NMSU prez must fit with institutional identity
Michael Swickard
“It was an interesting choice for The Ohio State Football Team to play the Aggies. I guess Ohio State’s first choices of opponents were unavailable; Golden Acres Retirement Home had the flu and little Bobby’s Cub Scout pack was having a Halloween party. On the plus side I know it was a good thing financially. The announcers mentioned that the Aggie team couldn’t even provide snacks during training camp. And this is a division 1 team?” Abbey (via email)
The above e-mail highlights New Mexico State University’s leadership problems. In college football the be-all and end-all is the team’s win/loss record. Ohio State this last week posted a bogus win while NMSU suffered a bogus loss.
Bogus money games are short-term gimmicks meant for one season. NMSU has played them each year for three decades. Worse, this year the football leadership begged for snacks, thereby opening the program up to ridicule by the national television announcers. One wonders if sought-after football recruits will come to a program that is panhandling the public for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?
This is not a criticism of the Aggie football players and coaches who give their all in a flawed process not of their making. I attend every game and have liked the coaches. The bogus game issue is above their pay grade.
Speaking of those leadership issues, the NMSU Presidential Search Committee picked five finalists and was instantly embroiled in controversy. Two of the five were tainted by issues at their home institutions. The search committee chair stated they knew those two had baggage.
The professional fields represented by the finalists are: English literature, math, education, geology and agriculture. One even looks like former NMSU President Mike Martin, who came and left with baggage. Alas, that candidate is one of the two with possible issues and is the only agricultural professional.
Perhaps the search committee was complying with a political directive from Santa Fe to frame the presidential final list so that four of the five were inferior or had defects, so the politically desired candidate would be selected. I do not know, but with the Internet I knew of the scandal problems in less than 10 minutes of searching.
Why else would the committee do this?
Institutional identity
Educationally, NMSU needs a president matching the institutional identity, or NMSU will be led away from its 120-year identity. On paper, that requires agriculture or engineering leadership. Politically, outside forces might want the candidate with the education background. He is originally from the University of New Mexico and may be the choice of some politicians.
I do not know any of the candidates, but I have known all of the NMSU presidents back to Hugh Milton. I also come from a pioneer family and have written on New Mexico, history including the history of NMSU.
NMSU is a land-grant institution, so the role of the president is to support and enhance that identity. The commonality of NMSU presidents in the past is that each of them improved and expanded the institution but did not fundamentally change the institutional identity.
While I personally liked Interim NMSU President Waded Cruzado, her background was not agriculture or engineering, so her role was to just hold the reigns until the next president was selected. If the possibly already chosen president is not from agriculture or engineering, NMSU could flounder in regard to its core mission.
UNM, not NMSU, is the state’s comprehensive school
Currently the six New Mexico institutions of higher learning each have different core missions. Importantly, each must know what it is not since it cannot be all things to all people at all times and in all ways.
In New Mexico the only truly comprehensive institution of higher learning is the University of New Mexico. It has all of the components of a comprehensive university including undergraduate and graduate programs along with law, medical and pharmacy schools. UNM does not have an agricultural and cooperative extension role, which is New Mexico State University’s statewide role.
Likewise, there are regional roles that Western, Eastern, Highlands and New Mexico Tech fulfill in New Mexico. Each has regional undergraduate and graduate programs,but they do spend money trying to be another statewide comprehensive university. Why would New Mexico need or want more than one comprehensive university in the state? There is no reason at all for that expensive duplication other than mindless political ego.
Because of its core mission, UNM would not hire a president with an agricultural background any more than Western, Eastern, Highlands or New Mexico Tech would. That is why NMSU must always have the right land-grant institutional leader.
Otherwise, it would be like having the Aggie band director coach the football team. While he can blow the whistle well, the deep understanding of football necessary to make the program thrive would not be there despite how sincerely he wanted to lead the football team to victory.
Likewise, I am certain all five of the final candidates are swell people and would all have interesting things to contribute. However, only professionals who have worked closely with agriculture and engineering for their entire professional lives are really qualified to lead NMSU.
While I regularly opine about a variety of subjects, this institutional identity issue is important to me in part because my professional background and Ph.D. is in educational administration. To me, making a political choice for NMSU president would be as fundamentally flawed as the Aggies playing Ohio State.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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Thank you Doctor for clarifying your position, now I understand what you meant. Sorry I took it wrongly. Coming from a dirt poor family with many “characters” in it, I am somewhat sensitive about people being judged by their family and not their own merits. I really think your family is irrelevant to your abilities and value, and should not be used for judgements, though I know that a bit naive in general these days. I think the larger NMSU familys’ judgements and views of these candidates is very relevant, as you will have to live with the choice in the end and you should have your say. I would just reinterate my position that a strong leader is needed, not just one with the “right” degrees. I think Dr. Ortiz looks like an outstanding candidate, in spite of a Ph.D. in special education, early childhood development. He is and has been a leader, he has accomplished many things, he has a stellar career going. Intangibles will always be just that, judgement calls made by those who actually have the decision to make, the Regents. Cheers Doc, and I always enjoy your columns and comments, whether or not I always agree, they are always well reasoned and thought out.
Dr. J – As Heath will attest, I very rarely comment even once on one of my columns and never twice. Despite this being my third post I still feel the need to clarify: I am not recommending Dr. Ortiz for NMSU President. All I have said is that I will not be troubled if he is selected. That is a heck of a lot different than pushing him for NMSU president.
I always want an Agriculture or Engineering professional to lead NMSU because that is NMSU’s core identity. Period. End of story. However, having personal knowledge of the Ortiz family allows me to accept his choice without dismay, if that is how it is going to be given the NMSU Presidential Search Committee’s final five, now four. I was not on the search committee and I have no say in the choice of the next NMSU president. I have no snap with any of the NMSU regents or in the New Mexico Governor’s Office. I was given the honorary title, Colonel, Aide-de-camp to a Democrat governor’s office years ago which carries absolutely no influence whatsoever even with my dog, Conrad.
NMSU is a one-in-a-kind institution of higher learning in New Mexico which was the point of the column. I appreciate your (Dr. J’s) concern and enjoy reading your comments regularly.
“ I put a lot of stock in family”. Indeed Dr. Swickard, and so do the Chicago politicos machine, and our own beloved La Politica. There is much more than family and personal knowledge of same in a President for NMSU. It is nice to hear your personal stories of Dr. Ortiz’s family, I am sure they are wonderful, but that is not how people are (or should be) selected for jobs, unless you live in Chicago or Santa Fe that is.
Golly Dr. J, what else is better? Former NMSU President J. Michael Orendorf was very highly touted but had personal flaws inconsistent with the institution. He was gone in seven months. I liked him in his interview and he wrote an email to me following up on a question about distnace learning that I used in my 1998 NMSU dissertation. Mike Martin was initially very well liked. So I have liked the two recent Michaels though many at NMSU did not. I was not ultimately sorry to see each go.Having a knowledge of the family character is important to me. Again, I do no know him and did not attend his public sessions while at NMSU. My point is that regardless of not having a specific ag background which it appears the search committee made sure by their choice there would not be, I would not be unhappy with Dr. Ortiz, having known his family in Carrizozo. I put a lot of stock in family.Dr. J wrote: November 11, 2009 • 4:13 pm (Edit)
Not biased by personal experiences are ya Doc?
Not biased by personal experiences are ya Doc?
My friends on this blog – while I looked over the professional biography of each NMSU presidential candidate, it was not until he was here in Las Cruces that I realized Dr. Michael Ortiz was from Carrizozo, New Mexico and I have been close friends with some of his relatives, though not him.
My grandmother was an school teacher in White Oaks, Three Rivers and Cloudcroft from 1908 until she started a family in 1923. My grandfather worked for the Southern Pacific in a number of roles including being an engineer on steam locomotives. My family still has their “ranch” south of Carrizozo and I have lived and worked in Carrizozo. I owned and operated the weekly newspaper, the Lincoln County News which is headquartered in Carrizozo from 1977 through 1980.
In the little ranching towns someone’s degrees from college is far less important than his standing in the community. The Ortiz family is a pillar of the area with member who have served honorably and with distinction in the roles of Judges, Sheriff and business leaders. I do not know Michael Ortiz but I know and think very highly of his family.
Pulling in my horns a bit and having known all previous NMSU presidents back to Hugh Milton (though not while he was president) I will not be dismayed in the least if Dr. Ortiz becomes the next NMSU President. He seems to be the best candidate.
Well, we only have 4 left now to deal with.
As the world moves forward in time, NMSU must find a way to keep it’s identity but also embrace the needs and demands of the 21st century. Look nationwide at other land-grant institutions and you will see that agriculture has become only one of several scientific disciplines those schools take ownership of. We can and should still be a leader in cutting edge agricultural education, but we need to be seen more broadly as a SCIENCE school, whether it’s the hard sciences, applied sciences or the social/educational sciences. The future of agriculture is changing, and will demand professionals who know how to incorporate the results of other disciplines into their work. There is no reason that anyone from any background cannot believe in and provide leadership for NMSU, as long as they are committed to educational excellence, community involvement, and inclusive decision making.
I totally agree with the previos comments and disagree with Dr. Swickard. NMSU needs the strongest, most inspiring, and most competent leader. Ag is not the be all and end all for NMSU, nor is engineering. Leaders come with all sorts of backgrounds. As a college Prez, what you got your Bach., Masters, or Ph.D. in matters little. What you have done as an administrator and what you will do and how you will do it are much more important.
It is time to sop being a cow college, period. Agriculture is a near dead industry in New Mexico, and would be if it were not for the daries and supporting feed suppliers. Just for the record my family was ranching here before there was a college to write history about.
As an employee of NMSU with a very small veiw of the big picture, I can see enough waste and lack of accountability to keep then next two Presidents busy for their entire tenures. Hire a Presdent who can make use of the resources rather than wasting it all on cronism.
Agriculture should not be a major priority of NMSU anymore than their football team should be playing in Division I.
I agree with you about making a political choice would be a mistake (I am shocked at how politics is so deeply embedded in New Mexico’s higher education), but I don’t agree that you need an aggie or an engineer as president to be a success. I’m retired from Penn State, which is very much like NMSU, and our current president is a sociologist. The president who led us to greener pastures was a muscicologist. You don’t have to be a medical doctor to be the CEO of a hospital; you have to be a good administrator. I hope NMSU gets a great person for president and leads it to greener pastures.