Aggie Almanac; 102 & 127; Restoring the Past (Hatch Archives) and Protesting for Pluto; Capoiera and Upping the Goal

Music Coming up on Aggie Almanac, NMSU helps the village of Hatch hang on to its history. This thing was waterlocked, I mean this is nasty. And some people aren't taking the recent demotion of Pluto sitting down. Hi I'm Hillary Floren and thanks for watching Aggie Almanac where the focus is on NMSU,

for each week we let you see first hand some of the amazing projects and endeavors taking place at New Mexico State. First on today's show we take you to Hatch, a town devastated by recent floods, homes and businesses were completely lost to the raging waters. But the catastrophe also reminded us what a community can do when faced with disaster. Right after the heavy rains lots of people were called in for help, including the NMSU Archives Department. They came along in the nick of time to make sure the damaging floodwaters didn't also wash away a big chunk of that community's past. After the floodwaters subsided, this is what remained of the Hatch Municipal Building. You know I spend a third of my life in this building and it's very devastating, it really is for all of us, for all of us. The building is just 9 years old and housed all the Hatch City offices, the mayor's office, utility department, public works, judges chambers, even the Hatch Police Department.

Everyone had to be moved to temporary offices elsewhere. It's a horrible home and working the evenings until you just literally drop into bed. And it's going to be just a long process, it's going to take a lot of time, it's not something that's going to be done overnight. The mess here speaks for itself. The flooring and much of the drywall and insulation had to be removed. The flooding was four feet deep and water got everywhere, even much to the horror of the village clerk into these fireproof cabinets that contained many of the village's official and historic documents. We've said a lot of money on these fireproof cabinets because we knew that those documents had to be protected. Unfortunately these are not waterproof as we learned, unfortunately. And I had down here in the bottom drawer, I had copies of the minutes of all the trustees meetings since the village was incorporated in 1927 and also old resolutions and ordinances.

Most of our ordinances have been codified, but they're still valuable records. And some of them I had in the second drawer which in those weren't damaged, the water didn't get up that far. But the ones in that bottom drawer were full of mud and water. The city clerk from Las Cruces came to help McConnell figure out how to preserve the damaged documents and that's when the head of NMSU Archives got a call. You know within 10 minutes the folks that called me and asked me if they could place their volumes in our freezer, which of course we said to absolutely just bring it down here as soon as you can, if you need to stabilize it, try to get it frozen as quickly as you can. And they said well where would we do that and in hatch there's actually a meat market or a meat company up there that have meat freezing in there and I said just put it in there and get it frozen, try to stabilize it somehow. And they did that and then they brought it down on plastic tubs which we took them out

of the plastic tubs. Of course I was wearing rubber gloves, I wasn't sure what we were dealing with at that point. I just wanted to let them know that we were here, we could help them out, get it down there as soon as you can, we'll get it in the freezer, then we'll get it dried out and back to them. Immediate freezing it turns out is the only sure way to save soggy documents. What freezing will allow us to do is while it's frozen, we can take out the individual volumes as the rest are being frozen and bring them out and thaw them out so to speak and let them air dry. I mean we didn't use a hairdryer, you don't want to use a hairdryer or a forestier or anything like that on this stuff because it can really harm the print, it can hurt the paper. It can do some nasty stuff to the ink and you really just don't want to do that to it. Hussman was given four bound volumes of village documents to try and salvage more than 2,000 pages in all, some of them dating back 80 years. These volumes came to us wet so you can see that you know you can see a little bubbling a little bit here and these pages in it, it was wet enough where it was started to make

it rust. I mean you can see the items here that have started to make it rust and when you start seeing that and the rust can get on the paper, once you know stuff starts to dry it gets real tacky. You probably remove things or pull things apart that have been real tacky when it starts to dry. When that happens the paper can tear, water can even literally wash the ink off the pages whether it's typewritten or you know written in ink. Here's a clear example of just how bad you know the document right here is you know this is really pretty sloppy, you can see some evidence of dirt getting into that, some little bit of water damage on this, ordinance number 167, brilliant to traffic in hash and now if we go over here we can see again you can see how this thing was waterlogged, I mean this is nasty, I mean I try to pull out the nastiest case scenarios at first to get to work on them right away.

This one actually had some mud on here on the outside and I tried to keep it as clean as I could, dried them out and then had them pressed. This is another representation of one that was completely waterlogged and it's back in pretty good shape after being dried out, this is another set of resolutions from the town of hatch and this is probably the toughest one I had of a bunch, this is mostly all onion skin and so if you look at this glass be careful, if you look at this, look how thin this paper is, so I literally had to pull each one of these apart and you can see where some of the ink has washed out onto the paper here, I tried to dry that as quickly as I could so we were pretty fortunate in getting it to dry but all of these, this is almost 300 pages alone right here, I mean if you look at it, original seals on here from the town. None of this difficult work could have been done without the help of this specially built freezer which can take the temperature all the way down to 32 degrees below zero.

This is one of the ordinances we've got right here, the last one I'm pulling out to literally dry out a little bit, this one wasn't nearly as water-sogged as the other ones but if you want to feel this you can feel literally how cold it is, you can come up and touch this thing, you'll feel it and there's no ice on it which makes this also unique. You won't find it at any ice or anything in your thross tree and right now it's set at minus, about minus 19 below zero. Husman says Hatch got lucky with these documents because of the way they were stored in old fashion vinders. What's great about this one is that like the others, this has not been sewn bound so all we simply have to do are pop these pieces off so we can pull this top off like that. And then what we'll do literally is we're watching on camera as we can separate it like this. See it's been perforated at the top so we can pull them apart and lay them out on the table and let them dry.

As you can see this happen, each individual page, these are actually in pretty good shape, these have actually dried pretty well in the freezer, they're still pretty chilly and there might be a little condensation when we lay it out so we'll want to lay them out flat so they dry. But you can see, you know, this is onion skin right here and if you see that it's very very thin and when it's wet, which I don't have an example of, when it's really wet it's very, very hard to deal with. And so you know when you're working with it you have to be cognizant that you're not pulling it apart too fast or forcing it because it'll tear. And that was real fortunate that none of these tore and that all the documents behaved accordingly and so we want to be real careful with them but I'll just leave it like this with the cover off of it and I'll probably lay these out and let them dry and you can see that each one of these, this is probably about 200 pages in here so each one, this will probably take me about 40, 45 minutes to lay out in one piece all over the department.

One reason the documents were sent here is the NMSU Archives Department has space to spread them out. Husman used every inch of available table tops for the project and spent hours carefully separating every page. This is just one of three or four or five tables in here where we've dried out this stuff and it's pretty low tech while we, while we've laid everything out, what you're looking at now are documents have been laying out for probably about four or five days and they're quite dry as to compared to what they were before. I literally had to interleaf this document with paper towels and you can see where the water is faded a little bit but this was completely water-sog so it was nothing but mush when I first had it and so we had to lay it out on this blotter paper and then I individually interleafed each page just to try to get the water to soak out of it and so this is sort of the finished product of what you're seeing.

Now it's a little crispy but it's not hurting anyway you can still read the document it's still usable when I first had it though it was basically a pile of paper in my hand, this mush so we'll lay this back down and flatten it just gently like that. So here it's the same thing and we had an interleaf just like this each page was like this so it would soak the water and again you don't want it to be able to fuse together which we're starting to happen with some of these pages and once they're fused together you have to sit literally there when I had them here you have to pull a page apart little by little just like that and it you know it can take you a long time and really test your patients but this kind of work you know every page that you can salvage is really a good thing. He's been a lifesaver I'm sure that must be very painstaking and slow, slow work but he's done an excellent job and he's told me that he was able to retrieve everything

that even the onion skin, a lot of those old minutes were done on onion skin you know with the typewriter and he's able to, he was able to salvage all of it so we're very fortunate. Husman says as a land grant university one of NMSU's tasks is to provide resources for people in need. In this case emergency assistance that helped a small New Mexico town hold on to its past. It's pretty important you know for a town's history and a town's patrimony if you will to have the ordinances and resolutions kept with them because you know when you lose that stuff it's like losing a chunk of your local history you know villages like Hatch unfortunately in some areas of the country disappearing very quickly because either people are leaving town or people are passing on or what have you and so this is a wonderful example of a town that's really working hard to rebuild itself after an awful event and we were real happy to help them out.

Like I say it's very interesting just to go back and see how people were feeling at the time and the comments they made and the decisions that were made and actually it's just what formed what forms the village. Was there anything down there that would have been I don't know that what was the most maybe important thing that was in the house? I would say the midst of all the meetings because that is a record of everything that everything that goes on in a community that's you know those board meetings are where all the decisions are made and all the action is done and all the laws are made and it's just a good record of what's happened in the village since 1927 and they make for very interesting reading you can go back and it's very interesting to read those minutes. As Hatch rebuilds is learning a lot of lessons including how to maintain its oldest and most precious documents. And I have to ask why were the documents not in the computer was that something that happened later and something that we hadn't got around to doing just one of those things

that you put off and put off and then when something like this happens you wish you wouldn't have put it off but we did. McConnell won't be taking any chances with those documents that were almost destroyed in the floods. She plans to ask the Hatch Village Council to consider copying all the papers onto micro film or CDs to back them up and possibly store them off site. As for the Hatch Municipal Building it could take another five months for repair work to be completed. We'll be right back. As we all know the planet Pluto got a demotion recently. In a surprising move last month the International Astronomical Union voted to downgrade the ninth rock from the Sun to a dwarf planet. The controversial vote got worldwide attention but at NMSU there's a lot more at stake because

the man who discovered Pluto in 1930 was on the faculty here and astronomers at NMSU say we owe it to him and ourselves to clear up Pluto's good name. They are demanding another vote and they want their voices heard that when it comes to planets size shouldn't matter. Like Thomas was an American hero and for that reason alone the status of planet as a real full-fledged planet should be kept and should not be changed.

You know why because that story should never end it should go on for a long long time and it might dribble away if we move away from Pluto as a full-fledged planet. Clyde Tomba is known throughout the world for discovering the ninth planet in the solar system in 1930 while working at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. He moved to Las Cruces in 1955 and developed a world-class astronomy research program at NMSU. He also became a local celebrity. The city even named a school after him. He's one of the region's claims to fame which is why it was so upsetting when the Astronomical

Union took its unexpected vote last month to demote Pluto to a dwarf planet. New Mexico State University had the distinction of being the only institution for the last hundred years who had on its staff the discover of a planet within the solar system. We have a stake in this discussion about the reclassification of Pluto. Not only does it university but also the city of Las Cruces. This isn't an issue that we ought to sit idle to buy and just let a small segment have their will and even the larger astronaut community be ignored in terms of their feelings about how this issue should be played out. Pluto got downgraded for failing to live up to new rules that define planets which say a planet must not only orbit around the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape but also clear the neighborhood around its orbit.

Since Pluto's oblong orbit overlaps Neptune it fails that last test. But not everyone's buying that argument and they also question the validity of the vote on Pluto's status. That was voted upon by a relatively small number of astronomers. At the present time there's a petition that has been circulated among astronomers that has been signed by over 300 astronomers protesting this reclassification. It's going to be given to the IAU and they're going to be asked to reconsider their decision about the status of Pluto. Tromba's wife says she gets increasingly irritated with this whole issue. What Clyde finally said, he was, you know, just frustrated pieces about the whole thing. He said, well it's there. So when I was there when they sent the probe off and they wanted me to say something and I told this about Clyde saying, well it's there.

Well I said we're going there to see what is there. When I get these calls you know is Pluto now going to be relegated to some other status in future textbooks, we're not there yet. We shouldn't allow ourselves to be there yet. This is a matter that was brought forward a single vote had been taken. Well another vote could be taken as well, can't it? And that vote could simply be to reverse the form of vote. It's just a vote taken by people. We're not telling nature what is out there and what's not out there. There's no just due to the fact that Pluto is out there in our solar system. But whatever the outcome, it seems clear that for most people here, Pluto may be small and remote, but it remains a full-fledged planet. And in our studio now to talk about the ex-planet Pluto were joined by the head of the NMSU Astronomy

Department, Dr. James Murphy and Dr. Bernard McNamara and astronomer with NMSU as well. Thank you so much for coming in. Glad to be here. First of all gentlemen, let's talk about your own opinion, should Pluto be a planet? I think that the jury is still out on that question that what you're asking is really something that the astronomical community has really not discussed in detail, until they can come up with a firmer definition of what isn't a planet, that's a difficult question to answer. Of course, emotionally, I love Pluto to still be a planet, but I think we are not there yet. In fact, the vote was just the opposite to make Pluto a yet reclassified as a dwarf planet. Right. And what is the sticking point? The sticking point is there are three aspects to the definition that I'm aware of. One is that the object orbits the sun, Pluto satisfies that. And the second aspect is that the object is massive enough so it can overcome its own

internal strength and essentially pull itself into a spherical shape. Pluto satisfies that as well. The third aspect is that it is dominant enough in its portion of the solar system to essentially have swept up or vacuumed up all the material in that vicinity. So it is kind of the big dog in town in that part of the solar system. And Pluto fails there because its orbit is really very eccentric. It goes farther from the sun than average and closer to the sun than its average. And in doing so, it crosses the distance of Neptune's orbit. So by doing that, it doesn't get credit for being a planet because it didn't sweep up Neptune. One of the ironic things about that is that Neptune crosses Pluto's orbit, but Neptune is still a planet. So I agree with Bernie. I think that part of the definition is really pretty soft and it really needs to be thought about more and solidify. Okay. So I guess the take on it as far as the kids go and everybody who grew up in Las Cruces is an emotional one.

As we saw on that piece that we just ran, you say emotionally and you of course probably knew Clyde Tomba. So talk a little bit about that. Yeah, actually when I came to New Mexico State in 1975 Clyde was my office mate. Really? We did an office together and did so for at least a year. After that, I helped Clyde in a fundraising campaign where even at the age of 80, both he and his wife traveled across this country and into Canada, helping to raise money for the university to establish an endowment called the Tombaugh Scholars Program to support young people at the beginning of the restaurant and local career. He has a person who retired at a maximum income of like $25,000. And yet as a result of those speaking engagements, he and his wife donated what is now up to a million dollars to the university. So Clyde and Pathy didn't make a dime from that effort. So I think quite highly of the person, but I'm sure Jim would agree that when it comes down to the definition of the planet, we really don't want to mix those two.

We don't want to bring in the person and say, well, the person defines the planet. It's going to be a definition of some sort. But the definition is far from settled. I think that there's going to be further discussion. It's way too premature as we're reading the newspaper is now to take Pluto out of the text box. I think that's sort of a statement. Well, that's what my next question was. Yeah, we have all these textbooks. We've all memorized the planets and Pluto is right there. What next? Well, I'm teaching a class now and every day Pluto seems to come up in one form or another and I still included in the realm of planets that I talk about. I make the point that this might not be the correct classification of that particular object, but nonetheless, it's got the history. It's hard to let go. Right. I mean, it is emotional, but I think it's also just for those of us who grew up and knew that Pluto was a planet, at least then. It's hard to, you know, without thinking, say, and the eight planets rather than the nine

planets. Right. And you said it was a smaller group of scientists, so will there possibly be another vote in the future? Are we holding out hope? No, I think it's actually quite likely. Really? I wish that our university would take the lead, actually, in trying to bring this issue back before the Astronomical Community. The vote that was taken in Prague was taken by maybe one to two percent of the Astronomical Community. The other 98 to 99 percent of astronomers have remained silent on this. So as far as the Astronomical Community is concerned, it's not a dead issue. But I think the more forthright our university is in terms of trying to keep this issue alive, not saying that we're going to ultimately win the discussion, but at least keep in the discussion going. I think the more likely it is it will be for the discussion in who knows. If we put those planetary status, we'll be maintained. I know NMSU and all the people here in Donjana County will hold on to that hope. Thank you both so much for coming in today.

We're out of time. Thank you. We close our program tonight with a segment that we call Amazing Aggies. Each week we honor one individual on campus who's involved in something we think is, well, amazing. Nina Compton and her husband met while suing each other as young attorneys. He was at her side as she was honored with NMSU's Dennis W. Darnell Faculty Achievement Award. Compton has been teaching at NMSU for more than 26 years. She teaches business law courses covering commercial litigation, health care, and consumer interests. She has earned honors and awards, including the top ten faculty members award in 1982, the Phi Gamma New National Faculty Advisory Award in 1983, the Donald C. Rouse Teaching Award in 1988, and the College Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award in 2000. In addition, she has done pro bono work for nonprofit organizations and served on the Governor's Commission on the Board.

I am proud to represent the continuing ideals that Dennis Darnell embraced and hoped to be able to meet the rigor of that continuing demand. If you'd like to nominate an amazing Aggie or have any comment about the show, give us a call at 6462042 or send an email to AggieAlmanac at Yahoo.com. And that's our show for this week. Thanks for watching. I'm Hilary Florin, hope you have a great weekend. for

Coming up on Aggie Almanac, it's a 500 year old tradition that has inspired these performers. It was used to be a lot. And NMSU sets its most ambitious fundraising goal ever. When we look at the success of other schools, we

know we can do it. Hi, I'm Hillary Florin and thanks for watching Aggie Almanac, K-R-W-G-T-V's weekly window on New Mexico State University. Imagine an art form that involves dance, music, martial art, and is steeped in a carefully guarded tradition that's almost 500 years old. Well, a dedicated group of people at New Mexico State have embraced that tradition and in the process, they're changing themselves and those who enjoy this cultural phenomenon. One by one, they trickle in. Don colored belts that designate their skill level and get ready to take part in a 500 year old ritual. I had kind of heard about it in high school, but I still didn't really know what it was until I actually went to

the first practice. I had seen it previously and a movie called Only The Strong, I think everyone who does got the way to seeing it. And then as soon as I found it, I just got the practice time and started coming up and doing it ever since. They range in age from 10 to over 30. Boys and girls tied together by the love of a tradition. You come in with a willingness to learn that's all you need and work out. It starts out slowly with exercises that prepare the body, mind, and soul. Usually the basic, you warm up, get everything nice and loose and goosey. You do arms, you don't have to your whole body. Even the warm-ups are a sort of dance combined with acrobatics and martial arts. And gradually the warm-ups turn into paired exercises. The closer you can get, the faster the smoother the better, obviously. So let's try to change the partners. I wasn't in good shape at all when I

started. I probably was about 20 pounds heavier than I am now and I lost it real fast. When I first started, I could barely do a push-up. When I first started, I didn't have upper body strength but you just keep coming in and it develops as you practice. Eventually the group forms a circle called a hoda. And to the beat of the music, they take turns sparring in the center. They call it a game. One that includes fluid acrobatic play, groundwork, sweeps, kicks, and fakes. A lot of people would call it sparring or maybe dancing but we call it a game that you're playing with each other. It's called the game where you kick on somebody, kick a trip, counter attack, attack, and stay out of the way. Make sure you don't

let on your butt. The whole role behind it is if you get hit, it's your fault, if you hit someone, it's your fault. So you have to really be, you have to really evade and then watch what you're doing whenever you're kicking at someone. It's a dance that mimics martial art. It's called capoeira. And because its origins in Brazil were shrouded in secrecy, no one knows for sure how or why it developed. The origins start in Africa around Angola. It's a country north of South Africa and when those slave trade was started with the Dutch and the Portuguese, they brought over slaves to Brazil to the sugar plantations and the slaves that the plantations just wanted to keep training for self-defense and stuff. So they started disguising it as a dance and a game. That way whenever their plantation owners would come by they wouldn't know what they were doing. Some people theorized that it came out of a self-defense kind of thing

to liberate themselves from slavery and survive. Others don't accept that theory. They think it's a mixture of all the African cultures that somehow just form just right to form the beginnings of what we have today. After slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, capoeira became associated with criminal gangs and anti-government activities and the police often showed little mercy in trying to stamp it out. It was used to be outlawed and then the person that took over as a dictator of the country, he saw it as an opportunity to further his career but in turn he authorized the practice of it in close quarters and secluded and that's how I started taking off. A few years after that, 10-15 years after that, we started getting larger and larger and then it was accepted as the national sport in Brazil in the 40s and 50s and since then it's just been growing.

Through the years, the art form lost its association with the poor underclass of Brazil and became popular nationwide. In turn to the century it was started to be more acceptable for women to do it from what I read. Before then it was more of a only male thing and not only that, it was more of a bug kind of thing. More of the street-wise person would be knowing capoeira versus your more affluent educated type of Brazilian or Portuguese person. Despite the refinements made to the art, capoeira remains demanding, requiring skills not only in dance, acrobatics and martial arts, but also in playing the traditional instruments. They introduce you to each instrument as you keep practicing and and they show you how to play and the songs and the lyrics. Basic up play of beats is a one, two, one. To do a real basic one.

Keep that one right there. Don't change it. So now you're going to hold it. There's there's symbols all the way around but here there's not so you put your hand and then you're going to go with her. The middle one is kind of a, you kind of just put your fingers on it like so. See that? You want to get that sound right there, but you want to keep that movement. You're going to do it there now. That's a good start right there, that's a good start. Put that head and you're doing it over and over. There you go. You're just playing in no time. You have to learn it all.

All you guys need to pay attention what's going on in the holder. When there's masters up here running it, you gotta need to pay attention what's going on. If they slow down, they speed it up. If they want certain people to play, if they play a certain tune, everybody needs to contribute, everybody needs to sing. And stay involved. Don't be just a bystander, get involved in the holder. If you're not going to play inside the game, make sure you sing, make sure you clap, make sure you contribute your energy. If you can play an instrument, you got to need to be switching on instruments a lot. You should have gone back on that one or something. Because the dance is set to the music, it's really just really rhythmic and the beating bow is the most important part of the music. The barren bow is this unusual looking instrument and is the heartbeat of the games. It's played by striking a steel string with a stick.

The pitch is regulated by a stone. Other instruments include tambourines and a conga-like drum. The lyrics are in Portuguese and focus on a variety of subjects, history, life, inspiration. The barren bow sets the pace and determines how the game inside the circle will be played. If it's slow music being played, you play a certain game called Angola, which is really close to the ground and close to each other. The music did take the rhythm. A slower Angola beat would dictate more of a close, cunning, cunning game. Nothing flashy, nothing extravagant. When the musical pace picks up, the performers react differently.

But then obviously as a temple picks up, you get more floreals, what we call it. More of the higher kicks, the fancier moves, the back flips, the escapes, if you will. Trips, throws, punches, everything. And while the ideas to avoid actual physical contact, accidents can happen. It's a martial art, I mean I can verify by the bumps and bruises and aches and pains that I've got. Broken noses that I've seen, blood that I've seen spilled, slight concussions that I've had. But when done correctly, the violent movements are controlled with a kind of gracefulness. Comradery is a part of the art, but the sparring entered into with respect for the partner and the group. There's a certain way to come into the game and then you kind of ask permission to play. And when you're given permission by the lead, percussion, the lead beating bow, then you go in, you play your game, counter attack attack,

kind of like a dialogue with another person, physical dialogue, back and forth, counter attack, attack, etc. And then you come out the same way, it's in ritual, you come out of the door if you will, of the Hoda. And back around to your spot and fill any voids. The Hoda or Circle becomes a living thing, fluid, with conflict and resolution, and always it seems in harmony. It's just something about it, just kind of, you know, I like the movement, the music, the whole atmosphere. It's just really made me appreciate just the different cultures. It's so graceful and powerful at the same time. The Kapueda tradition at NMSU dates back 10 years. From time to time, the student group organizes shows to raise funds and also to share this special form of dance, music, and martial art with the public.

We'll be right back. When we look at the success of other schools, we know we can do it, and if we all pull together and say, this is a university we care about, this is a community we care about, it'll happen. Welcome back. NMSU is getting very, very good at raising money, so good, in fact, it set a new goal for itself, the most ambitious ever at a university in New Mexico. It all started with the launch of the university's doing what counts campaign less than two years ago. That effort achieved its financial objective years ahead of schedule thanks to the generosity, of course, of a lot of people. If you've ever been inside the Stan Fulton Center next to the Aggie Memorial Stadium, you know firsthand what a terrific asset it is. The center opened in July 2004. It's more than 33,000 square feet of classrooms, computer labs, and offices. It houses an academic support and sports medicine facility for student athletes.

It's named for Stan Fulton, owner of the Sunland Park Race Track in Casino, who donated $3 million for the project. He also made financial gifts for the establishment of chairs in the education, business, and health and social services colleges. Fulton is just one of the benefactors who helped NMSU reach and surpass the $150 million fundraising goal that it set during its doing what counts campaign. That ambitious project was kicked off in October 2005 with a gala event. The comprehensive campaign was spearheaded with the help of NMSU alumnus Danny Villanueva, a former NFL football star, and Spanish language television pioneer. It was an idea embraced by the NMSU president. The overarching objective is to be able to enhance programs here at NMSU in such a way that we can really put ourselves on the national and international map. And that's what it's going to take. It's going to take private giving to complement what the state gives us if we really want to achieve the excellence we're committed to. Since then, the gifts have been pouring in. They include a $1.5 million donation by brothers Ed and Harold Chubb Foreman to the Civil Engineering Department to fund a chair and two professorships.

Alumnus Michael Johnson also stepped up to the plate with a $1 million gift to the College of Arts and Sciences to establish the first chair for the college in the geology department. One of the largest gifts to the university came in March with an in-kind donation of computer software systems, equipment, and training for the College of Engineering to help prepare students for careers in vehicle design, engineering, and manufacturing. The gift was from an organization called PACE, partners for the advancement of collaborative engineering education. It was valued at $88 million. The drive has been so successful and its goals reach so quickly and MSU increased the goal to $225 million to be reached by the year 2010. It's the most ambitious comprehensive campaign goal ever undertaken by a new Mexico University. NMSU already has big ideas for reaching its new ambitious fundraising goal. Here to talk more about it is Rebecca Dukes, Vice President for University Advancement, and Executive Director of the University Foundation. Thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for having me, Hillary. I know you've been a busy lady the last five years doing this. Tell us a little bit just about the NMSU Foundation, what it's all about. Well, gosh, you know, it's got a long history. It started out in somewhere around 1970, time period, really under Dr. Gerald Thomas. He was the one who really pushed the whole idea of having a foundation. And his concept was, as we needed to start thinking about private support, and that was pretty unheard of in those days because people back then still relied on the state to fund universities and foundations that were attached to universities. So he said, well, gosh, we've got to look at something different. There were a couple of professors who came far with the idea and said, I want to help in this area. And so some fundraising got started. But there was a time period, even as recently, and this is relative, of course, as the 80s, when we just had $20 million in certificates of deposit. So the foundation has grown from somewhere around $22 million to $40 million when I first came five years ago to now over 150 million in assets. So it's tremendous growth in a short period of time.

Yes, job security for you. Well, let's talk about that. That was forward thinking back then. Now private funding is becoming more and more important. And why is that? Well, the state funding is really decreasing, not just in New Mexico, but all over the country. Even in places, California in particular, you've seen that happen a lot. Arizona is down to something like, I want to say 19 cents or less, 15 cents on the dollar that they get from their state government. So because that's receding because of the budget problems that all states face, New Mexico is not quite there yet. We get about 29 to 36 cents on the dollar from the state, but we're getting closer and closer to that point where we can't get everything we need from the state of New Mexico. And I know a lot of people labor on the assumptions that tuition covers everything. It just doesn't. It doesn't cover it all. And so the things that really make an institution excellent, things like endowed shares and professorships and faculty funds and scholarships that are so important, do not happen unless private dollars support that.

So if we want to compete with what we like to call the big dog schools, like Stanford and Columbia and so on, then we have to have those private dollars to give us those margins of excellence that makes such a difference. All right. Well, what percentage of the university funds is coming from the private donors? Well, it would be roughly, I would say somewhere in the 20% range right now, we would like to see that grow. And that's not anywhere near where we would like it to be. We hope that'll come up, but it takes everybody. It's sort of like the Hillary Clinton's phrase, not with the other Hillary, where she says it takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village and a community to really raise funds for a university. And that includes everyone, whether it's students or faculty or professors or community people. Alumni, it's very important that alumni get involved with campaigns like we're doing. Those are the folks that will make the critical difference.

Nationwide, roughly a 90 cents of every charitable dollar comes from individuals like you and me. Not everyone thinks it comes from the Ted Turner's and those very wealthy individuals, but really it's the rank and file Americans that have made the difference in charitable gifts throughout history of our country, and certainly that's still true today. Well, we just came out of this piece right before our interview talking about the big donations that have made a huge difference in this aggressive campaign. But how much are you looking for from individual alums who are just out in the workforce and want to make a difference, but can't necessarily give that much? Well, I think it's not so much a factor of dollars as it is just participation. Will you participate in this campaign and have your voice be heard? Because I think it's important for people to say, gosh, if I give just a little, if I do something, I'm involved with the campaign and I'm participating. So right now, our alumni giving across the country, wherever our alumni live, is roughly about 6%, which is pretty pathetic. Sounds pretty pathetic.

Yeah, it's awful. It's not good. Our peer institutions, or our aspirin institutions like Clemson and so on, Clemson, for example, their funding is around 16% from their alumni. It still seems pretty low though. Yeah, you would think it would be higher, wouldn't you? I don't know what the thinking is there. I know I talked to an alum yesterday when I was in Chicago on business, and he's a graduate of another school. He says, I already gave a lot of money when I went to school there. I said, yes, people said. And he assumed that what you paid for in tuition and fees and books, because they are expensive, no question. That covers it doesn't. It just doesn't. It takes care of those basic, minimal needs. But what we really need to do is involve people in understanding that the private dollars give discretionary monies to their faculty, to the deans and the chair holders, to the president so that they can go in and say, gosh, we need to do something here. This is important. This is critical to the mission of the university. Whereas if we just rely on contributions coming in solely for other areas, those things won't happen.

For example, scholarships, we love them. They're beautiful. They're probably the most emotional gift you can make. The ability to help another student who came behind you, come along and do as well as you've done. But there are other needs on campus that are not as glamorous, perhaps. We have a Native American Center that we need to fund. We have athletics that always needs some kind of support. We have programs like Hotel Restaurant and Tourism. The English Department. One of the largest classes on campus probably has the least amount of funding, and that's criminal justice. That's our third largest graduating class, and we have one of the least forms of support to the criminal justice area. So those are areas that private donors could step in and make a huge difference. You saw the film on Stan Fulton. He's given over now over $7 million to New Mexico. Oh, it's phenomenal. What a beautiful man to do that. A true philanthropy, true philanthropy in his case. And Michael Johnson with a million dollars. I mean, those are gifts that just don't come from just the pocketbook, but come from the heart as well.

And they have huge impact. I guess that's the beauty about giving to New Mexico State. It doesn't matter how you give, where you give, or how much. But at New Mexico State, because of our size, your giving has the effect of throwing a big boulder into a pond, whereas in other schools, it's more like throwing a little pebble. When you're Harvard or Yale and you have those big endowments, gifts that you and I could make would just be like, oh, thanks. When people give to New Mexico State, we're like, thank you. Thank you. It's huge. It means so much. And people do want to see a return on their investment. So talk about what's different about this 2005 campaign than others in the past. Well, the other campaigns were just wonderful. And we still again really attribute this to Dr. Thomas and leading one of the last campaigns, which was the 1988, and it was the century campaign of the university. And that campaign in particular was something we call capital. And when you do a capital campaign, that's when you're saying to people, we want bricks and mortar. We need to build a building. We need something substantial, tangible to be done.

A comprehensive campaign kind of covers the entire waterfront where you're supporting endowed shares, endowed professorships, faculty assistantships, those kinds of things, as well as the scholarship monies and so on, that they're so critical. There's softer kinds of support, ones that help students and people individually and not just build edifices. So there are their monies that really help individuals. Endowed shares, if I could talk about that for a minute and tell you how important they are. A lot of people don't understand when an endowed chair does. It really what it does is it adds funds to an existing salary of a faculty member, so that they can concentrate in a particular area. And we bring experts in, for example, we have a person who is a chair holder in the College of Agriculture for water. And in a state like ours and in the Southwest, water issues are huge, really important. So those issues are ones that we want to address in a very specific way. And so we bring these experts in. Then if you're a student and you want to come study water issues or you want to study biology or nanotechnology or things that are of interest to you,

you're going to look down a list and say, what kind of professors do they have? Oh, so and so. I want to come to that school because they have that professor. So bringing funds in for that really are important. Draw people to the university. And real quickly, we only have a few minutes left, so I wanted to ask you, this isn't just focusing on the alumni, right? You're reaching a little further than that. We are. Our alumni, of course, are all over the country and the world, but we're asking the community. I think people move to Las Cruces, particularly people who are relocating, are moving to Las Cruces because they want to be in a community that's vibrant. And the university is what makes it vibrant. And so having the university here enriches their lives as well. So we want to involve those retirees and others that are moving here, come and play with us at the university, get involved and show us your involvement by making a gift in some fashion. And you think we'll beat this goal for 2010? We've set our new goal. We reached our goal of 150 million in December.

Yes, isn't that wonderful? It's just terrific that that's happened. And we owe it to so many people that that's come about. Our new goal is 225 million by the year 2010. It's big goal. It's big. It's ambitious. But when we look at the success of other schools, we know we can do it. And if we all pull together and say this is a university we care about, this is a community we care about, it'll happen. And this is a call to action right here, right now. And real quickly, before you go in the panorama, this issue that just arrived on my doorstep this week, you have a annual report for the foundation. Talk real quickly about that. Well, this is our first time to put the annual report in the panorama. We wanted to share the good news with everybody. And a lot of people are numbers people and they want to see those numbers. And you'll see an upward bar chart going on. I have to say kudos to our investment committee because those volunteers are the ones that have really helped our investments earn as well as they have done over the past few years. And additionally, we want to thank everyone who's contributed because those are those bar charts are going up. And our understanding that the philanthropic climate at New Mexico State University was a little bit more abundant.

And now people understand that the philanthropy that happens here makes a difference not only for the students that are here now, but those coming in the future. So it in an honors everybody who came before us. And so that's why we're doing it. That's why we're passionate and we care about what we're up to. And we have to add a thank you to you, Rebecca Dukes, because I see you at a lot of events around town and you are drumming up a lot of support. So we appreciate what you do. I love what I do and I hope that shows in the results and we think it does. Well, thank you so much for coming in today. And time now for our amazing Aggie of the Week when we honor someone here on campus involved in something we think is well amazing. Skills learned while studying to become a chemical engineer are something Arly Torres can take back home and share with their community in Palomas, Mexico. Torres is working alongside two other junior chemical engineering students at Enemysheu to find a cost-efficient method of reducing the high levels of arsenic and fluoride in the drinking water in Palomas and neighboring Columbus, New Mexico. The Enemysheu team is one of 42 funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to participate in a student design competition in April.

If you'd like to nominate an amazing Aggie or have any comment about the show, call us at 646-2818 or send an email to Aggie Almanac at Yahoo.com. And that is our show for this week. Thanks for watching. I'm Hillary Floren. Have a great weekend. Thank you. You

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