2011 Top 10 UNM General News Stories

Annu­ally, the Uni­ver­sity of New Mexico’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Mar­ket­ing Depart­ment (UCAM) releases its top-10 gen­eral news and research sto­ries at UNM. Below is this year’s gen­eral news list top-10 and the arti­cle UCAM pub­lished online rec­og­niz­ing the achievement.

1. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama announced that Yasamin Mostofi, assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the UNM Elec­tri­cal and Com­puter Engi­neer­ing depart­ment, was awarded the highly pres­ti­gious Pres­i­den­tial Early Career Award for Sci­en­tists and Engi­neers (PECASE). The White House press release stated, “the PECASE award is the high­est honor bestowed by the United States gov­ern­ment on sci­ence and engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sion­als in the early stages of their inde­pen­dent research careers.” http://news.unm.edu/?p=20143

2. Ursula Shep­herd has a pas­sion for help­ing stu­dents not only to suc­ceed aca­d­e­m­i­cally, but also to believe in them­selves and seize oppor­tu­ni­ties they never thought they’d have. Because of that pas­sion, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Shep­herd, Uni­ver­sity Hon­ors Pro­gram, Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico, is one of only four U.S. Pro­fes­sors of the Year. Spon­sored by the Coun­cil for Advance­ment and Sup­port of Edu­ca­tion and The Carnegie Foun­da­tion for the Advance­ment of Teach­ing, the award is the only national pro­gram to rec­og­nize excel­lence in under­grad­u­ate teach­ing and men­tor­ing. http://news.unm.edu/?p=22346

3. Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Regents Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy Dr. Mag­gie Werner-Washburne was hon­ored with the 2011 Dis­tin­guished Sci­en­tist Award by the Har­vard Foun­da­tion Fri­day, April 8 in Cam­bridge, Mass. The award rec­og­nizes inter­na­tion­ally noted sci­en­tists for their sci­en­tific achieve­ments and for pro­mot­ing and uphold­ing the stan­dards of sci­ences to improve and serve our diverse soci­ety. http://news.unm.edu/?p=12110

4. Law Pro­fes­sor Chris­tine Zuni Cruz received the 2010 Pin­cus Award, the most pres­ti­gious honor for a clin­i­cal law pro­fes­sor, at the 2011 annual meet­ing of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Law Schools in early Jan­u­ary. A mem­ber of the Isleta Pueblo, Zuni Cruz is founder and for­mer direc­tor of the UNM School of Law’s South­west Indian Law Clinic and serves as editor-in-chief of the Tribal Law Jour­nal, the only online aca­d­e­mic jour­nal that focuses on indige­nous tribal laws. http://news.unm.edu/?p=9539

5. In the largest sin­gle gift ever made to the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico by liv­ing indi­vid­u­als, Son­net and Ian McK­in­non have com­mit­ted $7.5 mil­lion to three UNM pro­grams. Projects at the Ander­son School of Man­age­ment, Uni­ver­sity Arena (“The Pit”) and the UNM Ten­nis Com­plex will ben­e­fit. Addi­tion­ally, an endow­ment will be estab­lished in honor of for­mer UNM Assis­tant Ten­nis Coach Loren Dils and cur­rent Ten­nis Coach Alan Dils. http://news.unm.edu/?p=17511

6. The Insti­tute for Mex­i­cans Abroad of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of Mex­ico, through the Mex­i­can Con­sulate in Albu­querque, is con­tribut­ing $50,000 for a schol­ar­ship fund to pro­vide 50 UNM stu­dents with $2,000 schol­ar­ships, in an agree­ment signed recently with the UNM Foun­da­tion. The objec­tive of the IME Schol­ar­ship Pro­gram is to pro­vide and improve higher edu­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties for Mex­i­can immi­grants and stu­dents from immi­grant fam­i­lies in the United States. The IME con­tri­bu­tion will be aug­mented by match­ing donor funds to allow 50 stu­dents to receive schol­ar­ships for the cur­rent and the spring 2012 semes­ters. http://news.unm.edu/?p=19852

7. UNM’S Divi­sion for Equity and Inclu­sion, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cen­ter for Edu­ca­tion Pol­icy Research, is the recip­i­ent of a four-year, $600,000 Lumina Latino Stu­dent Suc­cess Grant, as announced by the Lumina Foun­da­tion. http://news.unm.edu/?p=22018

8. Chair and Pro­fes­sor of Com­puter Sci­ence Stephanie For­rest received a $3.2 mil­lion grant from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to lead a team to develop resilient, auto­mated com­puter secu­rity sys­tems. The team, com­prised of com­puter sci­en­tists from Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia and UNM, is using com­pu­ta­tional analogs of bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion to develop soft­ware that auto­mat­i­cally repairs itself. http://news.unm.edu/?p=10746

9. UNM’S Sus­tain­abil­ity Stud­ies Pro­gram received a $1.5 mil­lion grant for an endowed chair in sus­tain­able envi­ron­men­tal food sys­tems and $150,000 in start-up funds from the W.K. Kel­logg Foun­da­tion. The endow­ment will sup­port edu­ca­tion that increases the well-being of stu­dents and cit­i­zens by advanc­ing envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence and social equity applied to the devel­op­ment of local food sys­tems. http://news.unm.edu/?p=12108

10. Recent efforts at UNM to focus on strate­gies that max­i­mize stu­dent suc­cess are begin­ning to pay off, as sug­gested by early enroll­ment num­bers for the fall semes­ter 2011. While over­all growth was mod­est, areas tar­geted in UNM’s smart growth strat­egy – upper divi­sion, grad­u­ate and online courses – saw sig­nif­i­cant growth. As of Mon­day, Aug. 22, the first day of fall classes, upper divi­sion credit hours increased by 4.2 per­cent and grad­u­ate credit hours by 4.6 per­cent. http://news.unm.edu/?p=18467