Report from Santa Fe; Garrey Carruthers

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. And by a grant from the Healy Foundation, tell us New Mexico. Hello, I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to report from Santa Fe. Our guest today is Gary Carruthers and I don't know whether to introduce you as President, Dr. Governor Dean Carruthers. Welcome back to the show. You can call me Gary to get to know me better. Okay. But really, you were a governor from 87 to 90. You were the dean of the business school for 10 years in there. You are a doctor because you got a PhD.

And now we welcome you as the president of New Mexico State University. And I've been doing that for about two and a half years and having a wonderful time. Yes. So I'll give you a little secret. If you want to stay young, young looking like myself, 76 years old, hang around with the students. It's true. I love the students. It keeps me young and alive and alert and so it's a great place for me to work at this time. Well, you were the first Aggie because you got a master, a BA in a master's from state. You're the first Aggie to finally be the president. I'm the only Aggie to ever be governor of New Mexico and the only Aggie to ever be president of New Mexico State. I would, some tell me I'm the 27th governor of New Mexico and the 27th president of New Mexico State. You'll see a lot of stuff with 27. Now the governor is debatable. I think I'm the 24th president, but I think they didn't count some lieutenant governors who filled in 24th governor. Right.

Yeah. I think I'm the 24th, but they down there time that I'm the 27th governor and the 27th president. So when you see my stuff, it has 27 on it, so anyway, I know I'm the 27th president. And I know where the right color, where my egg, your color is today. You got your egg, your gear on, yes. Well, when you took over in 2013, you launched with this motto that is, I think, just brilliant. The part that I remember is carrying community, transforming lives through discovery. You are always about discovery. Tell me what you mean by that. Well, I'll go through the whole thing quickly. Carrying community came from our students. When we talked to our students, do focus groups, they said, this is like, you know, this is like a community. This is like home. This is like family in New Mexico, so they said, okay, carrying community, transforming lives is all you do in education anyway. That's not you. But through discovery is particularly keen because when you go to college, that's when you discover your passion. You want to be an accountant or you want to be a sociologist or an engineer. You discover a whole new set of friends.

I mean, these are friends for lifetime. Your best friends will always be the people you went to college. Yes. And then we discover it in the Mexico state. We have our science and engineering programs, we're discovering new chili, we're discovering new robots doing that kind of thing. And then we have an extension service that discovers what the state needs from New Mexico State University for us to better serve them. So the discovery has to do with our students discovering themselves, our research and engineering and our extension service. So that's where that came from. And you actually go and visit all these county extension services. The one in Santa Fe, I use all the time. I've got a question about bugs or trees or parasites or something. They're wonderful and they're willing to come out and advise you. It's, we're so lucky to have the county extension service. That's part of the whole land grant. All land grant universities have extension service, ours is one of the better ones I might add. But we're a Carnegie Community Engagement University very recently designated about 350 of them in the country.

And part of the reason we're considered a community engagement university is because of our extension service. We have a lot of other activities that reach out into the community, but our extension service is very good. That's a huge honor for the Carnegie Foundation to name you, the community engagement university. But I'm just going to, you're going to blush. But these are, you, just this year you've gotten all these acculates here in the top tier of the famous U.S. News and World Report college guide for 2016, you're in the top 25 universities in America for Hispanics, okay, can we take a couple of more? Tell me what this value added by the Brookings Institute is because you're in the top 10 percent of that. But what is this value? Well, what Brookings did was a study said, okay, students, this is a capability of the students that came in to New Mexico State many years ago, how are they doing now financially at mid-career? And we have one of the highest value add-ids. We take students, as you know, in our states, sometimes they come from rural schools and not as well-prepared.

We take those students, train them, they have a good work ethic. At mid-career, they have one of the highest value add-ids of any university in the United States. We're in the top 10 percent. And so we think that's really cool. Our students are doing well. I think the average at mid-career is about $82,000 to $84,000 a year. Good. I hope they're staying here in New Mexico and earning that. Well, I can't tell you that they're doing that. Yeah. One other thing you got the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities, something called the Innovation and Economic Prosperity Award. And that comes out of our arrowhead operation. We have the arrowhead center there and it's all about incubation, entrepreneurship, developing new companies, assisting companies in New Mexico. And so we've been acknowledged by Association of Public and Land Grant Universities, that's been one of these prosperity universities, dedicated in particular to training young people to be entrepreneurs.

So we have a really good program down there. We just had a shark tank the other day, as a matter of fact, with five of our prominent business people. And it was our third shark tank and a young woman actually got some investment from these people for a piece of software that somehow analytically reads the brain and helps people that might have some kind of learning disability. So these are young people creating ideas. We take them to the shark tank and then the shark tank, ask them a bunch of questions and one of them got some investment. Oh, that is wonderful. So that comes from that prosperity university of trying to encourage young people to develop their own businesses, to promote the businesses, to find investment capital. And so I think one of the hallmarks of the New Mexico State right now is our entrepreneurship programs. Well, tell me, I wasn't going to get to this part yet, but I want to. So we know that New Mexico's economy has not bounced back from the 2008 recession. And when you look at the statistics in Albuquerque, the number of people leaving, the number of businesses leaving, what can you offer from the Airhead Institute and from state and

general to help stem the losses and to help provide inspiration, maybe funding who knows what to help the whole New Mexico economy. Well, we offer help to the whole New Mexico economy, actually just hired an extension agent to extend our entrepreneurship and incubation services to the entire state. So if you're a business in Raton and you have a new idea, something you think can be protected. And by the way, we're basically into new ideas and creating new businesses and new industry. We also have another unit called Small Business Development Centers and they will help any business whether you're trying to open a store, retail outfit or something like that. So if you're doing that, there's one venue that you can go to. If it's a new idea, perhaps it needs to be patented or copyrighted and you need to figure out a business plan how to do that, you come to the Airhead Center. That's wonderful. From anywhere in the state and we've had probably hundreds of ideas from around the state. I've got this idea, I think it'll work.

I think I can build a company on this so they come to us and we help them. Well that, I'm happy to hear that, that's what I was hoping for. Another function of the Airhead Center is the Domenici Center. Talk about that because every year you have this conference, you bring the national level minds to your that Domenici conference. You consider the best public policy conference in the region, in large part because Senator Domenici can pick up the phone and call some important people and say, I have my conference would you come out and talk to us. We were kind of highlighted this time by Governor Jim Hunt from North Carolina who did exactly what you're talking about in North Carolina 20 years ago, use your university system to build a strong economy. So we brought him out to talk to us about that and he left us with several good ideas. Then another very popular speaker was former Secretary of Transportation, US Secretary of Transportation, Peters from Mary Peters from Arizona, talking about the declining nature of our infrastructure and how if we don't begin to invest more in our infrastructure, all of us are going to have trouble with economic development, not just in Mexico, but we're

not keeping our highways up, our bridges up, our sewer and water lines, our power lines. All of that infrastructure is declining and we're not going to be competitive if we don't start making those investments. Two big highlights of our conference this year will receive by 1,000 people who subscribed to that. Great. You have two other big projects on campus. I was so glad that you are doing the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine. That's huge for the state. Talk to me about it. It's a major investment by the Burrell group. It's not owned by New Mexico State, it's hosted by New Mexico State. So while I serve on a board with the Burrell College, kind of an advisory board, it's a private enterprise on a public university. That's the way of the future in developing some of these programs going forward. We as a public could not afford another medical school in New Mexico. We already have a fine one at University of New Mexico, it's an excellent school.

But I think they have an opportunity for 125 students a year. We need more physicians. So when they approached me and said, would you mind hosting College of Osteopathic Medicine on campus? I'll give it a look. And we did, and we became very excited about it for a number of reasons. In our part of the country, which is more rural than up here, believe it or not, we just can't find enough general practitioners to serve our population. We're right on the border. We have our own set of border health problems that need to be addressed. And so we begin a negotiation. What's in it for New Mexico State? We're going to attract a whole lot of students who now want to be in the medical professions. Only about 200 a year can get into that college. But they're going to come to our university. We have nursing programs. We're going to do their chemistry, they're going to do all their requirements. And they give us a little money. We have a half a million dollars in scholarships that they'll offer to us. And we get land rent and utility to rent and that sort of thing. Not big financial deal with us, but it is a big deal for New Mexico and providing more

physicians. It's a big deal to New Mexico State by bringing in a whole class of students who now want to be in the medical services business. Now they may not all go to Braille, but they'll qualify at New Mexico State and they may go to UNM or they may go to some other medical school. Yeah. Any chance, you know what else we need is a dental school. Any room down there, anybody talking to you about a dental school because they've tried at UNM for years. The Braille College is rumored that that might be their next step. Oh great. But I don't want a veterinarian school. I don't want to deal with veterinarian schools. They are the most expensive thing in the world. And we, while we have all the animals in the world, we don't want to do veterinarians. It's cheaper to send our students to Colorado State, Iowa State, Texas, and UNM, actually pay to train them than it is to build your own school. Well you do. Well, maybe not the veterinarian side. By the way, we're speaking today with Governor Gary Corrothers, who's also the president of New Mexico State. One of your ideas that you had when you went in was to set up this heritage farm, right?

Kind of on the edge of the campus. For people who are at the convention center to study, but also people to realize what we've done in agriculture in terms of chili and pecans and onions. So we can have ag, but maybe not so much the animals. So talk to me about what you want to do with the heritage farm. It grapes, too, vineyard. We're going to have a vineyard there. We're probably going to put a winery there. Now the beer, the micro brewery, they want a micro brewery there. By the way, we teach making beer at New Mexico State, believe it or not. So there's pressure to do that. We wanted to mark the west side of our campus as an agricultural school. And to do that, we have just the prime piece of property. It's right by the conference center, and we're negotiating to build a hotel right next to it. And then there's about 20 acres there that we can put into crops. And then we can show people what we have discovered in the way of chili varieties or grape varieties or pecan varieties, irrigation systems, those kind of things. And the center of it will be a building and a doby building that was on the campus when

we bought the land to set up the campus in 1886. That building was there. And it was called the Seed House. And that's the name of it. It's called the Seed House. I actually went to school there. I learned about seeds there. So we're going to use the Seed House as the anchor plays for an educational center, have all our young students come in from the local public schools. And learn about these crops and where these crops came from and the kind of research we do. Then next to it, just up the way are the animals. But this is special to the kind of work we do in research at New Mexico State University and all the kinds of crops that we worked on over the years. Now also in your community, and I know you had something to do with this, is the Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum. What a jewel that is, and if I must say it is one of the best-named buildings because they named it after Bruce King, Governor King. That's a natural one. Of course. Of course. That's by the way on our campus, but that's actually managed by the State of New Mexico. We have 2,500 acres right around the campus.

And so we use it for things of this nature. We have Barbara Hubbard, one of the icons in Los Cruces, who's the person who's brought in all the shows, the Garth Brooks and then George Straits and everything. She wants to put up a pavilion where we can do performance. We need a new rodeo arena and we do a equestrian at New Mexico State. We need a arena from them. We have so much land there that we're trying to develop either commercially or for purposes for our community. The Farm and Ranch community is one. Heritage Farm is one. If we can do this pavilion, she wants that's another one for the community and the university become one. Oh. Wonderful. One other thing. There is another building that it's very aptly named by the State and that is the Carothers Building, which holds the State Library and Archives. That's perfect. Because you've always been for learning and education. Right. And Governor Richard asked me if he could do that and bless him for doing that. I really appreciate it very much. But when he asked me what building it came to mind that it had to have something to do with education.

And it's a great library. I know people use it for research all the time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's talk a little university stuff. I recently interviewed Janet Napolitano, who is a governor of Arizona, former Homeland Security Secretary. But now she's president of the University of California. And she's done some pretty bold things. One of the things she did was give her raise, for all of her employees, she raised minimum wage to 15 bucks. Like State of California wasn't doing it. The feds weren't doing it. She just said, that's it. We're doing it. And the only thing that they're able to do in California, because their economy is booming now, is if the parents make less than $80,000 and the kid can get into the university system, they don't pay any tuition. And another issue. They are booming if they can do that. Yeah. 55% of their students are now under that arrangement. Yeah. I wonder how they find answer university. Well, because of the research institute aspect of it and the out of state and out of country students.

Well, I'll give her some bad news research actually generally cost you more money than it produces. Yeah. So she's going to somewhere else. She must have a heck of an out of state tuition, but you cannot. And I'm not sure it's practical to have students come to a great university and not pay tuition. I think it's more practical to have them pay tuition and give them scholarships than it is to say, oh, this is a free, this is a freebie. Students need to appreciate the fact that somebody sacrificed them to be there. Yeah. Because it's another issue in the presidential campaign, which is someone saying should be free junior college for everyone, free college for everyone. And if you're hurting by talking about how they're going to finance it. No, I don't hear that part. Those are the very big numbers you're talking about. Yeah. They're going to take your house and your car just to have free community college and university tuition when you get through. It is a very expensive proposition. I go back to this. All students should have some skin in the game.

They need to work. I work my way through college, I about have scholarships as well. I have a much greater appreciation for what I got on the Mexico State University and I would say because I did, in fact, have to kind of buckle down. And Kathy and I were married and had one child before I graduated with my bachelor's degree, but I went on to master's in a doctoral degree and she worked part two. And so there's nothing wrong with having a little skin in the game, but we do need that support. We need scholarship support. We need internship support. We need all that. But free tuition doesn't click with me right now. Yeah. God bless. Napolitano. She can do it. Well, we'll see. We'll see. Another, there's some New Mexico issues I'd like to talk with you about. You've got a tremendous water institute there. Right. So, and now we're seeing with this Godzilla El Nino that's supposed to be coming and all this flooding in Texas. And what are you doing about, what are you doing about the drought, Gary? Well, you know, it's kind of interesting that people are willing to fund research for

water resources when it's drowsy. Yeah. But if it starts snowing like crazy this winter and continues to rain as it has an art part of the country, all of a sudden research and water resources will kind of go down the list of things we want to do. But what they're doing really is a whole lot of water planning. We are obligated to do a appropriate water planning because Texas always wants our water. Whether it's to the pecos or they want it to the Rio Grande, they always want our water. And the courts of rule, if New Mexico can demonstrate into the future that they have good and of beneficial use for that water, they can keep the water. But if we can't do that, if can't do that, then I think it jeopardizes the water going down the river. And so we're always in some kind of legal confrontation with Texas over this. So one of the things I think we're doing a much better job is trying to figure out how we're going to use this water. What kind of commitments are we going to make for the next hundred or two hundred years? Well, you know, you always think Texas is always flooding and they could just pipe it to other parts of their state.

And they could be south sufficient and not need our water. But you know, it was only last year Dallas had a drought never floating away. I'm going to San Marcos for a football game on Saturday in the places underwater and all that country was dry last year. Now it's all wet. I mean, it's flooding. And you've seen the flooding across the southeast and that's really dramatic. And I understand, and I hope you promise me, we'll get lots of snow up here in the mountains. Oh, I hope so. This wetter lots of snow because it eventually comes down the river to see us. Yes. Well, something else that seems to travel like water throughout New Mexico are these ethics problems that keep coming up. We have tried in the legislature what for ten years to get an ethics commission. You have so much experience in so many levels of successful operations. What do you think we can finally do to bring the ethics out, to have accountability, and to have some standards and educate?

It's not even the punishment aspect of an ethics commission. It's the education aspect. This is wrong. I remember when Michael Montoya, the treasurer, was busted for a huge amount of graft encryption. He simply said, but kickbacks is how we always do business in New Mexico. So we have to educate people that that's not the right way to do it. We've made a lot of progress. I'll have to give the Daniels funds some credit. They've invested about $2.5 million at New Mexico State University and Ethics and Ethics Training. I was a principal investigator on that. In that time, I chaired, co-chaired with the dean of the law school from UNM, two different task forces to address ethics issues. We recommended an ethics commission. The ethics commission has to have the authority to subpoena records, and some reason that causes people to stand back. But if they can't subpoena records, I'm not sure they can do the right kind of investigation. I don't know how many more events that we're going to have to have in our state, like our

secretary of state, who was supposed to be protecting ethics and finding- We were supposed to know all about campaign finance. And finance yourself in this pickle and having to resign. How many more of those events do we need before someone says we need a commission with subpoena power to investigate at least complaints? So the citizens can say, look, I think something's wrong here. Right now, the citizens say all they want to. I think it's unethical. Where do they go? What do they do? They complain to the employer, maybe the employer will listen. So I still believe, and I'll campaign again for an ethics commission, because I think it's absolutely essential. Many states have them already. They were- Oh, but seven. We're only one or seven that do not have ethics commissions. But this event alone, if it doesn't do anything else, but pushes over the edge, it would have been a success that something finally good happened from a bad behavior. But one of the laws that did get passed was that elected officials, if convicted of corruption and this sort of thing, would lose their pension and hear through the maneuvering of-

Well, yes, there's a boy being convicted, which is a free sign. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And what I'm concerned about is that the citizenry just gets jaded and they say, oh, they're all corrupt. We have wonderful politicians, wonderful lawmakers, wonderful university presidents. We're doing so much to make a difference. And I want people, you know, to have faith, to restore the faith somehow, that someone is working for the good of New Mexicans. This has been progress made, though. When we got the Daniels Fund grant, we began a program working with our county extension agents, which we mentioned earlier. And they had a thing called county college. And that county college was training employees at the county level about ethics. It's now morphed into a whole new program where you can get a certification. I think you get 16 credits, you become a certified advocate. It's a very successful program.

Now they're municipal league, the county employees. All of them now begin to use some of that training for their employees. So at least we're starting with the employees. We also have developed a film for state government. And it's one of those films that you watch a film a minute and then ask your question. You do one or two, and if you get it right, you go on, and if you get it wrong, they go back and refresh your memory about it. I think that's going to be unveiled fairly soon, and we did that for the state in the Mexico. So we're going to begin at least to train the employees. Now, we need to start with training the managers, because oftentimes the managers are an issue. But not always. In our county, we had just a couple of three clerks selling data from our, I think there were three people in the county clerk's office have just now admitted guilt, and I think it would be some time, but that's just people working in the office giving out data for money, obviously, for compensation. So sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't start with all of our managers and convince them what's ethical.

Let's understand ethics, what's right, what's wrong, and then we can work on the employees at the same time. And also if they are in some way held responsible for what their employees do, and the employee say, well, we didn't know, and the manager did know, then maybe there should be a little bit of penalty there. But who knows? It's like squishing mercury. It's very, very... Well, in the county trades office, I was told that a lot of people knew that was going on, and nobody said anything. Yes. Now, we've almost come to the end of our time. I understand that you have planned some efficiencies for a New Mexico state looking at the future. What are some of your plans? We're trying to develop a sustainable university. Our population is not growing. We have 32 different institutions of higher education. Graduation rights not improving. The market is kind of flat. So what you have to do is make sure your university is sustainable. So we're going to change our organizational structure. We're going to improve our purchasing. We're going to improve ICT, or it's called computers, and we're going to do some other things with finance to gain somewhere between 50 and 60 million dollars of efficiencies

over the next six years. Great. Good work. Now, your theme is transforming lives through discovery. Is there something else that we have yet to discover in this conversation about what New Mexico state is doing? Well, I think the thing that I've discovered since I've taken this job is just how great a university in New Mexico state is. When I was dean of the College of Business, I was so proud of that college. I was amazed at how little I knew about that university, even though I'm a graduate twice. I've worked around there for a long period of time. It is amazing the kinds of research we're doing out there. We have a cancer research team. I didn't even know existed. It's doing powerful stuff in this guy. In cancer research, everybody says you have to have a medical school to do it. No, you don't. Most of the research in cancer is not in medical schools. It's with biologists and chemists and microbiologists and that kind of thing. And so I was just blown away with the kind of work we were doing. And I was just there in my own little hut with the College of Business paying attention. In present and I discovered, wow, what a fantastic place.

Also discovered athletic programs, which can be pro and con, depending upon whether you win or not. Also discovered personnel issues, personnel issues will spend, you'll spend more of your time during the day as a president of the university doing personnel than you ever did as a dean. So, I've discovered a lot of things that I'm having a great time. I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying my great university and particularly our students. Well, you've helped us discover the wonderful things that you're doing. So I want to thank you, our guest today, is Gary Careathers, a president of New Mexico State University, former governor, former dean of the College of Business at State. Thank you for coming in and telling us what's going on. Always a pleasure. The life is to any time. Thank you. And I'm Lorraine Mills. I'd like to thank you our audience for being with us today on Report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Most archival programs of Report from Santa Fe are available at the website reportfromsatafay.com. If you have questions or comments, please email info at reportfromsatafay.com.

Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants 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. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico.