To achieve those goals, we’ll need to have the full involvement of the campus. Here’s the list of committees and a brief description of the charge of that committee.

• Institutional Policy Committee: recommend institutional level policies and procedures that relate to the general operation of the university. Recommend policy adjustments and new policies to the President and Board of Regents, not to include matters already negotiated in the respective collective bargaining agreements.
• Institutional Budget Committee: Review and advise the president on the creation of an annual budget in a multi-year planning context; maintain a highly transparent, informative, and participatory budgeting process; integrate campus strategic planning with the budgeting process; and analyze the budget context (e.g., state funding, environmental factors, etc.) and its impact on the institution.
• Strategic Planning Committee: chaired by Dr. Ian Williamson, guides the development and implementation plan (including the creation of measurable key performance indicators) of the institution’s next strategic plan.
• Strategic Enrollment Management Council: provide guidance and direction for student lifecycle and student experience to include the following: student recruitment and marketing, student success and retention, pricing and financial aid strategies, and academic program portfolio planning.
• Sustainability Committee: an existing committee, this group provides guidance related to institutional sustainability goals and efforts. A major component of these efforts is developing a plan and implementing a zero net carbon operations goal.
• Premier Hispanic Serving Institution Committee: promote strategies to maximize the student experience utilizing federal funding opportunities related to HU’s designation as a Hispanic Serving Institution.
• Native American, Non-Tribal Serving Institution Committee: identify and implement strategies that would enable the enrollment growth and student success of Native American students, to include applying for and achieving with distinction the federal status of Native American, Non-Tribal Serving Institution status. A related project will be the flying of Tribal Nations, Pueblos, and Land Grant entities flags in Centennial Park.
• President’s Council for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: an existing council, these efforts are focused on making gains in faculty, staff, and student’s experience in matters related to diversity, equity, and inclusion; to include campus climate surveys and community relationships.
• Institutional Accreditation Committee: guide the institution in maintaining and continuously improving institutional accreditation status with the Higher Learning Commission. Led by the ALO, this group monitors all aspects related to institutional accreditation, prepares the reports, and recommends institutional adjustments as required by the HLC.

If you’re interested in serving, you can submit your name to Carolina Martinez at carolina@nmhu.edu. The Faculty and Staff Senates will also be appointing members to these committees, so you can contact either Lauren Fath at lfath@nmhu.edu or Robert A. Anaya at raanaya@nmhu.edu.

• I’ve met with three Cabinet Secretaries including Transportation Secretary Rick Serna, HED Secretary Stephanie Rodriquez, and CYFD Secretary Teresa Casados. I was joined by Provost Gonzales, Dean Cesar, VP Lepre, Anna, and I agreed to stand up a professional training certificate for CYFD’s staff beginning this January. Due to the established Center of Excellence status that our Social Work program enjoys, we were able to quickly respond to a need for our state.
• I attended the NMHU soccer scrimmage on 8/16. While we did not win, it was a good start to our fall seasons. I know our co-athletic directors Shanna Halalilo and Jim Deisler have been working hard to support our athletic programs, and I was impressed with their focus on making athletics “intentional, collaborative, and consistent,” as they said during the Fall Sports preview:

I even got a chance to help some students on move-in day. Thanks to Kim Blea, Joe Dominguez, and the entire team over in housing! The residence halls are nearly full with 526 students living on campus.

• Juli Salman and her team have helped to set up a series of statewide meet the president events. Our first event was in Santa Fe last week and we have upcoming events in Farmington (9/26), Albuquerque (10/24), and Las Cruces (final date TBD, but looking like 11/3, one day before our men’s basketball game at NMSU). See the Foundation’s website for more information and other events, https://nmhufoundation.org/.
• Last week, I presented an update about the golf course to the San Miguel County Commission. As you may know, we currently partner with the city and the county to operate the Gene Torres Golf Course, with each partner contributing $60,000 per year. We’ve been exploring how to develop the vacant land around the course for potential residential and commercial use, which would support the operations of the golf course. We’ll do a presentation for the campus sometime this fall, and the initial study findings are very promising.
• Benito Pacheco and I took a trip to Santa Rosa and Tucumcari to discuss student recruitment and the possibility of partnering with Guadalupe County Hospital in Santa Rosa. Here’s a snapshot of me and Benito with Carl Marano, Superintendent of Tucumcari Public Schools:

• Our Foundation, our Alumni Association, and the H-Club are all enormous assets to NMHU. I hosted a dinner for board members from these groups at the president’s residence, and it was a pleasure to get to know them better.
• Here’s me presenting in front of the Legislative Land Grant Committee, who held a meeting up at NMHU this past week. They gave me a chance to speak about NMHU and, in turn, I got to learn about land grant issues in the state’s complex history:

• I’m learning about all the great programs we have here at NMHU–and one of them is the Ballen Visiting Scholar program. I got to the kickoff event on Monday, hosted by the Media Arts department, and spoke with the visiting artists Al Diaz and Izia Lindsay, who will be working with our students and faculty to paint a new mural over by the Trolley Barn:

• We held our first community forum of the semester over in Stu Clark on Tuesday 8/20, to introduce our new coaches to the community. It was well attended, and our Mayor David Romero and several city councilmen came by–we’ve named Mayor Romero our honorary captain for our first football game. We had a great conversation, and I’m looking forward to holding a variety of community forums on many different topics.
• I met with Melissa Sandoval from Las Vegas City Schools re-establishing recruitment, dual credit, shared facilities, and new opportunities.

• On Sunday, August 25 through the morning of Tuesday, August 27, I’ll be at the Council of University Presidents (CUP) retreat. CUP is a great organization that brings the 7 public university presidents in NM together to discuss important issues and strategize together about the future of higher education in New Mexico. Provost/VPAA Roxanne Gonzales and VPFA Stephanie Gonzales, and VP Gov Relations/Marketing David Lepre will be joining me for this.
• Our first football game is Thursday, August 29th, 6:00 PM at Sanchez Stadium here in Las Vegas. See you there!
• The ZUZU acrobats will be performing on Friday, September 6th in Ilfeld Auditorium.
• HU@theZoo is scheduled for Saturday, September 7th–see the Foundation website for more details https://nmhufoundation.org 

Congratulations to Dr. Melanie Zollner, Business, who was selected for the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) Faculty Fellowship Program for 2024-2025. Well done!

If you have an item or event you’d like to be featured here, please forward that to your relevant Vice President.

Respectfully,
Dr. Neil Woolf
President, New Mexico Highlands University