Rosemont Realty Partners with UNM, NMSU to Invest in Future Leaders for New Mexico

Rose­mont Realty CEO Dan Bur­rell met with New Mex­ico State Uni­ver­sity Pres­i­dent Bar­bara Cou­ture and Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Pres­i­dent David Schmidly in Albu­querque today to sign a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing out­lin­ing a part­ner­ship with the Rose­mont Lead­er­ship Insti­tute that will ben­e­fit New Mex­ico high school and col­lege students.

The Rose­mont Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, a Santa Fe-based non-profit orga­ni­za­tion founded by Bur­rell, is intended to increase the lead­er­ship capac­ity in New Mex­ico by bet­ter prepar­ing stu­dents to com­pete in the global mar­ket place. The institute’s goals include decreas­ing the high school drop out rate, increas­ing col­lege grad­u­a­tion rates and cre­at­ing grad­u­ates who are career ready.

“Sig­nif­i­cantly improv­ing high school grad­u­a­tion rates should be the num­ber one strate­gic goal of New Mex­ico over the next decade,” Bur­rell said. “With one third of the state’s high school stu­dents drop­ping out, New Mex­ico is strug­gling to real­ize its full eco­nomic poten­tial. That is why I am launch­ing Rose­mont Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, an inno­v­a­tive new pro­gram that in con­junc­tion with our state’s two largest uni­ver­si­ties, NMSU and UNM, will pro­vide excep­tional high school lead­ers from across New Mex­ico with the finan­cial resources, global aware­ness, and pro­fes­sional net­works required to suc­ceed in a com­pet­i­tive and knowledge-based economy.”

In one of his final acts as pres­i­dent at UNM, Schmidly said, “The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico is proud to become a part of this ini­tia­tive, along with the Rose­mont Lead­er­ship Insti­tute and New Mex­ico State Uni­ver­sity, designed to increase edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties, grad­u­a­tion rates and strengthen lead­er­ship among New Mex­ico stu­dents. Improv­ing our state’s edu­ca­tional ini­tia­tives as well as our state’s grad­u­a­tion rate is of para­mount impor­tance to the eco­nomic future of New Mex­ico. Our stu­dents and future lead­ers will ben­e­fit greatly through pub­lic and pri­vate part­ner­ships with orga­ni­za­tions like the Rose­mont Lead­er­ship Institute.”

NMSU Pres­i­dent Cou­ture con­curred, “Part­ner­ships between higher edu­ca­tion and lead­ing busi­nesses and cor­po­ra­tions in the pri­vate sec­tor are vital to grow­ing our econ­omy and pro­vid­ing future lead­ers who are equipped to deal with the ever-changing dynam­ics of soci­ety. Improv­ing grad­u­a­tion rates and strength­en­ing part­ner­ships for the eco­nomic devel­op­ment of New Mex­ico are among NMSU’s strate­gic pri­or­i­ties. The Rose­mont Lead­er­ship Insti­tute is a forward-thinking exam­ple of how pub­lic higher edu­ca­tion and the pri­vate busi­nesses through­out the state can work together. We are hon­ored to join UNM in this opportunity.”

The MOU estab­lishes a plan for NMSU and UNM to part­ner with the insti­tute, which will launch in sum­mer 2013 with its first class of 30 high school stu­dents, to be known as Rose­mont Fel­lows. The fel­lows will be selected by a joint com­mit­tee, with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from NMSU, UNM and Rosemont.

The sum­mer before their senior year of high school, the fel­lows will par­tic­i­pate in lead­er­ship train­ing ses­sions at both UNM and NMSU that will focus on crit­i­cal think­ing skills and lead­er­ship qual­i­ties. After return­ing to their com­mu­ni­ties through­out the state, the fel­lows also will work through lead­er­ship chal­lenges issued by the Rose­mont Institute.

Fol­low­ing their grad­u­a­tion from high school, the Rose­mont Fel­lows will receive a $25,000 schol­ar­ship to attend NMSU or UNM. The schol­ar­ship will be spread over four years and require the stu­dents to main­tain a 3.0 GPA, take at least one lead­er­ship course per year, belong to a stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion on cam­pus, par­tic­i­pate in a pro­gram to shadow a leader and men­tor high school stu­dents who are fol­low­ing them in the pro­gram. In addi­tion to their ini­tial $750,000 invest­ment for the first class of fel­lows, Rose­mont indi­cated that it is com­mit­ted to the pro­gram for the long term and will seek to grow the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants per year, which will result in mil­lions of dol­lars in schol­ar­ships for New Mexico’s future leaders.

Rose­mont Realty is a fully inte­grated mar­ket leader in com­mer­cial prop­erty acqui­si­tion and asset man­age­ment oper­at­ing in more than 28 states. The com­pany is head­quar­tered in Santa Fe with regional offices in Albu­querque, Hous­ton, Dal­las, San Anto­nio, Den­ver and Atlanta. Founded in 1991, Rosemont’s team has acquired more than 30 mil­lion square feet of com­mer­cial space in the U.S., deployed more than 900 mil­lion of investor equity, and com­pleted trans­ac­tions in excess of $3 bil­lion in gross real estate value.

UNM and NMSU are the two largest state pub­lic insti­tu­tions of higher edu­ca­tion, who between the two have more than 67,000 stu­dents statewide.

Media Con­tacts: NMSU, Julie Hughes, (575) 646‑1953; email: juhughes@nmsu.edu, UNM, Steve Carr, (505) 277‑1821; email: scarr@unm.edu or Rose­mont Realty, Javier Gon­za­les, (505) 670‑7495; email: jgonzales@rosemontrealty.com