Notes from the Sept. 26, 2006 Regents Meeting
by George Zamora
SOCORRO, N.M., Sept. 28, 2006 – The New Mexico Tech Board of Regents was informed at its monthly meeting on Sept. 26 that this fall semester’s student enrollment at the state-supported research university is showing a less than one percent decrease over last year’s record enrollment figure of slightly more than 1,900 undergraduates and graduate students.
New Mexico Tech President Daniel H. López also told the university’s governing board at its September 26 meeting that even though regular registration for fall semester classes has ended, the final enrollment figures for this semester won’t be officially tallied until numbers for enrollment in graduate courses and distance education classes offered by Tech are posted next week.
Despite this fall semester’s slight decrease in overall enrollment, graduate student enrollment at the university continues to increase, due largely to sustained growth in distance education course offerings, the Tech President added.
The Board of Regents also was informed that university administrators were recently notified by the U.S. Department of Education that New Mexico Tech has been designated an eligible institution under Title III of the Higher Education Act of 1965, thereby entitling the university to apply for special federal funds, grants, and waivers.
In other matters considered at the New Mexico Tech Board of Regents meeting, regents attending approved the following measures:
- an annual resolution to comply with the New Mexico Open Meetings Act;
- an annual resolution excluding members of the Board of Regents from authority to obtain details or view classified documents concerning any high-security contracts the university’s various research divisions may have entered into;
- the appointment of Carlos A. Ulibarri to the full-time, tenure-track position of assistant professor of management with the university’s Department of Management; and
- the appointments of New Mexico Tech vice presidents Peter Gerity and Van Romero as members of the board of directors of the Institute for Advanced Studies, a research and educational consortium connected with the management of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In addition, the New Mexico Tech Board of Regents also was notified during its regular monthly meeting that sabbatical leaves had recently been granted to Tech faculty members Snezna Rogelj and T. David Burleigh. Rogelj is a professor of biology and Burleigh is an associate professor of materials engineering at the university.
The university regents also were informed that six recent expenditures of more than $100,000 were made by New Mexico Tech, including:
- $250,000 subcontract to Applied Sciences Laboratory, Inc. for the Southwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership — Phase II;
- a $150,000 subcontract to AgilOptics, Inc. for the Commercialization and Industrialization of Adaptive Optics Pilot Project;
- a $2,804,000 subcontract to Science Applications International Corporation for work done in conjunction with the university’s Institute for Complex Additive Systems Analysis (ICASA) program;
- a $323,555 subcontract to the University of Utah for the Southwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership—Phase II;
- a $175,946 subcontract to GE Global Research Center for the Grid and Reliability and Renewable Distributed Energy Research project; and
- a $348,435 subcontract to Blue Bird Coachworks for the purchase of a 50-passenger bus that will be used to support operations at the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in Roswell.