Werner-Washburne Elected President of SACNAS National Board

SACNAS, the Soci­ety for Advance­ment of Hispanics/Chicanos & Native Amer­i­cans in Sci­ence, recently announced the elec­tion of its 15-member National Board of Direc­tors. Among those elected was Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Regents’ Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy Mag­gie Werner-Washburne as pres­i­dent of the board. Werner-Washburne’s three-year appoint­ment began Jan. 4. The first two years as pres­i­dent and the third as past-president.

Based in Santa Cruz, Calif., SACNAS is a non­profit cor­po­ra­tion that fos­ters the suc­cess of Hispanic/Chicano & Native Amer­i­can sci­en­tists, from col­lege stu­dents to pro­fes­sion­als, to attain advanced degrees, careers and posi­tions of lead­er­ship in science.

Werner-Washburne has sev­eral goals as pres­i­dent includ­ing one that should inter­est UNM and the state of New Mex­ico which is to improve out­reach to stu­dents like those who come to UNM as freshmen.

“I am hum­bled and excited to be the new pres­i­dent of SACNAS,” said Werner-Washburne. “My lead­er­ship phi­los­o­phy is to build teams, bring as many voices to the table as pos­si­ble and develop cre­ative solu­tions to impor­tant chal­lenges. I think my biggest goal is to make SACNAS a bet­ter team. I want to help pro­vide regional work­shops that lead to improve­ments in skills, what stu­dents know about career options early on, and give the stu­dents the tools and the lift they need to be successful.

“Being pres­i­dent of SACNAS at this time and at UNM is very mean­ing­ful to me for many rea­sons. This (UNM) was a key birth­place for SACNAS, so it feels like we have come full cir­cle and I am hum­bled to be a part of that.”

Werner-Washburne says she’s been told that at the rate the United States is going, it will take 160 years to diver­sify the sciences.

“I think there are dif­fer­ent ways to deal with chronic, hard prob­lems like stu­dent suc­cess and sci­ence edu­ca­tion that can lead to solu­tions that we have not thought of before,” said Werner-Washburne. “There is a con­cept of ‘emer­gent prop­er­ties’ in data – unex­pected results that come from putting new types of data together or look­ing at com­plex data in new ways. I hope that we can begin to see emer­gent prop­er­ties in some of the chronic, hard prob­lems that face our coun­try and, espe­cially, in the ones that con­cern SACNAS.”

SACNAS is cel­e­brat­ing its 40th Anniver­sary in 2013. What was started by Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Amer­i­cans in New Mex­ico, includ­ing many UNM fac­ulty, and else­where who believed in the impor­tance of pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to Chicanos/Latinos and Native Amer­i­cans in sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy, engi­neer­ing, and math, has grown into a soci­ety with about 20,000 mem­bers world­wide. Cur­rently, SACNAS is research­ing and find­ing ways to bring in many other dis­ci­plines that relate to what the orga­ni­za­tion does.

The orga­ni­za­tion has 6,000 paid mem­bers and serv­ing a world­wide com­mu­nity of 23,000 at more than 1,000 insti­tu­tions. There are 70 SACNAS chap­ters at col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties through­out the US and Puerto Rico, and a pro­fes­sional chap­ter at the National Insti­tutes of Health (NIH). SACNAS and its affil­i­ated groups have made major advances over four decades in open­ing the STEM fields (sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy, engi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics) to under­rep­re­sented minori­ties and in diver­si­fy­ing the nation’s sci­en­tific workforce.

“I’ve worked in sci­ence and diver­sity all of my career, here at UNM and in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.,” said Werner-Washburne. “I have been a SACNAS mem­ber for almost 25 years. SACNAS is, in my mind, a key leader in diver­sity and the sci­ences, and edu­ca­tion the issues of diver­sity, men­tor­ing, and the fron­tiers of sci­ence, math and engi­neer­ing. Beyond it’s lead­er­ship, SACNAS is a fam­ily. The national meet­ing is the place where so many of us go each year to restore our­selves, ener­gize and focus our stu­dents, and strengthen and grow the vision and net­works within the orga­ni­za­tion. Don’t let the name fool you, SACNAS wel­comes every­one – and we work with stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­als of all races and eth­nic­i­ties and the sci­ence is as real as the mentoring.”