UNM’s 2012 Top-10 General News Stories

Annu­ally, the UNM Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Mar­ket­ing (UCAM) Depart­ment com­piles a list of its Top-10 Gen­eral News sto­ries dur­ing the course of the year. Below is the list of UNM’s Top-10 Gen­eral News sto­ries for 2012.

Robert G. Frank Appointed Pres­i­dent of The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico
The UNM Board of Regents selected Robert G. Frank as the 21st pres­i­dent of UNM. Frank’s selec­tion fol­lows a six-month search by a com­mit­tee that included Regents, fac­ulty, stu­dents, staff and alumni. Frank, 59, will suc­ceed David J. Schmidly, who announced in April 2011 that he would step down after five years as pres­i­dent. Frank will take office in June 2012.

UNM’S Project ECHO Awarded $8.5 Mil­lion
The UNM Health Sci­ences Center’s Project ECHO, Exten­sion for Com­mu­nity Health­care Out­comes, has been awarded nearly $8.5 mil­lion over three years from the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices Health Care Inno­va­tion awards. Project ECHO is a trans­for­ma­tive model of med­ical edu­ca­tion and health care deliv­ery that brings high-quality care to very sick patients wher­ever they live. It was cre­ated by social inno­va­tor San­jeev Arora, a physi­cian at the UNM Health Sci­ences Center.

Dean Kevin Wash­burn Con­firmed to Lead Indian Affairs
The U.S. Sen­ate con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Dean Kevin Wash­burn to serve as assis­tant sec­re­tary for Indian Affairs at the Depart­ment of Inte­rior, the high­est posi­tion in the fed­eral gov­ern­ment that focuses pri­mar­ily on Indian Affairs. Wash­burn said he looks for­ward to help­ing the nation’s tribes con­tinue to pur­sue self-governance.

Unidos Project Receives Lumina Foun­da­tion Grant
The Unidos Project in Albu­querque received $600,000 from Lumina Foun­da­tion for a “no wrong gate” approach that allows stu­dents to flow freely through the edu­ca­tional sys­tem, with appro­pri­ate sup­port and direc­tion to remain on course, and with min­i­mal bar­ri­ers to suc­cess. This grant effort encour­ages com­mu­nity lead­ers across key pol­icy, edu­ca­tion, busi­ness and non­profit sec­tors to build, imple­ment and sus­tain “place-based part­ner­ships” that cap­i­tal­ize on local tal­ent. Lumina is invest­ing more than $11.5 mil­lion in Latino Stu­dent Suc­cess (LSS) efforts across the country.

Highly-Cited Sci­en­tists from UNM
The Insti­tute for Sci­ence Infor­ma­tion main­tains a list of the world’s most highly-cited sci­en­tists, based on high vol­ume of cita­tions of their work in sci­en­tific pub­li­ca­tions. UNM has only three fac­ulty on the list with two Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sors includ­ing James H. Brown in the Depart­ment of Biol­ogy and William Miller, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus from the Cen­ter on Alco­holism, Sub­stance Abuse and Addic­tions, while Research Pro­fes­sor Scott Toni­gan, also from CASAA, was recently added to the list. The trio is among the top half of one per­cent of the world’s scientists.

UNM Per­for­mance of Clausen’s ‘Requiem’ at Lin­coln Review Gets Media, Com­poser Acco­lades
Music Pro­fes­sor Bradley Elling­boe, UNM soloists and choral mem­bers got rave reviews on their per­for­mance of René Clausen’s “Requiem,” one of two requiems per­formed on Sun­day, March 18, at Lin­coln Cen­ter in New York City. Jef­frey Williams wrote in the New York Con­cert Review that Clausen’s requiem “is not dark and fore­bod­ing, but serene and hope­ful.” He added that Clausen wrote “a work of great power, with moments of con­flict.” Clausen’s “Requiem,” was com­mis­sioned to cel­e­brate the 100th anniver­sary of choral singing at UNM.

UNM Selected by NIH as One of 11 Cen­ters of Excel­lence in Pain Edu­ca­tion
UNM was recently named by the NIH Pain Con­sor­tium as one of 11 Cen­ters of Excel­lence in Pain Edu­ca­tion (CoEPE). CoEPEs will act as hubs for the devel­op­ment, eval­u­a­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of pain man­age­ment cur­ricu­lum resources for med­ical, den­tal, nurs­ing and phar­macy schools to enhance and improve how health care pro­fes­sion­als are taught about pain and its treat­ment. UNM Col­lege of Nursing’s Robin Meize-Grochowski, pro­fes­sor and Ph.D. pro­gram direc­tor, is the prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor and project direc­tor who will over­see the evolv­ing curricula.

UNM SRMC Opens Doors to Patients
The new UNM San­doval Regional Med­ical Cen­ter (SRMC) opened its doors for patient care Mon­day, July 16. The $189 mil­lion, 72-bed hos­pi­tal will not only bring greater access to health care to the peo­ple of San­doval County, but will pro­vide a major boost to the local and state econ­omy. Within a month of open­ing, the SRMC will employ 361 peo­ple at an aver­age wage of more than $75,000 per year for a first year pay­roll of more than $40 million.

Mar­garet and Turner Branch Donate $1.5 Mil­lion to Lobo Ath­let­ics to Name Field at Uni­ver­sity Sta­dium
UNM Ath­let­ics and the Lobo Club announced recently the dona­tion of $1.5 mil­lion by Mar­garet and Turner Branch to Lobo Ath­let­ics for the nam­ing rights to the foot­ball field at Uni­ver­sity Sta­dium. Pend­ing UNM Board of Regents’ approval, the field will be called “Branch Field.” The Branches have made numer­ous sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in sup­port of UNM Ath­let­ics for more than 30 years.

UNM Con­struct­ing a Stronger Regional Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Strat­egy
Pres­i­dent Robert G. Frank has received a final report from the UNM Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Sum­mit and is begin­ning to con­sider ways in which the uni­ver­sity can most effec­tively par­tic­i­pate in devel­op­ing the regional and state econ­omy. One of the most star­tling find­ings is the assess­ment of the num­ber of new jobs that must be cre­ated in the next few years to min­i­mize the effect of los­ing jobs in the gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tors that began with the 2007 reces­sion. The report makes a num­ber of recommendations.

** The selec­tions above are in no par­tic­u­lar order.