UNM Works to Rebuild Parent’s Association

The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico is attempt­ing to breathe new life into a par­ent asso­ci­a­tion that was gasp­ing for its last breath.  After months of inter­nal strug­gles and mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Uni­ver­sity admin­is­tra­tors, the major­ity of the Board of the UNM Par­ent Asso­ci­a­tion quit as the fall semes­ter began.  The remain­ing hand­ful of board mem­bers called an emer­gency meet­ing to dis­band, but after talk­ing with UNM admin­is­tra­tors about con­cerns, decided instead to try to repop­u­late the board and revive the association.

Melissa Var­gas chief of staff for the provost, put out a call for par­ents on the association’s email list ask­ing for vol­un­teers who would be inter­ested in serv­ing on the board and received 14 responses.  The next step in the process will be to recon­sti­tute the board and get the par­ent asso­ci­a­tion up and going again.

“We believe par­ent vol­un­teers are a great asset to this Uni­ver­sity,” said Greg Heile­man, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the UNM Par­ent Asso­ci­a­tion and UNM asso­ciate provost for cur­ricu­lum.  “We are work­ing hard to pro­vide them the resources they need to reestab­lish the asso­ci­a­tion and to con­tinue to do valu­able fund-raising for stu­dent scholarships,”

For­mer UNM pres­i­dent David Schmidly’s wife, Janet worked with the UNM Par­ent Rela­tions Office to form the asso­ci­a­tion five years ago.  Maria Probasco became its first pres­i­dent. After Probasco’s term ended, the asso­ci­a­tion wanted to change the by-laws to allow the past pres­i­dent to remain on the board.  Probasco and the other dozen board mem­bers who resigned in mid August claimed the Uni­ver­sity did not rec­og­nize that by-law change, failed to fill a promised staff posi­tion and did not sup­port the association.

Uni­ver­sity admin­is­ters explained that the by-law change did not go before the Board of Regents, as is required, and thus could not be rec­og­nized.  The Uni­ver­sity had received more than 100 appli­ca­tions for the staff posi­tion, which was in process of being filled. Under the Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing with the Asso­ci­a­tion, UNM pro­vides account­ing, busi­ness, finan­cial, legal and pub­lic rela­tion ser­vices, through the provost’s office.

The most recent board pres­i­dent, David Gar­rett, resigned prior to the board’s mass exo­dus, after just a cou­ple of months in the post.  In a let­ter explain­ing his deci­sion, Gar­rett stated “The recent report­ing of the con­tro­versy between UNM and the PA neces­si­tates clar­i­fi­ca­tion. “ He con­tin­ued, “UNM expressly stated they did not want to be involved in the elec­tion process of any board or exec­u­tive mem­ber.  More­over, UNM pro­vided admin­is­tra­tive and finan­cial sup­port which assisted the PA in rais­ing funds for stu­dent scholarships.

In the past, the Par­ent Asso­ci­a­tion has raised about $40,000 a year for stu­dent schol­ar­ships. Two of the biggest fundrais­ers for this year are already in the works and the new vol­un­teers are hop­ing this year will bring in as much or more to help stu­dents with finan­cial needs.