat on his life and moves to Tucson, where he assumes the identity of Tom Tanner, who cultivates orchids, becomes involved with an older woman and the local gay community and tries to heal from his troubled past. Bodin is also the author of Walking Fish, a novel, and Piggybacked, a volume of poetry.

Most people, unless they live in one, probably don’t give much thought to the history and meaning of trailer homes. But in Single Wide (Cornell University Press, 2017) Sonya Salamon and Katherine MacTavish (’90 BAED, ’95 MA), both academics in the Departments of Human Development and Family Studies, explore the meaning of the trailer park to some 12 million Americans, mostly poor and mostly rural. Studying 39 families—white, black and Hispanic—in three parks in Illinois, North Carolina and New Mexico, the authors expose the money trap many poor and working class families fall into as they reach for home ownership in the “mobile home industrial complex”: high costs of space rentals and utilities, poor construction and diminishing home values. They also explore the “trailer trash” slur and its effects on children who call a trailer park home.

How did indigenous people before and after the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica signify status and a sense of place in painting? In Constructing Power & Place in Mesoamerica: Pre Hispanic Paintings from Three Regions (University of New Mexico Press, 2017) edited

by Meredith Paxton (’68 BA, ’86 PHD) and Leticia Staines Cicero, text and images demonstrate how images on ceramics, textiles, manuscripts, buildings, and even bodies assert political power and social status. Paxton is a research associate in UNM’s Latin American and Iberian Institute.

The thriller genre these days often employs a female protagonist to lead us through murder, mystery and suspense. In Sin in the Big Easy (Post Hill Press, 2018) by Elizabeth McCourt (’76), the first installment of the Abby Callahan mystery series, Callahan is a prosecutor, not a cop, and she’s young. Just 27, Callahan decides to play detective when a client goes missing and girls keep turning up dead in a park in New Orleans, the novel’s title city. Callahan teams up with a friend, New Orleans

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native Jill Lejeune who is a freelance reporter, selling stories to The Times-Picayune. Callahan and Lejeune have a Millennial relationship and the dialogue is fresh and young. And like all good thrillers, the last few chapters reveal twists, turns and betrayal.

In 1966, Iris Keltz (’87 MA), an American Jew, leaves for a new life in Paris, then hitchhikes her way to East Jerusalem, the border of Israel and Jordan, to set foot in the Promised Land. But before she crosses into Israel and the walled city, she enters a shop and a young man in perfect English offers her tea. She falls in love with his best friend, marries and, as students of history of the region can predict, lives through the Six-Day War that is the nexus for conflicts that still rage today.

In Unexpected Bride in the Promised Land: Journeys in Palestine and Israel (Nighthawk Press, 2017), Keltz tells a uniquely personal story about Palestinian-Israeli relations. Her outlook is not political at first. She is a young bride getting to know a new family and a different culture. The mixed marriage lasts only three years and Keltz moves to Taos, where she marries a Jew, works as a teacher and raises a family.

With boundaries and attitudes always shifting in the region, she returns several times to Israel and the West Bank to visit family and learn more, always questioning the core of the conflict. “In the twentieth year of my life,” Keltz writes in conclusion, “I learned that the enemy of my people were friends. In the sixtieth year of my life, I believe more than ever there is no reason to fear ‘the other.’”

Santos “Champagne” Sanchez, the title character in The Fall and Rise of Champagne Sanchez (Floricanto Press, 2017) is a failed vendor of fireworks, burritos and vacuum cleaners. He has a mother-in-law who hates him. And now he’s pulled over by the cops at Rio Grande and Central and he’s going to prison for two years on a dope conviction.

Oh, and the briefcase full of cash he had has disappeared. Good thing his cousin, Adelita Chavez, a journalism student, is smart and hot on the trail of corruption. Filled with Burque color and barrio slang, this novel by Rudy J. Miera (’79 BAED, ’93 MA) is a lively addition to Albuquerque’s Chicano literature.

Teachers As Allies—Transformative Practices for Teaching DREAMERS & Undocumented Students (Teachers College Press, 2018) makes the case that teachers are often the sole adult outside their families that immigrant children are comfortable speaking to about their undocumented status. And, that teachers need to understand and support undocumented students and their families. Elaisa Sanchez Gosnell (’63 BA) is among several editors of this collection of academic papers on the topic. She, along with co-authors Eva K. Thorp and Sylvia Y. Sanchez, contribute a chapter titled, “Embracing Cultural Dilemmas,” in which they walk educators through the process of identifying and acting on the dilemmas that face teachers when how they approach a student or parents can have enormous impacts on a family. Other chapters address how teachers may interact with students’ fears of immigration raids or deportation and the importance of understanding and challenging stereotypes about immigrants.

Esteban A. Aguilar, Jr. (’02 BA, ’05 JD), Albuquerque, is Albuquerque city attorney.

Amanda R. Armenta (’02 BBA, ’03 MBA), Albuquerque, is a member of the Business Leadership Council for Family Friendly New Mexico.

“What do you mean by random?” was the question that spurred Thomas R. McFaul and Al Brunsting (’69 MA, ’73 PHD) to write God and Randomness (Wipf & Stock, 2017). At one level, it is simple to grasp: unpredictable events occur over which no one has control. But how do random events fit into the highly structured universe, with its laws of physics and scientific certainties? And how does God relate to this randomness? Brunsting, an optical physicist, engineer and son of a minister, last teamed with McFaul, a professor of comparative religion, in 2014 when they published God is Here To Stay: Science, Evolution, and Belief in God, in which they challenged the apparent incompatibility of modern science and belief in God. In this book, they argue that what we see as random events are God, acting with purpose in other dimensions not available to us.

The Sourwood Tree (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) by poet Jeanne Shannon (’83 MA) is about as simple as a narrative can be. Told in the musical, Southern voice of Anna May Osborne, from birth to death, this work of fiction brings to life the struggles and rewards of life in Appalachia in the 20th century. Shannon builds a sizzling tension between sweet descriptions of childhood in the country (“Charlotte and me used to play in the field and the woods, build dollhouses under the trees, paint our fingernails with pokeberry juice, and swing on the wild grape vines”) and the violence, tragedy and sexual secrets of Anna May’s life.

Michelle D. Dearholt (’02 BBA, ’07 MBA), Albuquerque, is a member of Family Friendly New Mexico’s Business Leadership Council.

(Miriam) Molly Fauth (’02 MD) was named the 2018 Oregon Family Doctor of the Year by the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians.

Joseph J. Fluder, III (’02 MS), Homer Glen, Ill., was promoted to chief executive officer at SWCA Environmental Consultants.

Victoria A. Sanders (’02 BSED), Keller, Texas, was named Secondary District Teacher of the Year in the Keller Independent School District.

Yvonne D. Garcia (’03 MBA), Albuquerque, is the director of operations and programs at New Mexico Health Connections.

Joshua L. Shainin (’03 BA, ’06 MBA), Albuquerque, is an audit associate at REDW LLC.

50 Years at The Pit (University of New Mexico Press, 2018) is too bulky to slip into a Christmas stocking, but it will no doubt be wrapped and tucked under many a Lobo sports fan’s tree this December. Written by Albuquerque sportswriter and editor Gary Herron and with a foreword by Hunter Greene (’89 BUS), this coffee table book is filled with the history of the iconic building, now officially named Dreamstyle Arena, and has loads of photos of important moments—wins and losses—as well as a collection of comments from former players about what the building meant to them. As Greene, a former member of the basketball team, says in his foreword, “I just wonder why it took so long for someone to come up with the great idea to commemorate such a unique venue full of energy, history, and excitement.”

Yvonne M. Feltman (’04 BUS), Austin, Texas, published “Your Pets Are Fine… and Other Lies: True Adventures in Pet Sitting.”

For Young Readers

Allie Moore (’04 BA), Albuquerque, has been named vice president of marketing for Keres Consulting, an American Indian-owned general consulting firm that primarily contracts with federal agencies.

In Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017), author Caroline Starr Rose (’96 BSED) allows 11-year-old Jasper to tell his adventure story his way—without proper grammar, but with heart and sadness and a yearning for escape. Their mother gone and their father in another foul and violent mood, Jasper and his older brother Mel are plotting to leave. “There’s too much sadness in this house. More ugliness than I can bear,” Jasper thinks. “How I itch to be anywhere else.” That anywhere else turns out to be part of Klondike Gold Rush, but Mel sets out alone. Jasper, not to be left behind, stows away on a steamer bound for Alaska, looking for his brother and a cache of gold worth millions.

The Riley of the title is One-Eyed Riley, and the boys encounter a cast of colorful and unsavory characters—and danger—as they chase Riley’s ghost.

ATTENTION PUBLISHED ALUMNI AUTHORS: We would like to add your book to the alumni library in Hodgin Hall and consider it for a review in Shelf Life. Please send an autographed copy to: Shelf Life, UNM Alumni Relations 1 UNM, MSC01-1160, Albuquerque, NM 87131

Will Fisher (’04 BA, ’13 MBA, ’15 MGTCP), Albuquerque, is the CEO of Farm Credit Family.

Andy Lim (’04 BBA), Albuquerque, was a keynote speaker at the 2018 Quality New Mexico Learning Summit at Isleta Resort & Casino.

Valerie N. Peyton (’04 Allie Moore BBA, ’06 MBA), Artesia, N.M., financial operations manager for Sandia National Laboratories, was recently named a 40 Under Forty by Albuquerque Business First.

Alexander A. Ukhanov (’04 PhD), Albuquerque, is the director of Actoprobe, a company that designs, manufactures and sells custom microscopes.

Naomi Bancroft-Moerman (’05 BS, ’14 MD), Albuquerque, is an emergency room physician at Presbyterian Hospital.

FALL 2018

33

“It’s not just about being able to write a check.

It’s being able to touch somebody’s life.”

– Oprah Winfrey

The UNM Foundation works with individuals, alumni, corporations, and foundations across the country to connect charitable giving to The University of New Mexico. Private giving supports scholarships, research, programs, facility improvements, and much more at UNM. With the help of donors like you, the University will continue to provide top tier education, research, and programs to students, faculty, and the community. At UNM, every gift can make a difference, every gift can change a world.

Whose World Will You Change?

Visit unmfund.org to make a gift today. @UNMFund

UNMFoundation

@UNMFund

505-313-7600

(continued from page 17)

helped prepare me for my first job before I received my degree.”

While in the MBA program, Hozier helped Perry secure an internship at Allstate Insurance headquarters.

As an undergraduate, Perry found another partner: Her husband, Rob (’86 BA), whom she met in a communication class. Rob went on to attend Whittier College School of Law in California, graduating in 1989 and earning his LLM from Emory University Law School in 1990. The couple recently celebrated their 27th anniversary and have two children.

After earning her MBA, Perry worked as a sales representative at Pitney Bowes, a business service firm specializing in postage meters and office equipment.

After several promotions, she was named executive director, a position she held for 11 years.

“In business, I’ve always gravitated toward leadership roles, working for empowering companies that have a strong culture that supports women,” she says.

Soon after the promotion, the company transferred her to Albuquerque, where a chance meeting with Hozier led to her joining the faculty of the Anderson School as an adjunct professor.

“I loved teaching,” Perry says.

“It was exciting to go back to classrooms and listen to students talk about the challenges facing them.”

She left UNM to found KP Sports, a sports media marketing company, which was later acquired by Learfield Communications. She joined USA Gymnastics in December 2017.

Asked where she sees herself 10 years from now, Perry pauses a few moments, then says, “Ten years from now, I’d like my children and family to say I was a good role model, wife, mother and human being, and I tried to affect everyone in a positive way.

“If I can get to that point, then I think I’ve lived a pretty good life.

I’m always motivated to be the best I can, and give others the opportunity to succeed.” ❂

Randy Brokeshoulder (’05 AASGS, ’12 BUS), Gallup, N.M., demonstrated doll carving from cottonwood roots at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe. Justine Dodge (’05 BA), Albuquerque, is a speech language pathologist at Los Alamos Medical Center.

Daniel B. Farley (’05 BBA, ’07 MACCT), Peralta, N.M., joined BPWC LLC as a senior tax manager. Farley also serves as the secretary/treasurer for the New Mexico Estate Planning Council.

Eric C. Robinson (’05 MWR, ’12 MD), Albuquerque, is a physician in the Emergency Department at Socorro General Hospital.

Trey Smith (’05 BA, ’08 MPA), Albuquerque, forensics director at East Mountain High School, was named the 2017-2018 New Mexico Educator of the Year by the Iowa-based National Speech & Debate Association.

Katie Wylie (’05 BA), Albuquerque, has been promoted to Early Childhood Program Director at Alta Mira Specialized Family Service.

Daniel M. Alsup (’06 BA, ’09 JD), a shareholder with Modrall Sperling, was recognized by Chambers USA in its 2018 legal rankings for New Mexico in the Corporate/Commercial practice area.

Daniel Alsup Mary J. Harner (’06 PhD), Kearney, Neb., co-directed and co-produced the documentary film “Life on the Gila.”

Christina Horton (’06 BAA, ’10 MARCH), Albuquerque, is an architect at VHGArchitects.

Lisa A. Huval (’06 MCRP), Albuquerque, is a deputy director in Albuquerque’s Department of Family and Community Services, overseeing housing and homelessness efforts.

Pilar M. Westell (’06 BBA), Placitas, N.M., is the owner of Zendo Coffee, which was recently named New Mexico’s most beautiful coffee shop by Architectural Digest.

Amy G. Williams (’06 MD), Santa Fe, N.M., is the first pediatrician hired by Presbyterian Healthcare Services in Santa Fe.

The arena for the 2017 U.S. Classic being readied for competition.

Photo: USA Gymnastics/John Cheng

Cassidy C. Zachary (’06 BA), Corrales, N.M., cohosted the podcast “Dressed: A History of Fashion,” which aired on the How Stuff Works network.

FALL 2018

35

SHOW YOUR PRIDE ON YOUR PLATE!

New Mexico motorists, get your Lobo license plate today! $25 from each plate is donated to the University.

INFO: www.unmalumni.com/license-plate

The University of New Mexico

Alumni Memorial Chapel A P L AC E TO C E L E B R AT E

ARE YOU A

LO BO? MAKE YOUR WEDDING HISTORIC

BEAUTIFUL NEW MEXICO LANDMARK NONDENOMINATIONAL LOCATED ON MAIN CAMPUS

505-277-5808 Visit www.unmalumni.com/chapel to take a virtual tour and book online

36

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

(continued from page 23)

their pocket $275 billion a year to charity.

And everyone in America should be proud of that. This is something that’s so good for our society. It encourages people to be engaged in their communities.”

For Taylor, who has been with United Way since 2007, faith in the mission was fueled by his own middle-class upbringing and all those jobs after high school.

“Oh, my gosh. Absolutely,” Taylor says.

“My mom and dad had some ups and downs. So when they were in a position to help me they did. There were times when they weren’t really in a position to help me. Mostly I was working my way through college and law school.”

United Way helps people mired in poverty and is also there for the families who are doing well but are just one financial setback—a blown transmission or a big medical bill—away from needing help.

“One of the interesting things about United Way’s donor base,” Taylor says, “is these middle-class donors who just give a couple hundred dollars a year.

During this last recession we had so many people who were donors and then suddenly they were needing services.

I guess I kind of lived the life where I’ve been in that situation.”

As senior vice president, Taylor commands a team of lobbyists and strategists. He spends time cultivating relationships and advocating for United Way policies by phone and email and also frequently makes the trip from his office in Alexandria, Va., to the Capitol to talk to representatives, senators and their staffs in person.

It’s a world familiar to Taylor, who got his first job out of UNM as a staff assistant to U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici. The job didn’t pay much and required long hours, but Taylor was in Washington, D.C., and learning from one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress.

“I feel like I got so lucky there,” Taylor says. “I don’t know that I fully appreciated

at the time just who I was working for as far as the level of influence that he had. But it was just a really great start for me. And that just kind of got me hooked.”

While he was in Washington he looked around at who was successful and it seemed that most of them were lawyers. It made sense for him to come back to UNM for law school.

After he graduated and was waiting to take the bar exam, Taylor added one more to his long list of job experiences.

He worked as a fragrance model spraying cologne on mall customers before he passed the bar and began to practice law.

The pull of politics was too much after a few years. He ended up back in D.C. with a plum assignment, staff counsel for a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a job he got when a member of the rugby team he played on recommended him. In 2005 he joined the staff of U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, as general counsel.

To blow off steam, Taylor still plays rugby in what is descriptively called the Old Boys Rugby League. He spends more time watching his son play the sport and has also spent a number of years as the leader of his daughter’s Girl Scout troop.

When he wants to feel grounded and understand the challenges that United Way meets, Taylor looks west, back to Albuquerque.

“I think the mission of United Way really is to improve people’s lives,” Taylor says. “And I honestly think that being from New Mexico really helps me see the whole universe of where the nonprofit sector fits into society and how different people benefit from it.

“The best thing for me is when I go on social media and I see what my oldest and best friends in New Mexico are thinking, people who I went to high school with who are still in Albuquerque. It really helps to keep me grounded in thinking outside the bubble that is Washington D.C.” ❂

Carlos A. Contreras (’07 BA, ’14 MPA), Albuquerque, is Albuquerque’s director of Innovation and Marketing.

Jenniffer L. Degreeff (’07 MEME), Albuquerque, was a New Mexico Technology Council 2018 Women in Technology winner.

Jamie Santistevan (’07 BS, ’12 MD), Albuquerque, is an emergency department physician at Presbyterian Hospital.

Seth S. Scott (’07 BAFA), Brooklyn, N.Y., created a video game called “Membrane,” which is available on the Nintendo Switch.

Daniel O. Trujillo (’07 BBA, ’08 MACCT), Albuquerque, received a Young Alumni Award from the UNM Anderson School of Management.

Jacquelyn D. Armer (’08 BBA, ’15 MBA), Albuquerque, joined the REDW LLC’s State & Local Tax practice.

Aja N. Brooks (’08 JD), Albuquerque, was the featured speaker at the 37th NAACP Hobbs Branch Banquet. She is currently employed as the statewide pro bono coordinator for New Mexico Legal Aid’s Volunteer Attorney Program.

Teresa C. Dovalpage (’08 PhD), Hobbs, N.M., released a mystery novel entitled, “Death Comes In Through The Kitchen.”

Jessica Jaramillo (’08 BA, ’12 MPA) is the director of Student Recruitment & Undergraduate Admissions at New Mexico Highlands University. She previously worked at UNM in Enrollment Management and in the the UNM School of Medicine’s Combined BA/MD Degree Program.

Laura M. Bellew (’09 NURCP), Albuquerque, is an acute nurse practitioner with Lovelace Medical Group’s hospitalist team.

Laura L. Burton (’09 MA, ’16 PhD), Rio Rancho, N.M., is the program manager for UNM West.

Antonio Flores (’09 MACCT, ’03 MBA), Albuquerque, has been promoted to manager of business software at REDW LLC. Christopher Hawthorn (’09 BA, ’14 MD), Albuquerque, is an emergency department physician at Presbyterian Kaseman Hospital.

Laura C. Rasmussen (’09 BA), Albuquerque, joined the Dion’s marketing team as content specialist.

FALL 2018

37

UNM ALUMNI ASSOCIATION AWARD WINNERS

Joyce M. Szabo, Carolyn Montoya, Kenneth Armijo, Kenneth B. Sapon, Robert Melendez and the Spragues

T

he Alumni Association is

Lobo Award

professional achievement or

Joyce M. Szabo (’83 PhD) Joyce M. Szabo, a Regents’ Professor of Art History, joined the faculty of UNM’s Department of Art and Art History in 1989. She specializes in Native American art and museum studies and her area of particular focus is Plains drawing and painting from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Szabo was curator of American Art at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Va., before returning to teaching in 1988. In addition to her faculty position in the department, she has published widely and is also an interim curator at the University Art Museum at UNM. Szabo was the William H. Morton Distinguished Fellow in Native American Studies at Dartmouth College in the fall of 2010 and the Gordon W. Russell Visiting Professor in Native American Studies, also at Dartmouth, during the summer of 2013.

dedication to the betterment of the

Zia Awards

University. The Zia Award honors

Carolyn Montoya (‘76 BSN ‘13 PhD) Carolyn Montoya has held many titles at the UNM College of Nursing since 1991, including professor, associate dean, director of the family and pediatric Nurse Practitioner programs, and Interim Dean from August 2017 to August 2018.

As president of the New Mexico Nurse Practitioner Council, she worked to achieve full prescriptive authority and independent practice for nurse

proud to announce the

recipients of our annual Lobo, Zia and Inspirational Young Alumnus awards. The 2018 recipients will be honored at the Alumni Association’s All University Breakfast beginning at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 29, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel. The public is invited to attend. Tickets are $25 per person and reservations are required. To purchase tickets, please go to unmalumni.com/ homecoming or call the Alumni Relations Office at 505-277-5808.

The Lobo Award honors a UNM graduate distinguished by

outstanding alumni who make their home in New Mexico. The Inspirational Young Alumnus Award honors emerging leaders, age 40 or younger, in community service or professional achievement.

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MIRAGE MAGAZINE

practitioners in New Mexico. She has served as president of both the American College of Nurse Practitioners and the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners. She also is on the U.S. Health and Human Services Rural Health Advisory Committee and has worked to develop academicpractice partnerships in rural and underserved settings.

Montoya was inducted as a fellow to the American Academy of Nurses in 2016.

Kenneth Armijo (’05 BA) Kenneth Armijo, a senior member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, is a problem solver. His research is focused on photovoltaics, distributed energy and concentrating solar thermal energy technologies.

Using engineering to push forward innovation in alternative energy and sustainability is an extension of Armijo’s childhood in Sabinal, N.M., where he learned to solve problems on the family chile farm.

Armijo graduated cum laude in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a minor in mathematics from UNM, and went on to earn a master’s degree and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the 2017 Principal Investigator Award from the New Mexico Small Business Assistantship for an automated PV container racking system. In 2016 he was honored as a New Mexico 40 Under 40 recipient.

Kenneth B. Sapon (’81 BS) Kenneth B. Sapon trained as a pharmacist, but the family business drew him in and he has worked at Champion Agency, the insurance company founded by his father, since 1979. He is now the president of the firm, which provides clients with life, disability and long-term care insurance and annuities.

He is an active supporter of UNM and a serious fan of Lobo Basketball.

In 2008, when Ken was recruited to join the UNM Anderson School of Management Foundation Board, he immediately agreed and served until 2014. “When I joined the Anderson Foundation Board, it was so that I could help grow the number of entrepreneurs that come out of UNM. I want to inspire risk-takers because we need more outside-of-the-box thinkers to grow our business environment,” he says.

He and his wife, Anne, who is also a Lobo, are also members of the UNM Foundation President’s Club.

Robert Melendez (’94 BS, ’96 MS, ’00 MD, ’08 MB) Robert Melendez, an ophthalmologist and partner with Eye Associates of New Mexico since 2004, is a cataract surgeon in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho. He also serves as a clinical assistant professor at the UNM Health Sciences. He just completed his term as president of the UNM School of Medicine Alumni Association.

Melendez earned his medical degree from the University of New Mexico in 2000 and completed his ophthalmology

residency training at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio, where he served as chief resident. Melendez helped start the Juliette RP Vision Foundation in honor of his mother who was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. The foundation raises funds for research grants and scholarships to help visually impaired college students.

Inspirational Young Alumnus Jesse Sprague (’13 BS) Jesse Sprague’s work centers on the earth and spatial data, and he is specifically interested in geomorphology and remote sensing.

Christopher Lippitt, associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, recognized Sprague as a star when he first taught him in an undergraduate course. He now chairs Sprague’s master’s thesis committee and predicts Sprague will lead New Mexico in geospatial technology.

“His work at the intersection of computer science and GI Science, coupled with entrepreneurial success and care for UNM and New Mexico at large, is a rare combination that I believe represents the very best of what UNM hopes for from its alumni,” Lippitt says.

While completing his Master of Science degree, Jesse founded Ibex Aegis Inc., a geospatial intelligence software delivering time sensitive decision support from remotely sensed data.

Jesse is an Eagle Scout and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and enjoys climbing mountains.

Jessica E. Snow (’09 PhD), Las Vegas, N.M., co-authored a research study published in the American Journal of Physiology about the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary hypertension. Snow, a vascular physiologist, is on the faculty at New Mexico Highlands University.

Jessica Snow

Randi N. Valverde (’09 JD), Santa Fe, N.M., was promoted to shareholder at the Montgomery & Andrews law firm.

2010s Roman E. Martinez (’10 BBA), El Paso, Texas, brought his Pure Joy Basketball Camp to the McDermott Athletic Center in Rio Rancho in January.

Amber R. Mayo (’10 BA, ’14 JD), Albuquerque, discussed the link between animal cruelty and domestic violence during a conference sponsored by the Navajo Nation Animal Control Program at the Navajo Museum in Window Rock, Ariz.

Kristen Rodriguez (’10 BBA, ’14 MACCT), Albuquerque, is a senior audit associate in REDW LLC’s audit and assurance department.

Matthew C. Sanchez (’10 MBA, ’10 JD), Albuquerque, received a Young Alumni Award from the UNM Anderson School of Management.

Derek C. Valdo (’10 BA), Albuquerque, a member of the Pueblo of Acoma, was appointed to the Notah Begay III Foundation board of directors.

Kristin N. Garcia (’11 BA), Albuquerque, is the development and membership manager at the National Hispanic Cultural Center Foundation.

Leslie K. Jiron (’11 BBA), Albuquerque, is the tax manager in REDW LLC’s tax department.

Jennifer E. Perez (’11 BM, ’15 MMU), Rio Rancho, N.M., was the featured soprano for the Los Alamos Symphony Orchestra performance at the Crossroads Bible Church in April.

Ian M. Alden (’12 BA, ’15 JD), Albuquerque, joined Giddens, Gatton & Jacobus, P.C., as an associate attorney.

FALL 2018

39

Alumni Events Calendar SEPTEMBER

8

SCHOOL OF PHARMACY

4th Annual Alumni Tea, Domenici Center, UNM, 2 p.m.

8

UNM FOOTBALL VS. WISCONSIN TAILGATE

Madison, 9 a.m. CST

8-9

DC CHAPTER CHILE ROAST & TACO PICNIC

Fortuitous Farms

12 CAREER SERVICES ENGINEERING & SCIENCE CAREER FAIR 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., SUB Ballrooms

13 CAREER SERVICES BUSINESS & ACCOUNTING CAREER FAIR

10 a.m. to 2 p.m., SUB Ballrooms

13 USS NM BELL REDEDICATION WITH NAVAL ROTC ALUMNI

25

Scholarship Dinner

13 NORCAL CHAPTER CHILE ROAST Chase Park at Moffett Field, Mountain View, Calif.

13 BLACK ALUMNI CHAPTER T.A.S.T.E. (TAKE A STUDENT TO EAT) 4 p.m., Hodgin Hall Alumni Center

OCTOBER 1 BLACK ALUMNI CHAPTER JOE LONG SCHOLARSHIP FUNDRAISER

Nexus Brewery, 4730 Pan American Fwy NE

6 ATLANTA CHAPTER CHILE ROAST Square Pub in Decatur Square, noon to 7 p.m.

11 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION TRAVEL

PROGRAM: YOUR PASSPORT TO THE WORLD RECEPTION

Embassy Suites

30 AMERICAN STUDIES ALUMNI &

STUDENT PANEL PRESENTATION

5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., Hodgin Hall Alumni Center

NOVEMBER 3

SAN DIEGO CHAPTER

8

CAREER SERVICES NETWORKING EVENT

9

VETERANS DAY CELEBRATION

UNM vs. SDSU Game Watch at SD Brewery

5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., SUB Ballrooms

UNM Alumni Memorial Chapel

30 LOBO LIVING ROOM – RARE TREASURES AND FINE WINE

Smith Plaza and Zimmerman Library, noon

13 LA TIERRA SAGRADA SOCIETY

CHOOL OF ENGINEERING S DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARDS

Zimmerman Library

DECEMBER

14

FALL COMMENCEMENT Dreamstyle Arena

8-20 STEM BOOMERANG SYMPOSIUM AND JOB FAIR FOR STEM ALUMNI

UNM SUB

FEBRUARY 3 UNM VALENCIA “SOUP R BOWL” FUNDRAISER

Student Community Center, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

7 UNM ALUMNI ASSOCIATION WINTER AWARDS BANQUET

CAREER SERVICES CAREER EXPO 14

UNM SUB Ballrooms

6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Hodgin Hall Alumni Center

22-24 DINNERS FOR 12 LOBOS

SAN DIEGO HAPPY HOUR AT STONE BREWERY

28

Liberty Station, 5:30 p.m.

28 AMERICAN STUDIES 75TH ANNIVERSARY

L AW SCHOOL DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS DINNER

19 19

23

CELEBRATION

Hodgin Hall Alumni Center

UNM SUB, 6 p.m.

SURGERY CLINICAL CONGRESS RECEPTION Boston

40

UNM’S 129TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION!

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Go to UNMAlumni.com for updated information on alumni activities and events. Events, dates and times are subject to change. You can also contact the Alumni Relations Office at 505-277-5808 or 800-258-6866 for additional information.

From Dana’s Desk

I

remember learning early on how to use an encyclopedia. Find the volume of the first letter that goes with your desired topic, open up, flip a bunch of pages and voila—about 500 words or so attempted to do justice to historical events and figures, animals and geographic reference points.

We are now in the 21st Century, so for inspiration for this column I turned to a popular search engine rhyming with “oogle” and asked for “interesting facts from the 60’s.” After all, in the spirit of Peace, Love & Lobos, it seemed only fitting to recall the decade that inspired the theme for this year’s Dana Allen Homecoming. As you may imagine, the results produced a wide spectrum of information: not only Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic speech, Nobel Peace Prize and untimely death, but also the debut of “Sesame Street” and the Cookie Monster. There are too many things in between to list them all, but it’s fair to say the variety was thought-provoking.

For this September’s lineup of Homecoming events, we too hope you’ll find something that motivates you to return and engage in ways that inspire you to think about how to promote your own means of peace and love among fellow Lobos. Homecoming offers numerous opportunities to reconnect with other alumni in groups both large and small.

There are tours, lectures and open houses designed to stimulate learning. And, of course, there is the opportunity to enjoy a traditional tailgate and football game, where you just might hear the band do a cover of “Give Peace a Chance” (released in 1969, according to “rhymes-with-oogle.”). And in this issue of Mirage, you’ll read about individuals who are working in their own ways to enhance unity, healing and improving the lives of others in traditional and unconventional ways. You’ll also get to know John Brown, your new Alumni Association president, who is definitely a cool dude. Naturally, we also had to reflect this era by asking Lobo Louie and Lucy to don headbands and bell-bottoms for their photo shoot as it was in the 60’s that spawned the early version of Louie.

As always, we want to make sure to keep you up to date on the latest hip, groovy and outta-sight news from UNM and your Alumni Association. If you haven’t updated your information with us recently, visit UNMalumni.com and take a moment to do so. And while you’re there, send us some news about the latest happenings in your life and share suggestions on what you think would be a way out idea for us to consider as a new event or program. We’ll probably answer with “Right on!”

Peace, Love and Lobos for Life,

Dana Allen

Vice President for Alumni Relations

Jared C. Collins (’12 BBA, ’14 MACCT), Albuquerque, has joined REDW LLC as a tax professional specializing in partnerships, S corporations and flow-through entities, primarily in commercial real estate.

Jennifer A. Kittleson (’12 MBA, ’17 JD), Albuquerque, is an associate at Modrall Sperling.

Jessica L. Kostelnick (’12 BFA) and her husband Seth S. Scott (’07 BAFA), Brooklyn, N.Y., run Perfect Hat, an art, gaming and music company.

Erin D. Muffoletto (’12 BA), Albuquerque, is the manager of external affairs at Comcast Cable Communications Group.

Nathan N. Nez (’12 CERT1, ’13 AAS), Albuquerque, had his minimalist paintings shown at LOOM Indigenous Art Gallery in Gallup, N.M. Adam G. Stramel (’12 MBA), Tesuque, N.M., is a commercial banker at New Mexico Bank & Trust, where he is responsible for relationship management, community involvement, portfolio management, credit analysis and assisting customers with loan selection.

Christina Tewa (’12 BA, ’14 MBA), Albuquerque, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, has been promoted to senior vice president for Keres Consulting, a Native American-owned general consulting firm.

Diego M. Gomez (’13 Christina Tewa BA), Albuquerque, showcased his play entitled, “Planeta Solitario” at the 2018 Linnell Festival of New Plays at UNM. Rachael A. Maestas (’13 BA), Albuquerque, is marketing coordinator and public information officer for the Albuquerque Economic Development Department.

Keith C. Mier (’13 JD), Albuquerque, is a shareholder with the Sutin, Thayer & Browne law firm.

Nicholas Trost (’13 JD), Albuquerque, is an attorney for the Parnall Law Firm, LLC. Jeremy A. Banik (’14 PhD), Albuquerque, received the 69th annual Arthur S. Flemming Award for the Applied Science and Engineering category from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.

FALL 2018

41

Alumni Network Snapshots from Alumni events

Annette Flores (’84 BSHE), left, and her twin sister Antoinette Quintana (’84 BSHE) join the Volunteer Thank You Reception on the Karen Abraham Patio.

Golden Grad Patricia Salisbury (’68 BSED, ’75 MA) dons the golden gown at the Golden Grad Bash.

Carey Tully, Sheyenne Lewis (’08 BSN) and Kimberly Gleason (’05 BFA) join the new UNM Native American Alumni Group in welcoming 2018 graduates at Bow & Arrow Brewery.

Eric Yorty (’18 BA) and John Petry celebrate at the Veteran Resource Center Graduation Banquet.

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MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Juan J. Fario Briceno (’15 BS, ’18 MS) celebrates his master’s in electrical and computer engineering and mater’s in optical science and engineering.

Professor Karl Karlstrom leads a group of geology alumni down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.

In Memoriam We remember alumni who recently passed away.

1930 - 1939 Rachel S. Apodaca Cunningham, ’38 Patricia Mills Smith, ’38 1940 - 1949 Helen C. (Comstock) Myers, ’40 William Vann Kastler, ’40 Mary H. Anthony, ’41 Priscilla V. Donaldson, ’43 Esther Pearl McBride, ’44 Beth Graves Morgan, ’44 Adela Mercedes Gallegos Padilla, ’44 Richard D. Strickland, ’44 Theodore T. Trujillo, ’44 William M. Webster, ’44 Floy Agnes Lee, ’45 James Gordon Brown, ’46 Charlemaud Curtis, ’46 Ruth Shirley Fransted, ’46 Maxine Rhien, ’47 George A. Arnot, ’48, ’51 William J. Cunningham, ’48, ’50 Ralph E. Dixon, ’48, ’56 Charles Joseph Metzler, ’48, ’49 La Verna Mae Pendleton, ’48 Geraldine A. Wallace, ’48 Eva-Lou Wellborn, ’48 James K. Culbertson, ’49 Ruby L. Meyer, ’49 Francisco D. Sanchez, ’49, ’59 Elwin Lewis Schaefer, ’49 Catherine Walters, ’49 1950 - 1959 Robert L. Borton, ’50, ’52 Carlos Martin Candelaria, ’50 Florabelle S. Coulloudon, ’50 H. C. Cox, ’50 Carl Edmund Ludlow, ’50 Patricia Grannis Pelto, ’50 David U. Rakestraw, ’50 Donald M. Stencil, ’50 Berna Deen Stephens, ’50 Robert F. Sylvanus, ’50 John W. Weatherford, ’50

Donald Lowell Zieglar, ’50 Donald Fogg, ’51 John J. Futterknecht, ’51 Paul Harris, ’51, ’52 Doyle R. Hinds, ’51, ’57, ’64 William O. Jordan, ’51 Priscilla Kremer, ’51 Jerry N. Levine, ’51 Wayne Edwin Nelson, ’51, ’70 Martin Harry Prince, ’51 Gordon M. French, ’52 Clark Benjamin Funk, ’52 Jacquelyn Gossard Terry, ’52 Walter W. Marshall, ’52, ’58 Bruce Allison Pieters, ’52 Barbara B. Richardson, ’52 Barbara G. Schunck, ’52 Aaron John Terrell, ’52 Alwyn L. Allott, ’53 Kenneth G. Boffin, ’53 Mary T. Caird, ’53, ’77 Charles B. Reynolds, ’53, ’54 William B. Richardson, ’53 Joseph B. Sarvis, ’53 Herbert Robert Spencer, ’53 Carol W. Whenry, ’53 Louis B. Coryell, ’54 Jo Margaret Farris, ’54 Richard Alan Higgins, ’54 Alan Dean Miller, ’54 George R. Shaffer, ’54 Norman S. Thayer, ’54, ’60 Joseph Barry Blythe, ’55 Paul D. Butt, ’55, ’59 Charles H. Kalbach, ’55 Daniel William Nachel, ’55 Allen T. Orgain, ’55, ’68 David L. Quinlan, ’55, ’61 Barbara A. Thompson, ’55 Harry Wugalter, ’55, ’64 Harry Milton Davidson, ’56, ’69 Thomas E. Davis, ’56 Michael Angelo Del Mastro, ’56 Bill Scott Eichert, ’56 Harlan C. Pannell, ’56 Karl J. Reinhardt, ’56

Katelyn J. Hart (’14 BA, ’17 JD), Corrales, N.M., is an associate for the Gallagher & Kennedy law firm.

Brandon M. Meyers (’14 BS), Albuquerque, has joined McCoy Leavitt Laskey LLC as an associate.

Vi T. Nguyen (’14 BA), Albuquerque, is a senior account manager at 3 Advertising, LLC. Ivonne A. Orozco Acosta (’14 BAED), Albuquerque, was named the 2018 New Mexico Teacher of the Year by the New Mexico Public Education Department.

Steven K. Purwin (’14 BBA), Albuquerque, was promoted to senior audit associate in REDW LLC’s audit and assurance department.

Randy R. Suazo (’14 AS), Ranchos de Taos, N.M., is a member of the Northern New Mexico Climate Change Corps.

Ernesto D. Watchman (’14 AAS), Gallup, N.M., gave a presentation at UNM-Gallup in support of the inclusion of a film and digital media program for the Gallup campus.

Caroline T. Graham (’15 BA), Albuquerque, showcased her play, “The Great Maverick Adventure of 2007,” at the 2018 Linnell Festival of New Plays at UNM. Django J. Lovett (’15 BA), Surrey, B.C., earned a bronze medal in the high jump at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia.

Irene Loy (’15 MFA), Ranchos de Taos, N.M., acted in “Mix and Match: Fools for Poetry,” an event held by the Society of the Muse of the Southwest.

Abran O. Madrid (’15 BA), Las Cruces, N.M., began the 23rd season of concerts at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church with his group, the Orlando Madrid Jazz Quartet.

Cole J. Schnoor (’15 BBA), Rio Rancho, N.M., has been promoted to Audit Associate II in REDW LLC’s audit and assurance department.

Shaandiin R. Tome (’15 BFA), Albuquerque, a Diné filmmaker, debuted her short film entitled, “Mud—Hashtl’ishnii” at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

Jessica L. Woodard (’15 MA), Albuquerque, is a primary literacy promoter in the Dominican Republic for the Peace Corps.

Austin M. Apodaca (’16 BLA) had private workouts with the National Football League’s New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills.

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In Memoriam Russell W. Scott, ’56 Robert Norton Smith, ’56 Pauline Hyder Zemke, ’56 Jim Grant Brown, ’57 William V. Cheek, ’57 Janet Ann Davies, ’57 Roger Miles Fryer, ’57 Lorna D. Holloway, ’57 Norman MacDonald Jordan, ’57 H. Eugene Myrick, ’57 Billy B. Patten, ’57 Phillip G. Sawdey, ’57 William F. Thorn, ’57 F. Mack Waller, ’57, ’72 Donald R. Kuehnert, ’58 Sharon J. Roth, ’58 Marjorie Rose Tapia, ’58 Norman Ball, ’59 Lewis Dale Caton, ’59 Walter A. Kincaid, ’59 Robert Francis Osborne, ’59, ’69 John W. Schultz, ’59 Flavio A. Valencia, ’59 1960 - 1969 Robert Michael Dorak, ’60, ’67 Raphael J. LaBauve, ’60 Kathy Morse, ’60 Kathleen Hall Rich, ’60 Thomas D. Roff, ’60 Georgia P. Snead, ’60 Benjamin K. Snow, ’60, ’61 Marjorie M. Steger, ’60 Harold Bram, ’61, ’63 William J. Cocke, ’61 Phyllis B. Helms, ’61 Darrell C. Kilman, ’61 Robert Dean Lozier, ’61 Charles McCormack, ’61 John Florer Morse, ’61 Jay W. Tuttle, ’61 Lucia C. Wilcox, ’61 Billy F. Marcott, ’62 Alan K. Miller, ’62 Terry R. Motteler, ’62 Patricia Anne Byrnes, ’63

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Arnold W. Loeckle, ’63 Allen Leonard Metzger, ’63 Donald J. Wellborn, ’63 Robert D. Deakin, ’64 Donald G. Eitzen, ’64, ’66 Pauline K. Kalich, ’64 Richard Edmund Phillips, ’64 Axel Kollner White, ’64 Lewis E. Jones, ’65, ’73 Andrew Lockhart, ’65 Blynn D. Shafer, ’65 Robert E. Dickson, ’66 Dennis H. Freshman, ’66 Barbara Bryan Hutchison, ’66 Oliver Allred, ’67, ’84 Cleopatra Campbell Anderson, ’67 Thomas G. Banks, ’67 Glen W. Belden, ’67 Sue E. Lancaster, ’67 Marilyn A. (Melville) Mann, ’67, ’72 Sarah E. Miles, ’67 Frank B. Rose, ’67 Burton J. Smith, ’67 Betty A. Stanford, ’67 Joseph George Welch, ’67 Larry D. Adcock, ’68, ’72, ’83 Niel H. Berg, ’68 Mick K. McLaughlin, ’68 Coral Diane Stupp Pierce, ’68 Richard Michael Rivers, ’68 Robert Lewis Squires, ’68, ’94 Helene Rae Vorce-Tish, ’68 Robert Emmett Whelan, ’68 Garry S. Brown, ’69 Mary Ellen Butler, ’69, ’91 Thomas L. Grisham, ’69, ’73 Peggy Jo Miller, ’69, ’83 Betty Cobey Senescu, ’69, ’77 1970 - 1979 James Dale Cramer, ’70 Jacqueline M. Guttmann, ’70, ’73, ’78 Patricia A. Urban, ’70 Donna L. Eisenhour-Hasenkamp, ’71 Kathleen Ann Mayer, ’71 Marjorie Madelene Moore, ’71

Marilyn F. Palmer, ’71 Patricia Anne Smith, ’71 James Curtis Thompson, ’71 Thomas E. Bahan, ’72 Donea Lynne Shane, ’72, ’74, ’86 Carol Lisa Smith, ’72, ’85 Paul L. H. Heine, ’73 Bernard James Rubin, ’73 Agustin B. Tafoya, ’73 Roy S. Whitson, ’73 Brian Patrick Willett, ’73, ’79 Janet G. Collins, ’74 Carey C. Hambleton, ’74 John Thomas McGuffin, ’74, ’85 Lynne A. Powell, ’74 Jo Day Cope, ’75, ’78 Alfred L. Padula, ’75 Gavin G. Pickett, ’75, ’83, ’92 Jeremiah J. Ring, ’75 Larry Patrick Abraham, ’76 Lynette L. Anderson, ’76 Angelique B. Brunt, ’76 William Larry Colvin, ’76 Peter D. Gilbert, ’76 Antoinette M. Johnson, ’76 Michael David Moore, ’76 John Carroll Pollak, ’76 James William Roupas, ’76 Michelle Anne Syroid, ’76 Roger Leslie Tyler, ’76 Darlis Ann Miller, ’77 Kenneth E. Parker, ’77 Timothy Michael Raftery, ’77, ’81 Randolph T. Shibata, ’77, ’83 Dorothy B. Wilson, ’77 Mary R. Darling, ’78 Carol Ruminski, ’78 David A. Bailey, ’79 Jeremy McDonald Brown, ’79, ’92 Donald Clayton Camp, ’79 Margaret Anne Harrington, ’79 1980 - 1989 Marvin Morrison Hoffman, ’80 Lillian Margie Solis, ’80 Polly Sue Fife Widner, ’80

In Memoriam Elizabeth Rose Bell, ’81 Steven Luther Carpenter, ’81, ’85 Katherine Ann Ganz, ’81 Gary Alan Grazier, ’81 Milton Glenn Lockhart, ’81 Matthew Vincent Trujillo, ’81 Warren Z. Buck, ’82 Darragh Callahan, ’82 James H. Decow, ’82 Martha Gayle Engebretsen, ’82 Pamela Lynn Emery Hilt, ’82 Robert J. McClelland, ’82 Richard B. Waite, ’82 Kevin Lee Bradshaw, ’83 Charlene Chavez, ’83, ’85 Charles Edward Digneo, ’83 Dawna C. Radtke, ’83 Hattie Wilson Dietzel, ’84 Catherine F. Mosman, ’84 Karen V. Pinto, ’84 Robert Loonan Saltzman, ’84, ’85 John Randall Tuttle, ’84 Horace L. Garcia, ’85 Daniel Jose Hernandez, ’85 John Howard, ’85, ’91 James Earl Lieuwen, ’85 Bonnie Raye Otto, ’85 Jerry Parkinson, ’85, ’01 Olga Pedroza, ’85 Regina Violet Chambers, ’86 Robert Eugene Copeland, ’86, ’95 Griffin Noyes Dodge, ’86

Zarek Michael Padilla, ’86 David William Steinbach, ’86, ’92 Margaret Eloise Colocho, ’87, ’90 Erma Jean Eddie, ’87 Amanda Rene Esquibel, ’87 John Damien Garcia, ’87 Atrelle H. Jones, ’87, ’93 Clo Mingo, ’87, ’92 Brent Allan Smith, ’87 Cynthia A. Cooper, ’88 Eva Ruth Jaggers Summers, ’88 John Drake Watson, ’88 Richard Anthony Palochak, ’89 Sharon Louise Robinson, ’89 1990 - 1999 Philip Lee Leatherwood, ’90 Urbano Zea IV ’91 Eric Jon Steele, ’90, ’92 Susan Bachin-Crowl, ’92 Henry A. Boehme, ’92, ’92 Robert Preston Hershberger, ’92 Laura Leanne Ness, ’92 Ruth E. Newey, ’92 Richard W. Sonntag, ’92, ’05 Ricardo M. Medina, ’94 Candace Anne Wauneka, ’94 Belinda Kay Cheatum, ’95 David Grife Vigil, ’96 Rita Vivian Avila Gallegos, ’98 Tobin Karl Walters, ’98, ’00 Kerri Rose Gedert, ’99 Jennifer Lee Riordan, ’99

Brenna J. Gaytan (’16 JD), Albuquerque, is government relations manager at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico.

Brianna J. Mortensen (’16 AA), Gallup, N.M., is an intern with the U.S. Department of State in the Bureau of Public Affairs as part of the International Media Engagement Program.

Michael A. Wright (’16 MCRP, ’17 PDCER), Albuquerque, is an urban planner for Sites Southwest.

Jason Beaulieu (’17 BSCE), Albuquerque, a former UNM men’s soccer goalkeeper, has signed to play for the Montreal Impact of Major League Soccer.

Felecia N. Cantwell (’17 JD), Rio Rancho, N.M., is an associate attorney at Butt Thornton & Baehr.

Joseph L. Divincenzo (’17 BBA), Rio Rancho, N.M., is staff accountant for Nagel CPAs, LLC. Melissa L. Ellis (’17 BA), Albuquerque, was the first Jewish winner of the Miss New Mexico title.

Raena C. Garcia (’17 BA), Albuquerque, is an Americorps VISTA volunteer for Rivers & Birds.

Dominic A. Martinez (’17 JD), Albuquerque, is an associate at the Modrall Sperling law firm.

Kathryn Ritter (’17 JD), Albuquerque, joined Miller Stratvert P.A. as an associate attorney.

Jake T. Rothschiller (’17 BLA), Albuquerque, a safety on the UNM football team, was honored with the Bill Brannin Most Valuable Player Trophy.

Jeffrey S. Slopek (’17 BSCM), Albuquerque, is a project manager for Klinger Constructors.

Bonnie S. Strange (’17 MLA), Albuquerque, is a landscape designer at FBT Architects/ Groundwork Studio.

Have a Good Howl Our monthly email newsletter, The Howler, keeps Lobos up-to-date with Alumni Association news and events, as well as additional alumni profiles not published in Mirage. You can read it online at UNMAlumni.com/howler or subscribe to

Michelle Timm (’17 JD), Albuquerque, is an associate attorney for Butt Thornton & Baehr.

Jason T. Sanders (’18 BA), Orange, Calif., a four-year placekicker for UNM, was selected by the Miami Dolphins in the seventh round of the NFL draft.

the email version by sending a request to alumni@unm.edu.

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In Memoriam 2000 - 2016 Rosemary G. Armijo, ’00 Joyce N. Bittinger, ’00 Vicente Rafael Sanchez, ’00 Eric Christopher Mora, ’01 Miranda Adeline Moss, ’02 Eric Paul Strayer, ’02 Jessica S. Christiansen, ’03 Janice Irene Grant, ’03 Matthew Brian Marquez, ’05 Emily Van Pham, ’06 Roland Art Sandoval, ’06 Lacy L. Houdek, ’07 Michael Kots, ’09 Lisa M. Jaramillo, ’10 Arlene M Nidel, ’12 Sacha Helene Washburn, ’13 Kendra Lynette Williams, ’13 Darnell Nicholas Daniels, ’14 Aaron E. Kenney, ’15

Daniel Douglas Warnock, ’15 Ella Evelyn Lederer, ’16 OTHER ALUMNI Ben James Agajanian Shirley Ann Burt Nancy Ake Cecil Geraldine Viola Chavez Marilyn Louise Coughlen Marywil H. Croson Linda G. Crowther Robert S. Culpepper Betty Denton Lena Pauline Erickson George W. Franklin James Joseph Gilligan John Ira Hull Edward L. Johnson Edith L. Larson Mary K. McAustin

Roland J. Montoya Eleanor Marie Huston Engstrom Mueller Roberta Ponto Mason C. Reddix Ralph R. Spengeman Jeffrey R. Terr Rojeanne M. Thomas Patti Jean Thompson Stephen B. Thorson Jane Taylor Wagers Willard R. Wight John P. Wilger Robert D. Wright David W. Zauel FACULTY AND STAFF Charles Gilbert "Gib" Richards Vera John-Steiner Mario A. Rivera Marta Weigle

Pack Your Bags The UNM Alumni Association gives Lobos with wanderlust the opportunity to continue their education by traveling the world through the Alumni Travel Program. With a number of unique trip opportunities in 2019—from Cuba to Cairo—the Alumni Travel Program sets you up for success by handling all the travel plans and arrangements for you while offering amazing discounts too.

To view Alumni Travel Program options and book, visit UNMAlumni.com/travel.

For questions, please call Kathie Scott at 505-277-9093.

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Discover Panama January 31 - February 8, 2019 Explore Panama by boat and land

The Charm Of The Amalfi Coast September 4-12, 2019 Sorrento, Positano, Pompei, Naples

Legends Of The Nile March 5-16, 2019 Cairo, Luxor, Nile River Cruise

Wines of the Pacific Northwest September 15-23, 2019 Portland/Vancouver to Spokane/Clarkston

Dutch Waterways April 10-18, 2019 Cruise Amsterdam To Antwerp

Timeless Cuba September 27 - October 5, 2019 Cruise from Miami to Cuba

Baltic and Scandinavian Ballads June 13-23, 2019 Cruise Stockholm to Copenhagen

Masterpiece Montage September 30 - October 11, 2019 Rome to Barcelona

75th Anniversary Of D-Day June 15-23, 2019 Normandy, Honfleur

Grand Danube October 7-21, 2019 Prague To Sofia

Canadian Rockies By Train August 8-16, 2019 Dramatic scenery

Kingdoms of Southeast Asia October 31 - November 19, 2019 Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos

My

ALUMNI STORY

I grew up in the small town of Socorro, N.M., where my family runs a Mexican restaurant. I had no idea of the career possibilities that lay ahead with a quality education and driven work ethic. Then I came to UNM and found a world of opportunity opened up to me. I graduated in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a minor in English.

®

My UNM story includes inspiration from professors, staff, family and fellow students who led me to learn that incredible opportunities are available in the world for those who believe that the sky is the limit.

I have worked in four major cities since graduating—Salt Lake City, Utah, Zurich, Switzerland, Philadelphia, and now Beverly Hills, Calif., where I am currently a retirement plan advisor. I get the great pleasure of working with companies as their financial advisor and motivating their teams to do what is necessary to retire comfortably with confidence and dignity.

I moved to Los Angeles in 2015 and a notice of a fall alumni event caught my eye. I went to a chile roast put on by the Los Angeles Chapter of the UNM Alumni Association, connected with fellow Lobos and got some freshly roasted green chile to take home. As soon as I saw all those Lobos gathered together, I said, “I want to be involved!” I’m now chapter president and in my role I get to meet UNM graduates living and working in the Los Angeles area and continue to be inspired by so many Lobos that have their own unique stories of opportunity and possibilities.

Volunteering at local college fairs to spread the good word about our University is an experience that I recommend any proud Lobo to give a try!

I’m a proud Lobo for life.

Michael Curry, ’09 BBA Stay in touch with your Alumni Association at UNMAlumni.com. Click on “Connect.”

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M A G A Z I N E

Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 1260 Liberty, MO 64068

The University of New Mexico Alumni Association MSC 01-1160 1 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001

Ariane Crummer grew up in Westchester County, New York, a commuter train ride from the biggest city in America. Then her family moved to sleepy Santa Fe. The shift was abrupt and the move across the country was hard for her, but it brought Crummer to the University of New Mexico in 2013. And it resulted in this quintessential New Mexico image, which was chosen as the 2018 Homecoming poster.

The photograph was taken in December 2014 when Crummer was headed north to spend her first Christmas in New Mexico with her family.

“The stormy skies around the Sandias that day began to open up and a rainbow appeared,” she says. “I had to stop on the side of I-25 to photograph this moment because it was not just a rare sight to see a full rainbow, but it also made me feel like I would eventually adjust to the move out here despite the hardships.”

Crummer is on track to receive her BFA in Art Studio with a focus in photography as well as a BA in psychology.

Signed limited edition (18 x 24 print): $45. Unsigned limited edition: $30. Order online at www.unmalumni.com/homecoming or by calling 505-277-5808.