Report from Santa Fe; Garrey Carruthers

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . That's what we expect all of our kids to do. Right now, we graduate them at the end of high school

and people say, well, that's the end. I don't have to do anymore. Sometimes we're graduated at the end of our bachelor's degree. That's it. I don't have to do anymore. That's not good enough for New Mexico if we really want to be the kind of high-tech, high-income state that we desire to be. I know that a lot of the education people try to view it as a seamless web of actually pre-K and not just through 12th grade, but through college, through 16. And that takes a lot of spiders spinning that seamless web. I want to come back to the economic implications of this because I believe you have some figures about how much a person who is graduated from high school earns as opposed to a college graduate. Right. And these are just 2000 census data and very available. But if you didn't graduate from high school, your average income is about $18,000. If you didn't graduate from high school, it's more like $27,000. So if you look at that, there's a $7,000 difference there almost. And for Pete's sake, I don't understand why young people don't see that

and say, my gosh, I'm not going to give up that much money on an annual basis. But if you were going to get a bachelor of science degree, the average income in New Mexico is $51,000. And if it's greater than a bachelor's degree, that is a master's in a PhD. It gets around $74,000. So there's plenty of economic incentive to stay in school and to progress because you're going to be in the workforce for 25, 30, 35 years. And even $7,000 a year over 30 years is a big number. Yeah. And so these kids are giving up because maybe they want to buy a car, they want to chase women, and they want to have a good time, whatever. And they're going to give up a pretty handsome income for the next 30 or 35 years if they don't take care of the education. Now, how much of this is cultural? I know Ernie's old Irish grandmother kept saying, first, get an education. At any juncture in his life, it was all about education. Here are the abuelitas, the old people saying that you have to have an education. But who is speaking in the Native American community and who is speaking in the Hispanic community

to continue your education? Well, I think there's a lot of that. But many of our students are first-generation in our country as well. And if you think about it, if you came up from Mexico and all of a sudden your parents have a job in say, Southern New Mexico, your standard living has gone up rather dramatically from where you were in Mexico. So that's a big movement upward financially for them so they may feel comfortable with that. And what I don't think we can do is expect the parents right now to carry that load of the message. I don't think they're inclined to do it. Many of our Native Americans have never been to college. So why would they advocate college? Many of these Hispanics have never been to college. Why would they advocate college? So we personally have to take that on someone else. And I believe we have to set higher expectations in a variety of different ways. I'll give you an example in El Paso, Texas in the El Paso School District, as I recall. They were trying to move that school district from last to first in Texas and they did it.

But one of the things they did to those young students who were first-generation in this country is long about the third and fourth grade when you start writing. They would always ask them to write a story about what they were going to be after they graduated from college. Did they want to be a doctor? Did they want to be a scientist? Did they want to be an astronaut? And so because at home people weren't talking about going to college and after college, they decided to introduce it in the school systems. And so I think one of the tricks we might follow is very simply just asking students at that early age to begin to think about just going on the way through college. But if they're not getting that at home, then we need to intervene in the system and make sure it happens. There is very tricky. Because it assumes that they're going to college. What do you want to be afterward? So that's a given and they're thinking about the rest of their life. Do you have some other tricks up your sleeve? Well, I believe that the universities, for example, ought to be more engaged with the public schools too. I think there's been a disassociation between public schools and the universities. And what we're trying to do now

at the Mexico State University and the College of Business is to reach down into, say, the sixth or seventh grade and tell these people what the opportunities are. Because if we're sitting over here on our own little island and no button is informing these students about what's possible like $51,000 a year, in fact, if you've graduated with a bachelor's degree, if they don't know that, then why would they become enthusiastic about finishing high school and going on? In the Mexico, we're one of the worst days. Of 100 freshmen students in high school in New Mexico, only 11 of them will graduate from college. Of 100 freshmen students in high school, only 11 of them will graduate from college. It's one of the worst records in the United States. How have our efforts with the lottery success scholarship and now there was going to be a $50 million fund that the governor wanted for need-based financial aid? How have these been making a difference? Big plus.

In fact, in the Center for Public Policy and Higher Education report card, we get high marks for participation. That is, high marks from graduates of high school going on to college. We get a B-plus, I think it is. So we're up there pretty high among all of the state. The problem is, we lost all the students from the ninth grade to the senior. The ones that survived are very likely in part because of the scholarship to go into college. The problem is, we lost them back here in high school and as a consequence, they'll probably never go to college. Now, how are we going to reach those? The ninth through 12th grade? We have to intervene about the sixth or seventh grade. That's what we believe that we have to go into the sixth and seventh grade. We're also working with teachers to try to encourage teachers to think about advocating business careers and so on. But we need to go into the public schools and explain to these students what the opportunity to do. You want to be a journalist? This is what you need to be a journalist. You want to be a doctor? This is what it takes. Some families are doing this.

Some kids do it on their own. It's remarkable that some kids are so intuitive that they can figure this out themselves. We have great examples. I remember one time I went to the Governor's Prayer Breakfast here. There was a kid from Water County and you wouldn't count them in Water County generating a whole lot of college graduates generally. This kid had already written two books. He couldn't have been more in 23, 24 years old. I think he'd been to Oxford as I recall. I mean, a kid was fantastic. It can be done if these kids just have some information to convince them that that's a path they want to follow. What about programs like Take Our Dotties to Work and things where they get, they're aiming at the fifth and sixth, fourth and sixth grade level of just going out and seeing another profession kind of expanding the horizons of what's possible. I think those are good programs. In fact, those kind of programs that introduce students, as you know, we're built in a spaceport, I think. Oh, yes. And we'll talk about that in a bit. Yeah, that's our next. But we're built in a spaceport.

But one of the reasons I was so supportive of the spaceport is I could envision a big grandstand here and we're going to shoot a rocket off. And we bring all of our school kids in and we put them into grandstands and we explain to them about the rocket, where the rocket's going, the nature of the program. We shoot a couple of rockets and then we say to these kids, if you really want to be in this industry, and you know, they like rockets. Oh, yes. They all buy the rocket stuff. And it would say, if you really want to be in this industry, you need to go on to school, become an engineer, study math, study science, etc. I think to demonstrate to them something that's very exciting and at the same time remind them that to be part of that excitement, you really have to stand still. And it's so passionate of the commitment. I mean, people who love space travel, I mean, they can do the math. They can do every little step along there because the image is so powerful. The dream is so real. So let's talk about the spaceport. I know that you were very much in favor of it and that state will probably have some programs that kind of dovetail with the spaceport

when it's finally established. Well, we have big visions, of course, of the Las Cruces, because it's nearby. Uh-huh. People think it's just north of Las Cruces. It's quite a ways north of Las Cruces is actually near a truth of consequences. But it's out in a pristine grassland that you notice down in that part of the country. Uh-uh. We think several things can happen, as a matter of fact, we now have a fledging aerospace engineering program at New Mexico State University. It'd be the only one in the state. Maybe joint with New Mexico Tech, that's still under discussion. But in fact, we need to create more aerospace engineers. If we have a spaceport, that's really going to drive this program. We have a market in New Mexico State, which the Arrowhead Center, which I'm affiliated with. We have a vision of locating many of these aerospace companies on our research park and have a synergy with our university. They'll hire students. They'll use them for interns. And at the same time, they have a lot of scientists and engineers who could be adjunct faculty members at New Mexico State University.

We see that. And then there's all the, what they call terrestrial tourism aspects of it. If you start shooting rockets, you reach the level that some of these companies believe are going to get to in the next five to ten years. You start doing that. There's going to be a need for mom and the kids. Let's say dad's going to go on a, on a, the space trip. And if he's just going to go suborbital, it's only about like 43 minutes. But to prepare to go suborbital takes you a week or so, because you have to go through tests, and you have to learn safety procedures and everything else. Well, what are mom and the kids doing? Well, he's doing that. Why don't we send him up to Santa Fe and do a little shopping? Maybe drop by Albuquerque and pick up a few things. Go over to Roswell and see the Alien Museum. You need to have all of these features, because the families are going to come along. They've been waiting to shoot dad into space for a long time. And now it's their chance, and they're going to be with them. And as a consequence, you can see a rather dramatic development, I think, in opportunities. There are companies that are talking about five-star hotels, and golf courses and things of that.

Of course, we're talking 10, 15 years down the road, because this is an infant industry. But in addition to that, these rockets take manufacturing. They take new fuels. They take all kinds of things. We right now in Las Cruces have a company that's into rocket racing. Part of that attraction. Apparently, all you do in rocket racing is you take the NNAPLA Speedway and you set it up on the edge like this. And then you fly around like this and they actually pitstop these rockets. They can only stay in the air, a limited period of time. And then they land on an airport runway and you have a pit crew like you do a NASCAR, and you fuel the rocket in a way you go. And so I ask, how do you stay on the course? How do you know they're not cutting corners? And it's all virtual. They have it in a heads-up display on their helmets. And they can track whether you're staying within the boundaries of the race course. Well, that's pretty exciting stuff. These guys believe that there's going to be the next NASCAR is going to have to do with rocket racing.

It's going to be based in Las Cruces, New Mexico. There's a lot of exciting things happening. And then, educationally, of course, I still believe that we can inspire a lot of kids to follow on math and science curriculum that they wouldn't otherwise do. I want to pay tribute to one of Las Cruces as finest former citizens. Clyde Tomba, who was the only United States citizen to discover a planet. He discovered the planet Pluto. And I was so gratified to know that a month or so ago, when NASA finally sent that rocket to Pluto, that some of Dr. Tomba's ashes were on that rocket. Going, isn't that wonderful? And so, all in that area, you have so much. You have white sands. And didn't the proximity of that kind of protected airspace of white sands affect their choice of space part? Yeah, I think that's the driver as a matter of fact. The reason the spaceport is supposed to be located where it is. It's in a parcel of a land that's west of white sands missile range. But the missile range controls the airspace to infinity. But they don't use it that much.

They occasionally close it. I used to be a pilot and I used to fly north to south. And you always had to call and see if that airspace was open. And generally speaking, 90% of time was open and you can fly over it. But they control it. Then when they had a missile shooter, something they would close it for safety reasons. It's one of the few places in the United States that you have from ground to infinity, controlled airspace that's not used very much. And white sands is the other. Now we're not going to use the white sands. They have their own programs over there. And they don't want to be interrupted. But if you're going to miss airliners and everything else, you better have clearance all the way to the top. And so that was what I think one of the drivers. The second driver is a remote. These people who fly these rockets are not interested in being around cities. Oklahoma City has an older base that they're trying to make a spaceport. The problem with it is folks don't want to fire rockets around communities that large. So the remoteness is attractive. The third feature is it's fairly high elevation. You can fly off a Mojave in California

or you can fly off a coast. But you have to have a lot more lift to get up to the first 3500 feet. And so you start at 3500 feet as you're going into space here. And that apparently is a big savings. It takes less of a rocket in order to do that than you would have to if you did Mojave or California. So there's some advantages to being in that particular location. Well, it's a very exciting enterprise and we're all watching. I know that Florida tried to lure them back and offer them again tax incentives. Oh, yes, they did, but I think they did. We still have a 3500 feet to do. Oh, did anything else come out of this latest session? I know you're up here a lot that affects you or state. Well, the thing that didn't come out of it is part of the development of the spaceport required the road funds. Oh, yes. And I understand that grip two was not funded. I understand the governor was not real happy with that. But what apparently we did get out of this particular legislature

is the initial investment in the spaceport itself. But now we have to travel on a dirt road to get there. So that's not going to work for a long period of time. The future in the past are a little too close there. But yes, I think things came out of the legislature. I think higher education in general was reasonably pleased with like 4.5% increase for employees. It's been a long time since we had a significant increase for either faculty or staff at the universities. I think they thought that was pretty good. There's a $60 million capital outlay fund for maintenance of universities. And if you've been around most of our universities, the maintenance has kind of fallen on bad times. We have been able to keep up. That would be something very important. $20 million for endowed chairs. As you know, I'm a big fan of endowed chairs. I think it not only lets you attract, but also to retain important faculty members. And it actually advances the prestige of the university to have these chairs. There's a Gary Carruthers endowed chair at UNM. There's actually two of them.

Okay, where are they? There's an endowed chair in the Honors College, a million dollar chair, the Gary Carruthers chair, in the Honors College. And then there's a Gary and Katherine Carruthers, a million half dollar chair at the Mexico State. Kathy and I gave a half a million dollars to New Mexico State University. It was matched by a million dollars from the same endowment fund. If we would give them a half a million dollars, they would set up a chair in economic development. And so there's one called the Gary E. and Katherine T. Carruthers chair, as a result of a contribution. Kathy and I made, but the state matched it with a million dollars. And that's why I think it's so important we have. I can't afford a million a half, but I could at that time afford a half a million. A lot of people will help us. If they put in a half a million and the state matches with a half a million, we could really advance the cause of keeping really good faculty members on our campus. You were involved in so many, many things. And they're all kind of moving in the same direction. But what is your favorite of all the projects? It's me. I think it's the development of the graduate programs in the Mexico State.

We have moved our MBA program to Los Alamos. We have 17 students up there. We actually come up to Los Alamos to teach. And as the results are doing that, White Sense Missile Range demanded that we come over there and take our MBA program over there. And we have 41 students over there in an MBA program. Why is that important? All of these people are well trained. Many of them have risen up through the ranks, but know very little about managing or budgets or that sort of thing. And so they're reaching the point in their career that they need to gather in some of those kinds of credentials. Human resources, business law, or accounting. And so we see growing that program as being an important contribution to economic development. We're also trying to create entrepreneurs. The Arrowhead Center is an important project for me. That's where we commercialize intellectual property in New Mexico. And that's moving along just fine. You were just the keynote speaker and the technical research collaborative. I know you're the president of that. I'm the chairman. The chairman. Acting for the governor of the technology research team. And you keynoteed the Los Alamos Awards for patents and grants.

And that seems to again combine all of your business and education interests together there. Well, it's interesting. I'm basically an educator and always have been. Everywhere I've been, I try to be an educator. But that links up so well with health care as we noted before. But also with economic development. The solution to economic development is to have the best workforce in the world and everybody will want to come in. We'll run out of water before we ever run out of prospects. So education is a key in my view. I know it's overly simplified. But that will lead us to the promised land of health care and economic development quicker than anything else. And yet, at that Los Alamos event, you introduce yourself as a businessman and a recovering politician. Now, I have to do that because I try to divorce myself from a past if I can. Actually, I enjoyed being governor of the state in New Mexico. It was really a lot of fun. But when you asked me what I ever really wanted to do many, many years ago, I was interviewing for a job. I was 35, 36 years old. And it was outside the university job.

And they said, what do you want to do when you grow up? And it caught me by surprise. It was first question in an interview out of state. Just, you know what I'd like to do? I have a whole host of different experiences. But I want to go back to New Mexico State University and work with students when I'm all through. I'm living the dream. You really are. You really, really are. Well, you know, that's just the perfect ending for the show. I mean, not many people get to live their dream. But when we look at all the things you've done, you're work with water, with the department of the interior, with the tax reform commission, with education, with business, with health care. Really, you're a Renaissance man. You'd think I'd have skills by now. Well, I thank you for joining us and sharing your vision and your insight. Our guest today is Dr. Governor, all of that. Gary Careathers, thank you so much for joining us. Indeed, my pleasure. Thank you for asking me. Okay, it's my pleasure indeed. And I'm Lorraine Mills.

I'd like to thank you our viewers for being with us today on report from Santa Fe. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from New Mexico Tech, on the frontier of science and engineering education, for bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees. New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for, 1-800-428-TECH. Thank you very much. This does not even include the property tax for every individual in Mexico, so for some of you who are a family of four, are not paying $25,000 a year in all this taxes, and that

includes federal taxes and grocery seats and income taxes and everything like that. We are going to have to be careful not to burden people with that much taxes because it's going to come back and haunt us at a later date. So we can't see the increase every year at eight, nine percent. I think more reasonable one would probably be a three, three and a half percent growth if we still have those revenues. Well, unfortunately, we've only budgeted PBS only years, there's twenty-six and a half minutes for the show and we've come to the end of our time. I want to thank you both so very much. Lucky Varela, Luciano, Lucky Varela, Democrat from Santa Fe, a member of the House of Representatives. Thank you so much. And Representative Larry Laranaga, a Republican from Albuquerque, thank you so much for joining us. It's always a pleasure to be here. I feel that way too. Hey, I'm Lorraine Mills. I want to thank you, our viewers, for being with us today on report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week.

Work from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future.