UNM Signs MOA with Santa Fe Community College

UNM Pres­i­dent Bob Frank and SFCC Pres­i­dent Sheila Ortego

UNM Pres­i­dent Robert Frank and Santa Fe Com­mu­nity Col­lege Pres­i­dent Sheila Ortego signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment recently with Santa Fe Com­mu­nity Col­lege Higher Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter (HEC), a learn­ing dis­trict estab­lished by SFCC. Under the agree­ment “UNM shall offer, at its dis­cre­tion, courses facil­i­tated through the Extended Uni­ver­sity operation.”

The MOA reads, in part, “HEC wants to pro­vide facil­i­ties, ser­vices and resources to UNM and UNM’s stu­dents and per­son­nel and UNM wants to accept such facil­i­ties, ser­vices and resources.”

HEC will pro­vide com­puter lab­o­ra­to­ries and library facil­i­ties as well as test­ing and tutor­ing ser­vices at no cost to stu­dents. Text­books for the courses will be avail­able for pur­chase and resale at SFCC. UNM and SFCC HEC will coor­di­nate mar­ket­ing of courses.

Ortego said that the agree­ment allows UNM to have space at SFCC. Stu­dents can talk to advis­ers about courses of study, tak­ing UNM courses online, or plot­ting an aca­d­e­mic plan.

Tina Ludut­sky Tay­lor, the direc­tor of the SFCC’s Higher Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter, said, “Stu­dents can iden­tify a desired degree pro­gram early on. They can com­plete an associate’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in the most eco­nom­i­cal way with appro­pri­ate advise­ment.” She added, “The com­mu­nity wants spe­cific artic­u­la­tion agree­ments with UNM. They want UNM degree pro­grams to be made available.”

Ludut­sky Tay­lor said that stream­lin­ing the edu­ca­tional process for New Mex­ico stu­dents would also ben­e­fit the insti­tu­tions. “We all get to report faster com­ple­tion rates,” she said.

The next step is to estab­lish the agree­ments between the UNM’s and the SFCC HEC’s var­i­ous pro­grams and colleges.

Some UNM col­leges and pro­grams already have estab­lished ways for stu­dents to move through an associate’s pro­gram at a com­mu­nity col­lege into a bachelor’s pro­gram at UNM. Pres­i­dent Frank encour­aged Provost Chaouki Abdal­lah to take the nec­es­sary steps for suc­cess of the MOA, say­ing, “It’s prag­matic to do this.”

Jerry Dominguez, vice provost, Extended Uni­ver­sity, was instru­men­tal in devel­op­ing the MOA. He doesn’t want to stop at under­grad­u­ate degrees. “Engi­neer­ing and other grad­u­ate pro­grams are wanted, too,” he said.

Media Con­tact: Car­olyn Gon­za­les (505) 277‑5920; email: cgonzal@unm.edu