Present: Duane Elms, Tony Macias, Rick Johnson, Faye Vowell, Marcia Bourdette, Julie Morales, T. J. Betenbough, Christy Miller, Dan Tressler, Donna Rees, Chris Farren, Julie Miller, Chris Casey, Mary Camarena-Hittle, Carmen Maynes.

• Bowden Hall is leaking in Mary Billings' office. Has been reported to maintenance, and it has not been fixed. Rick Johnson reported that the GRC is leaking also in JoAnn Fischer's office. Has been called into maintenance but has not been fixed.
• Donna Rees is working with a private security officer training program starting in March and some of it will be completed before the end of the semester. Donna met with DOL and it will pay for students eligible for WIA. She is scheduling training in Deming, Las Cruces, and Socorro. She estimated SCH will be 500 this semester. The problem is that if someone wants to become a private security officer a criminal background check and drug screen must be done--sometimes this loses us applicants. Steve Chavez and Curtis Hayes have reviewed the curriculum and approve it. Donna Rees is working with ProForce and they will be faculty.
• Senator Smith has introduced a capital outlay bill for $1 million for a Learning Center in Lordsburg but no one knows whether it will go through.
• WNMU has demands on classroom space that we cannot meet. Extended University was contacted Monday by Cissy McAndrew because film company wanted to do an open meeting for the public, but no space was available. Donna will start documenting unavailable space. The film company is looking at using the Senior Center, etc.
• On-line faculty brown bag lunch schedule was handed out. It will be sent out also over faculty and staff listserv. Minutes will be on virtual campus drive on steel.
• Mary Billings attended a meeting in Santa Fe regarding the NM Virtual College and they have a bill introduced by Rep. Campos for $500,000 which will enhance the virtual college with advisors, a bookstore, etc and will focus heavily on concurrent and dual enrollment.
• Next week Tuesday in Albuquerque there will be a session for community block grant proposals. Luna County will be presenting a project to expand the learning center in Deming.
• Chris Casey spoke with Dr. Counts last week on the appropriations bill and nothing has changed: compensation is still at 2%, full formula funding, 3% tuition credit, athletics funding down $100,000, ITV is in at $122,100, CDC at $575,500, NAFTA at $15,300, and Nursing at $142,000 . Dr. Counts proposed 3 amendments: 1 in nursing to get additional $440,000, Netl additional $400,000, and athletics. Other bills can be tracked on billfinder.
• WNMU will have a visit on Monday and Tuesday next week from four representatives from the RMAC conference. J. R. Smith, Commissioner, is coming along with others on Monday. We have prepared an agenda for both days. They will meet with coaches, students, boosters, faculty athletic rep, and Dr. Counts. One factor will be are how comparable are we to other schools in the conference. We will also need to make presentation at spring meeting in Colorado Springs. Pac West no longer exists and we are currently in the Heartland Conference.
• Purchasing deadline dates have been sent out by Jon Saari.
• Mary Camarena-Hittle reported that on March 14 at GRC there will be a staff senate general assembly with two main issues to cove: nominations for 05-06 president and two senator slots and Union issues. There will be a copy of the petition, fact sheet, and employee question sheet. Open meeting.
• Rick Johnson: (1) At last General Assembly Salary & Benefits reported back that majority of faculty and departments in favor of domestic partner benefits. In the General Assembly a motion was made to request and recommend that the University provide domestic partner benefits. He wrote a letter to the three VPs and the President. The President is expected to respond by the 30-day response time.
• Diane Hamilton is sponsoring special legislation initiated by Tom Gruszka to recognize any of the four-year institutions who have attained the Zia Award with a monetary benefit and request $5 million. We think this was heard yesterday in House Education Committee, House Bill No. 888. Tom talked to Quality New Mexico. They will not support this because it is not their job to provide an award system, but will not speak against it. Our argument is that the legislature should be recognizing this type of achievement.
• Nominations for Faculty Senate President will be made with an election in April
• Kathie Gilbert encouraged members of Cabinet to come to Bayard Community Center on Friday night to discuss what role SIGRED should play in economic development. We want to get community input into what that role should be and on Saturday will be in a retreat to discuss that input. We need University representation at the meeting on Friday at 6:30 p.m. The meeting should last about 2 hours.
• Kathie Gilbert handed out fliers about QNM conference on March 31 and April 1. It is an excellent conference where Baldrige winners will be present.
• Strategy Forum attendees have had a meeting and determined that we would focus initially on three areas for action projects and picking up a fourth. Communications will be moving forward through April 15; Scholarship for Teaching and Learning (SoTL), Redefining the Strategic Planning Process, Marketing and Planning. The Co-Chairs of SoTL are Patricia Cano and Julie Miller; marketing Irene Meares and Jon Saari, redefining to be determined. This group will be working with chairs of the three senates as a part of this process and will be meeting with Assessment Committee. We are looking for people who are interested in working with these committees from all areas of the university. Kathie Gilbert and Julie Morales will be training facilitators for each of these committees. Kathie would also ask that those of you who are responsible for areas to please identify those for facilitator training.
• Kathie Gilbert will be meeting with Team Chairs to talk about how to get action projects defined by April 15.
• Staff will also be working with some assessment issues and anticipate that this will be the project to come in to replace strategic planning issue.
• Assigned sponsors for each of the teams. Dr. Vowell will be doing scholarship, Farren marketing and planning, redefining not yet determined.
• What is the data telling us?--When candidates for data analysis and research were here it was very interesting that in their presentations they asked some questions that we had not asked ourselves. Fall 2004 enrollment data was given to them. One candidate observed that we are 2/3 women and 1/3 men and asked whether that is our choice or an accident? Do we want to change or keep this? If this is our choice, what kind of special services are we providing for women and what type of support are we providing for men who are the minority? The next question asked was the ethnicity issue. The candidate looked at number of hours carried by Native and African American students which was much higher and Hispanic or Anglo students. If that's the case, what is the explanation for it? It does raise some issues: Session yesterday with African American students who were distressed at overt racism in the classroom. These students are carrying a large number of hours and when they succeed their instructors act surprised. We should look at data to know students better and understand why these African and Native American students carrying a heavier load. Are we making sure that they fail? Are these students trying to get done because of the environment here, or are they out of state and want to get finished to go home? FNV stated that we don't have any mechanism to answer these questions. Maybe we need to ask the faculty research committee to take some of the data and award money to faculty to conduct research projects in this area. Do we need to put something in the budget for this type of research? KG said this will come back to AQIP teams but should be talked about in faculty and staff meetings and cross functional units like retention and admissions areas. Mary Camarena-Hittle stated that we need to ask whether we are really serving this population and marketing and planning group should be interested in this data.
• Student Affairs has a graduate assistant who is working on Noel Levitz data. He has now taken the demographics and broken down the satisfaction gaps by ethnicity, age, etc. The Native and African American students are the two groups where the gaps were larger than university average. This is a small group, but we must be cautious because we want to serve these students because of our commitment to diversity but this states that we are not doing all that we can do in these areas. The graduate student will also do satisfaction levels by departments.
• We need to internally define how we will assist the Data Analysis Director perform his job.
• Rick Johnson stated that it appears that when brochures for individual programs of study and things departments do that are put together there is no uniformity of format. We need to look at a unifying factor for the covers, fonts, etc. Student Government is looking at this and within the next few days should have some more ideas in this area. Dr. Vowell has approached Dr. Miller to ask Garth Gerstein to do a uniform brochure template. This should be sent to Dr. Farren who will work with Julie Morales. FNV asked if Farren, Johnson, and Vowell could meet before faculty senate today to review template along with Julie Morales. We want to make these attractive and age appropriate to potential students but must contain information that parents may want to see.
• Carmen Maynes announced diversity training next week courtesy of NCAA. Two days will be devoted to students and athletes and second day to faculty and staff--40 in the morning and 40 in the afternoon. We have 7 open seats in the afternoon of March 10.
• Dr. Counts designated two days of vacation during Spring Break week which will be Monday and Tuesday, March 28 and March 29.
• Commencement speaker list has been forwarded to Dr. Counts.
• Andrew Hernandez spoke with Dr. Counts and set the recognition day in Deming for Wednesday of Commencement week.
• Reminder that Gallup graduation is Saturday, May 7.
• Mike Aleckson has resigned as Director of Admissions and Laure Romero Jones has been appointed as Acting Director. Process for search will begin immediately.
• Last year we mailed out summer schedules too late to Arizona teachers. We will put out an offering of graduate work for summer from the SOE which is about 80% of graduate students. Because of the tier system in New Mexico this will encourage a large number of teachers to pursue master's degree. We would like to get out word earlier.
• Spring Break will include implementation of document imaging, random ID numbers, and training for document imaging. We are working with the State of New Mexico regarding disposal of original documents.
• Closed on Academic Support Director yesterday; hope to hire soon.
• Student government is unaware of any additional student fees or increases. Student government meets Wednesday night at 8:30 p.m. April 1 Financial Aid starts making awards and if we are going to have an increase in tuition, student fees, etc. we need to have an estimate so we can build it into Financial Aid awards.
• The first Spring meeting of the Web PMT has been held. Steve and Dean, Duane have done a great deal of work at looking at the possibilities; recommended some changes and will review again and gather input from different groups.
• With the change in Admissions, we have recognized the lack of communication regarding changes.

1. Starting at the present time each recruiter is asked to contact the inquiries and applicants from their areas at least once a month by letter, telephone, e-mail, etc.
2. We will be sending out financial aid letter to all applicants encouraging them to complete FAFSA prior to April 1 when awards start.
3. The following month there will be letters regarding campus visits and letters from specific major areas from academic departments.
4. We will telemarket scholarship students and have sent posters to all California community colleges advertising the competition scholarship.
5. We are sending letters to all applicants for fall and spring that didn't show at that time.
6. We are putting ads in the newspapers of all the two-year schools that are our feeder schools.
7. We are in the process of reactivating WUE/WICHE for any out of state student selected by us can come here for 1-1/2 times in-state tuition. GPA of 2.5 or higher will probably be one of the criteria. This should help in recruitment of athletes and overall enrollment.
8. We have 7 kiosks that will be located with the help of student input which will enable students to do on-line financial aid, etc.

• Faye Vowell met with Katherine Woodard met with Josh Saffel and discussed changing the funding source for the Social Work classes. She met yesterday with Trini Tolar, Richard F. Rodriguez, and Magdaleno Manzanares and discussed bringing 60 teachers from Juarez to do summer classes. Someone in Admissions will need to help with visas. Laure Romero has been assigned this responsibility. Trinidad Tolar needs to touch base with Laure Romero Jones on this. These students will be working on an endorsement in Bilingual ed over a series of summers. Faye Vowell asked Julie Morales to work with Trinidad Tolar regarding offering classes at Nuevo Casas Grandes. She also asked Julie Morales to touch base with Wm. Charland re his block class and the computer science class. Chris Farren will pay for advertising for these courses. Marcia Bourdette was asked to have flyers taken to housing for econ and CMPS course.
• Wine making class did not make. Asked Donna Rees to advertise this course via display ad. Kathie Gilbert suggested an interview with instructor for the newspaper.
• We will also do a block Student Success Seminar.
• Duane Elms announced that on March 11 personal web sites will be available. E-mail Jason Collet for password. We haven't offered this to alumni yet but possible in the future. Asked Christy Miller to poll for interest. IT will not construct or develop site. Kathie Gilbert suggested a one-hour tutorial for credit to facilitate web page development and could open to public.
• Julie Morales was contacted by Andrea Martinez at Forest Service celebrating 100 years. They want to host a film at GRC. This is a video produced by the Forest Service which is a two-hour documentary about the Forest Service. FNV will sponsor. Forest Service is working with WNMU to do joint multi-cultural presentations. Also working with Forest Service to insure internship positions for our
• Community Relation will meet next Wed at 4 pm at GRC.
• Deadline for next issue of Westwind is March 11.
• Chris Farren attended the quarterly alumni meeting in Saturday and they did branding exercise for marketing m. At next Cabinet, he will ask Cabinet members to do branding exercise.
• Julie Miller announced that next Monday Patricia Erickson will give talk on Buffalo soldiers in SW at 7 pm. Slide presentation and discussion. one-hour presentation.
• On Thursday and Friday 14 people from WNM presented at NMHEAR Conference in Albuquerque. Good presentations and good ideas. We commented that you have to go away to see what we are doing here on campus-- Linda Baldwin, Irene Meares, and George Muncrief from Business Adm are doing a wonderful job collecting data on who their students are, Linda Beattie linked freshman seminar and math class, Barbara Taylor and Gail Gruber presented on, Roland Shook, FNV and Chris Farren presented on NSSE. Vivian Meyers and Barbara Flores also attended. We had the second largest number of presentations.
• State-wide articulation task force effort is under way and disciplinary groups will meet in March.
• Expanding Your Horizons this weekend.
• Kathie Gilbert asked if we could work with both papers to get a community event column in each paper that would highlight upcoming events for the next week, etc.
• Searches in Academic Affairs are moving forward. Some departments faculty are on two or three search committees. SOE Dean will close on March 1, committee constituted.
• Chris Farren also asked for good candidates for Director of Admissions. Ad approved by end of this week.
• FNV working with Jasmine Fallstich and student government to bring initiate a Master Teacher nomination process by the students. You will see purple boxes in the campus buildings where nominations can be deposited. We are asking students as a part of our focus on active, collaborative learning to nominate faculty that have an impact on their learning using specific strategies in active, collaborative learning. The nomination will ask for specific examples of assignments and impact. We will have celebration of winners and nominees and collect best practices to share with faculty across campus. Please encourage students to nominate. The nominations will also be solicited at Extended University campuses.
• Chris Farren announced Student Affairs will be helping Deming group get a race car in the Great Race this year.
• T. J. Betenbough spoke about AACTE award Elaine Jordan also attended the award presentation. 8 institutions were recognized at an awards breakfast. WNMU received a great write-up in the award program for our support of teacher excellence and accountability. Award will be presented to the SOE today along with extra programs. Tj and Elaine feel this is a great conference for SOE faculty to attend in the future. Kathie Gilbert asked that the award along with program be displayed in the Library. It will also travel to Deming, Gallup and TorC.
• Chris Farren updated enrollment as of today's figures we are 716 hours over the 5%; however, we must still work on creating student credit hours. We thank all of the people who have made this happen.

Meeting adjourned at 10:00 a.m.