Parish Memorial Library celebrates 45 years of providing services to UNM and the community during October and November with a lecture series and exhibit. All lectures are open to all and will be held from Noon to 1 p.m. in Parish Memorial Library, followed by refreshments.

An exhibit of photos and other materials illustrating the history of the library is on display in Parish Memorial Library through Friday, Dec. 19.

Wednesday, October 15

“Leaders & Laggards: Maternal Health Policy & Implementation in South India”

Stephanie Smith
Stephanie Smith

Stephanie Smith, assistant professor, School of Public Administration

Nearly 300,000 women die from pregnancy-related complications each year. One-fifth of these deaths occur in India. Maternal survival rose on India's national policy agenda in the mid-2000s, but responsibility for health policy and implementation in the federal system is largely devolved to the state level where priority for the issue and maternal health outcomes vary.

This talk covers the experiences of two south Indian states, Tamil Nadu, a leader, and Karnataka a relatively slow mover. Competition to advance consistent political priorities across regimes in Tamil Nadu offers fertile ground for policy entrepreneurship and strong public health system administration facilitates progress. Inconsistent political priorities and relatively weak public health system administration frustrate progress in Karnataka. These variations offer insights to the ways in which sub-national political and administrative contexts shape health policy and implementation.

Smith holds a doctorate in public administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Her research and teaching interests focus on global health policy, international development and the intellectual history of public administration.

Wednesday, Oct. 22
"Predictably (Ir)rational: Insight from Economic Experiments”
Kate Krause, dean, Honors and University Colleges, and professor of Economics

Kate Krause

Traditional microeconomic models begin with the assumption that each of us strives to gain the most satisfaction, or utility, that we can subject to time, financial and other constraints. In the starkest applications of these models, rational consumers maximize their consumption of material goods and services constrained by their ability and willingness to sell their time and talents in the labor market.

One logical conclusion derived from this model is that people faced with choosing between increasing their own wealth and helping others, will choose to increase their own wealth. Another is that they will consistently value risks: risk-takers will gamble; cautious people will choose conservatively.

Participants in simulated experiments and in the real world repeatedly defy these predictions. Economic experiments that explore altruism, risk-taking, and consistency in decision-making identify patterns of divergence from the base model and ask us to consider why seemingly irrational divergences persist.

Krause earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 1977. She went on to earn a J.D. from Stanford Law School and her doctorate in Economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1996.  She joined the Economics Department faculty at the University of New Mexico in 1996.

She considers herself to be a behavioral economist, and in her work she considers what people do when faced with economic decisions that don't have obvious right answers given the self-interest assumptions of classical economics. This interest has led to work on the emergence of economic behavior in children, gender equity, environmentally responsible behavior and the economic implications of family formation.

Tuesday, Oct. 28
“Historic New Mexico Business Collections in the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections”
Michael T. Kelly, associate dean University Libraries

Michael T. Kelly

Professor William J. Parish, for whom Parish Memorial Library is named, was instrumental in bringing several important historical New Mexico business collections to the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections. He was particularly interested in the history and philosophy of business. His business and social history, “The Charles Ilfeld Company,” was published in 1961 by the Harvard Press and he was researching the history of the Bank of Santa Fe at the time of his death.

Both businesses were important in the development of territorial New Mexico. The Charles Ilfeld Company founded in the middle of the 19th century eventually grew into the largest mercantile firm in New Mexico lasting in various forms for nearly a century.

Michael T. Kelly is the associate dean for Scholarly Resources, Special Collections, the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, and associate professor of librarianship. Kelly has 30 years of professional archival experience working in museums, historical societies and universities. He received his bachelor’s degree in history from Shippensburg University of Penn., his Master of Arts in History from Iowa State University, and his Master of Arts in Library Science from the University of Denver. His professional experiences include the directorship of the Harold McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Historical Museum in Cody, Wyoming and Curator of Special Collections at Wichita State University.

Monday, Nov. 10
“Technologies of the ancestral:  Folk art, social innovation and ideology”
Manuel Montoya, assistant professor, Anderson School of Management

Manuel Montoya

Innovation often implies a deep connection with high-technology or modernity. However, folk art and ancestral traditions produce equally compelling technologies. Manuel Montoya explores the historical and philosophical moments that separated folk art from the concept of technology. He will investigate the moment when mechanical reproduction changed the way that technology was viewed and will conclude with a series of speculative gestures to revisit the technologies of ancestral work and their value to the 21st century global cultural economy.

Montoya is a professor of global structures, an interdisciplinary scholar of globalization and the factors that produce a global political economy. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a Rhodes Scholar and Truman Scholar. He is the CEO of his own global consulting firm, In Medias Res Consulting, which has provided support to global NGOs and INGOs including the United Nations and UNESCO. A native from Mora, N.M., he has returned to UNM because of his interest in New Mexico as a global emerging economy.

His research focuses on the interdisciplinary origins of global culture and its impact on economic and management issues including work on human security, expeditionary and conflict economics, global culture as an intangible firm resource, expeditionary economics, global export analysis, international trade, emerging economies and global economic sustainability. He is the faculty adviser of International Business Students Global, whose emphasis is on issues that shape the global agenda.

Parish Memorial Library named for William J. Parish a former Dean of the College of Business Administration opened in 1987 in the new Anderson Graduate School Building. Business and economics collections first moved from Zimmerman Library to a small business library in the College of Business and Administrative Sciences (now the Anderson School of Management) in 1969 and later into the Parish Memorial Library.