APD Protest Photos, March 25
Story will be in the Tuesday April 1 issue
Photos By Rene Thompson, Editor-in-chief
Month: March 2014
New campus STEMulates downtown
By Nick Stern, Senior Reporter | Photos courtesy of CNM.edu
Administration has had an innovative and different way to address the intersection of entrepreneurship, education, and economic development in Albuquerque’s down¬town community, and the STEMulus Center was found to be the solution, which is planned to be accessible by the 2014 fall semester, Chief Community and Engagement Officer, Samantha Sengel said.
CNM is currently leasing space for the new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) center at the First Plaza Galleria building at 20 First Plaza Ctr. NW in downtown Albuquerque where it will complement the significant amount of energy being put into the revitalization of downtown Albuquerque and contribute to the constantly evolving workforce, Sengel said.
“The mayor and the leadership in our city have been very clear about the fact that downtown is going to become the hub of innovation, entrepreneur¬ship, and startup culture. We need to be responsive and proactive in bringing what we do best down¬town and making it avail¬able to the community that is there today and that will be growing in the near future,” she said.
The STEMulus center will have coding academies, cyber-security academies, accelerated learning pro-grams, boot camps, and even a prototyping lab, which will have the resources to move ideas from the sketchpad to the real world, she said.
The prototyping lab is intended to have a wood¬working station, a welding station, a machine tooling station, and even a 3D printing station, but most importantly will have technicians and courses that will help people acquire the skills needed to use each workshop, Sengel said.
“We will have the structure for credit classes, but we also have non-credit, that has to do with skill development and training. We do not just stick you in a welding station and say good luck. We are going to structure around the safety training, so that they can be at the welding station and work there and if there is one-on-one instruction that needs to occur then we are going to have that technician onsite to support them in that way,” she said.
There will probably also be practical application courses like weekend-long, non-credit, introductory welding classes where people can pay to spend the weekend learning and increasing their skills which really is what the center is meant to be all about, Sengel said.
CNM recognizes that it is still very important for more and more people to receive degrees in New Mexico, and the hope is that people will become interested in pursuing their education after learning related skills, Sengel said.
“With the introduction to something exciting and interesting we can hopefully hook them and get them interested in pursuing their education, because that is what’s good for New Mexico. More people with degrees are important in New Mexico and we want to increase degree attainment across our country, region, and state,” she said.
Sengel advises anyone who is interested in this future project to keep their ears tuned for announcements because CNM intends on doing its best to keep everybody informed as there are new developments, she said.
Anyone who is interested can also go to cnm. edu/stemulus and fill out a form with any questions or comments they might have about the STEMulus center, Sengal said.
Smoking in the rain; Welding students build new smoking shelters
By Jonathan Baca, Copy Editor
Planning and designs for the covered shelters for CNM’s smoking sections have been submitted, and they will be fabricated and constructed by none other than the school’s own welding students, Welding instructor, Ron Hackney said.
The “smoking shacks” will be built by students of the Project Fabrication class, one of the final courses before Welding students test for their certificates, and they plan to build one to two shelters each semester the class is offered, Hackney said.
“These are folks who are already ready to graduate. Over three quarters of them are already certified welders, by industry standards, so they are pretty advanced students,” Hackney said.
Hackney said the project will be a great opportunity for his students to get real world experience, being responsible for every aspect of a project, from planning and materials to fabrication and installation.
Executive Director of Multi-campus Operations Jennifer Cornish said that the idea for the project came from discussions about the best way to create the smoking shelters they had promised to install after the new smoking policy was implemented.
“Since the inception of the new smoking policy, we knew that we needed to provide some shelter, if not all, than at least most of the smoking sections,” Cornish said.
A team was assembled to design and make the specifications for the shelters, and Cornish said the school’s architect had the idea to ask if the Welding department would be interested in creating them.
Thomas “Hass” Saunders, Welding major and work study lab assistant, was the student who actually created the designs for the shelters as part of his class work, he said.
“It is essentially a bus stop with a couple of modifications made to it,” Saunders said.
Saunders took measurements of existing bus stop designs and CNM locations, designed the “smoking shack” on a CAD (computer aided drafting) program and made physical blueprints, created a list of materials, and then got quotes for material costs, he said.
Saunders, who helps students with their class work as part of his work study job, said he feels the project will be a lot more valuable and fun for the students than their normal projects.
“It takes a whole different meaning to welding. Instead of just doing different positions all day, now we can actually build something, and it makes the students feel good at the same time,” Saunders said.
In addition to benches and a covered awning to protect smokers from the elements, the shelters will have perforated walls for ventilation, and so Security can easily see inside, Cornish said.
Another important feature will be solar panels on the roofs of each shelter, to power lights that will shine in the evenings, she said.
“We can’t run electricity out to all the shelters; that would have made it too expensive. But we want to make sure that they are safely lit,” Cornish said.
They would also like the openings of the shelters to be facing toward the south, so that in the summer the sun will generally be at the back and the smokers will have more shade, she said.
Cornish said that the school’s Sustainability Team will be meeting with members of the Welding department sometime this week to go over the final details of the project, and to see if any of the locations around the school’s many campuses will require any alterations to the original designs.
“I think it’s a really wonderful opportunity for our students to participate as a learning project, and it meets the needs of the students who want to use the smoking areas, and it is a sustainability project,” Cornish said.
Hackney said that since the plan is for the Welding program to eventually build a shelter for every smoking section on every campus, the project will likely become a major part of the curriculum for the Project Fabrication class for some time.
He said that while the instructors will act as quality control, setting specifications and inspecting each shelter on completion, the students will essentially be in charge of the project from start to finish.
“We have to make sure as an educational institution that the students actually use it as a learning outcome. It’s not like we’re trying to get free labor, we want to make sure that they can actually learn from it,” Hackney said.
In addition to the experience for students, this project will also help the Welding department save some money, because the materials will be paid for out of a special budget created for the smoking sections.
Normally project costs come out of the Welding program’s budget, which is strained as it is, so Hackney said it is nice to be able to save a little money while giving his students a great project.
“It certainly helps, because every department gets billed for its metal, and it’s pretty expensive. But in the end, somebody’s got to pay for it, so we have to make sure that we don’t waste metal and things like that,” Hackney said.
Saunders said that as a student, he agrees that none of the students feel they are being taken advantage of, and that they are happy to be building something of value that will be used by people on campus for years to come.
“This is not free labor, this is essentially a great learning experience. In a nutshell, it’s kind of the students’ way of giving back to their school,” Saunders said.
Editoiral Cartoon Issue 37, Volume 19
Fred Phelps’ short visit to heaven
By Nick Stern
Farewell forever to spring break
It is so invigorating to be able to take a week long break during the spring semester to come back refreshed and ready to finish up the last weeks at school, but unfortunately this last spring break that passed will be the very last one ever, at least for CNM students.
Spring break has been a pastime since the Greeks and Romans started celebrating a sort of spring ritual, and has been a fad since the 1930s in America, according to content. time.com.
Not all students use the break for decedent debauchery or to have a good time, and for most, the break is a much needed rest for those that have hefty schedules and busy lives to lead.
According to President Winograd’s Blog, starting in January the idea of losing spring break all together was addressed, and was to be addressed by students and staff in a survey.
According to the Media and Communications Office as of Feb 14, “There will no longer be a spring break at CNM.”
It does not seem that this break survey was sent to all students, nor was the issue brought up through MCO until the decision had already been made to ditch the term break.
We all rely on the break for a much needed rest from the semester, and it might just be beneficial to students to just pass it right on by, but will hopefully not affect students to the point of burning them out and making their GPA’s or grades suffer for just a little less of a spring semester.
Letter to the Editor, Issue 37, Volume 19
The First Amendment, which guarantees free-speech rights, is fundamental to the highest ideals of American constitutional democracy and our nation’s system of higher education. However, no court, constitution, law or leader can guarantee any right once and for all, forever into the future. Even constitutionally protected rights need to be monitored, protected, and every attempt to whittle away at them must be vigorously challenged.
Free speech rights at CNM are under threat. Last year, the CNM administration temporarily shut down The CNM Chronicle and suspended the staff over the publication of its “sex issue” and then reversed its decision less than 24 hours later after a deluge of public attention. More recently, new collective bargaining agreements for full-time and part-time faculties contained language designed to prohibit the CNM Employees Union (CNMEU) from using “College resources… for any union business of any type, a political campaign for an individual candidate, an issue or an organization.” In administration’s initial proposal to the part-time faculty negotiating team, of which I was a member, The Chronicle was identified by name as one of those “resources,” though it does not appear in the final collective bargaining agreement.
It is no secret to anyone familiar with the CNM that this administration is obsessively concerned with protecting and polishing its public image. Nothing in the new faculty contracts directly attempts to limit an individual faculty member’s free speech right, but it is naïve to think they are not threatened. The contract clause I quoted is vague. Could it be interpreted to prohibit a union official from responding to an inquiry from a Chronicle reporter? Perhaps. After the new contracts were reported on in the news media, CNM officials issued pronouncements in which they affirmed their support for individual free-speech rights. What is a reasonable person to believe? Is the truth more likely to be found in the actions of CNM administration or in their statements once their actions have been exposed to public scrutiny?
CNM faculty, staff and students are on a “slippery slope,” by which I mean an action or law, initially restricted to a specific situation or group, like The Chronicle or CNMEU, which opens the door for a much broader and possibly illegal application of the same restrictions. For that reason, it is in my self-interest to defend the free-speech rights of The Chronicle and CNMEU because any curtailments of their rights brings CNM one step closer to an attempt at restricting my individual right to free speech. Similar logic compelled the American Civil Liberties Union in 1978 to defend a neo-Nazi group’s right to stage a public political rally complete with swastikas in Skokie, Illinois, where a significant portion of the residents were survivors of the Holocaust. The ACLU’s argument, which was savagely criticized at the time by many of its own members, was that protecting the free-speech rights of a group as odious as the neo-Nazis was necessary to guarantee the free-speech rights of all Americans.
CNMEU and The Chronicle may be the only organizations associated with CNM that administration cannot completely control. At the moment, I am less concerned about the union than I am for The Chronicle because I believe the newspaper has already been targeted for elimination. My suspicion is fueled not by any statement made by an administrator, but by what has already been done: three months after The Chronicle was shut down last March CNM launched The Suncat Times, which is described on the college’s website as a “student newsletter” distributed by email.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” has been attributed to the abolitionist Wendell Phillips, sometimes to Thomas Jefferson, though a similar statement was made as early as 1790 by the Irish political figure John Philpot Curran. The statement is as sound today as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries and I hope it will heeded by liberals and conservatives, libertarians and socialists, people who support unions and people who oppose them, as well as friends of The Chronicle and people at CNM who never read an issue.
Seamus O’Sullivan, Ph.D.
Part-time faculty, political science and sociology
Hidden Gems; Geology classes go on rock tour
By Carol Woodland, Staff Reporter | Photo by Carol Woodland
New Mexico is full of amazing geological features and students who take Earth and Planetary Sciences courses are able to take advantage of the hands on approach to learning by participating in geological survey field trips.
John Rogers, professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences said that this semester there are six offerings within the department including a special topics course called Geology of New Mexico.
Rogers said he offers all students in Earth and Planetary Sciences the opportunity to take part in the field trips, and hopes to give students the opportunity to go on at least six field trips each semester in his classes.
“We’ve had two trips so far this semester, and we’ll probably have five more before the end of the semester,” Rogers said.
This semester students have been north of Albuquerque to Tent Rocks and to the east side of the Sandia Mountains to touch a geologic feature called the Great Unconformity.
There are also plans to visit the White Mesa area south of the Jemez, and to go on some trips with the Albuquerque Gem and Mineral Club, he said.
Students who go on the trips are able to collect fossils and minerals for themselves, and for those interested in collecting, the annual Albuquerque Gem and Mineral Club trip to Bingham Mine near Socorro is not to be missed, Rogers said.
“We’ll collect barite, calcite, lead minerals, travertine; a whole bunch of stuff,” Rogers said.
Rogers said that while most of his trips are not too strenuous some of them may include several miles of hiking, so he lets students know beforehand how challenging the trips may be and what students need to do to prepare.
CNM is in a great location to study geology, as there are many different landscapes at each campus, Rogers said.
“Just walking between classes is a field trip. I’ve told my students that I don’t know of another campus in the world where you can see the diversity of volcanic features that you can see from CNM’s Main Campus,” Rogers said.
The Physical Geology and Earth History labs also offer students the chance to learn with hands on activities, he said.
Students in the Physical Geology labs are currently learning about geologic maps, and have also spent a lot of time this semester learning to identify different rocks and minerals, and are learning about how Earth’s geologic features work, Rogers said.
Studying geology offers students a chance to develop skills in other subjects as well, such as math and science, Rogers said.
“There is lots of math, biology and chemistry in geology, but you do not need to come in with a strong background,” he said.
Rogers said that while many students take one of the geology classes to fulfill a science credit, some are just taking it because they are interested in rocks, minerals and crystals, and some are pursuing geology as a career.
According to the US Government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics website, bls.gov, the job outlook for geoscientists with a bachelor’s degree is promising, with a 16 percent increase predicted over the next eight years, which is faster than average for most occupations.
“Hopefully our classes sway some of those who were just taking it as a science class to maybe think about going that direction,” Rogers said.
Career possibilities include exploration for minerals or oil, working energy related fields, or environmental work, Rogers said.
“ P e o p l e don’t think of geologists as environmentalists, but a lot of us get work in the environmental realm working for private consultants, working for the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), and working for the New Mexico environment department ,” he said.
There are also jobs working for private consultants looking at geologic hazards and remediation of environmental disasters, as well as in education, Rogers said.
CNM’s Earth and Planetary Science classes all transfer to UNM, including the special topic courses, which, unlike some of the other special topics courses, are eligible for financial aid, Rogers said.
Rogers said that CNM will continue to offer the Geology of New Mexico class in addition to the Physical Geology class and Physical Geology Lab each semester on multiple campuses, Earth History and Earth History Lab, as well as the new Dinosaurs special topics course, which will only be held once or twice a year, he said.
“One of my goals is to just get students thinking about things that they see every day and maybe haven’t contemplated before. Like what is the origin of that hill sitting off in the distance? Is it a volcano?” Rogers said.
Student ID: Passport to discounts
By Angela Le Quieu, Staff Reporter
A valid CNM ID can be used more than just on campus; various organizations and businesses offer discounts and other perks to CNM students.
A free annual bus pass can be picked up from student services and CNM students can also get a free UNM community library card that allows them access to Zimmerman and other libraries on the UNM campus.
Besides these freebies, there are many discounts available for food, fun, fitness, and lots more, and this is a list of various places around town.
Food
Cheba Hut
Monday student day; free chips and drink with ID and purchase of a sandwich.
232-2432
115 Harvard Drive SE
Sombreros Mexican Restaurant
Students receive a 10 percent discount on Mexican cuisine, open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
266-8226
120 Harvard Drive SE
Street Food Market
Take 10 percent off on Malay, Vietnamese and Thai street food from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
268-1196
2300 Central Ave SE
Fitness
UNM Fitness Center
CNM students can purchase a RecCard and have access to all of the Johnson fitness center including their gym and pool for $40 a semester per person with a $10 fee the first time to create a UNM access card.
277-4347
Johnson Center across from Popejoy on the UNM campus
Flavor Fitness
$40 a month instead of $55 with unlimited classes that include BodyPump, Body Step, Zumba and many more.
280-6462
5600 Menaul Blvd. NE
Tennis Club of Albuquerque
Offers discounts on membership to CNM students, members have access to tennis courts, a fitness center, and pool during the season. Call for more information on summer discounts.
262-1691
2901 Indian School Road
Entertainment
Popejoy Hall
CNM students can receive a 40 percent discount at the UNM Bookstore ticket office for the following shows:
Sherman Alexie, on March 30, at 3 p.m.
Soweto Gospel Choir on April 4 at 8 p.m.
Yesterday Once More: A Musical Tribute to the Carpenters, on April 5 at 8 p.m.
Taikoza, on April 13 at 3p.m.
The Mystical Arts of Tibet on May 31 at 8 p.m.
popejoypresents.com/tickets/cnm-student-discounts
The Guild Cinema
Student tickets are $5 with a valid CNM ID for a variety of independent movies.
255-1848
3405 Central Ave NE
The Kimo Theater
Offers student discounts, but discounts vary depending on show and discounts may not be available for all shows, check with the box office.
768-3522
421 Central Ave NW
Cliffs Amusement Park
Students, staff, faculty and their families can take 20 percent off ticket prices by purchasing tickets ahead of time at cliffsamusementpark.com/
881-9373
4800 Osuna Road NE
Retailers
Frock Star
Take 10 percent off all non-clearance vintage clothing
266-6979
115 Harvard Dr. SE
Artisan Art Supplies
CNM students can take 10 percent off their total purchase with ID.
256-4540
3017 Monte Vista Blvd. NE
Master Touch Automotive
10 percent off all services with student ID.
883-9141
4113 Menaul Blvd. NE
Tom Quirk Automotive
$80 per hour instead of the normal $92.50 for labor.
883-0793
3434 Girard NE
Leading the blind; Visually impaired students succeed
By Jonathan Baca, Copy Editor | Photo by Jonathan Baca, and courtesy of Wikimedia.org
The BrailleNote can translate websites into Braille
Disability counselor Lucy Birbiglia shows off an audio book player for blind students.
With a lot of determination, a little help from their friends, and new technologies, blind and visually impaired students are succeeding at getting a college education at CNM.
Blind students have a whole different set of challenges along with all the traditional ones that every college student faces, and although some new devices and technologies have made some things easier, there is no replacement for hard work, said Lucy Birbiglia, counselor for the Disability Resource Center.
“Technology is not a substitute for the student’s work. Students with any disability have to work harder than other students,” Birbiglia said.
Early education major Francine Garcia has been legally blind from birth, and can see some shadows, but no faces or details, she said.
For the obvious challenges to class work like reading and writing, Garcia uses several tools that make it much easier than it once was, she said.
For her textbooks, she uses a device called a Victor Reader Stream, an mp3 player specially designed for the blind, where she keeps all of her textbooks saved as audio books.
At the start of each semester, counselors from the Disability Resource Center help visually impaired students find solutions to their textbooks, whether they are audio files, PDFs that can be read aloud using a program called a screen reader that can read any text on a computer screen out loud, or for students with some limited sight, a magnifier may be all that is needed, Birbiglia said.
Garcia also uses a piece of technology called a BrailleNote, a device that looks like a laptop with no screen, that Garcia can use to type notes and assignments using Braille. The device also has a line of refreshable Braille, an area filled with tiny metal pieces that can pop up and form words of Braille.
Garcia said that she can read textbooks and assignments on her BrailleNote, and can even surf the internet with it, because the refreshable Braille line can translate any text from a website into the bumps and lines of Braille, line by line.
“It’s a really cool tool. It can also read text aloud, and can even translate stuff into Spanish and French. It’s pretty amazing,” Garcia said.
Joseph Diekmeyer, Social Work major, said that he did not go blind until 2003, when he was 23 years old.
Diekmeyer, who is an orphan, said that his glaucoma and the high doses of medications he was made to take caused his eyes to start bleeding heavily one day. He said that at the hospital, doctors gave him medication that forced him into a coma, and when he woke up, he was alone in a homeless shelter, completely blind.
Since then, Diekmeyer has had to learn to live again without sight, never losing the determination and zest for living that he always had, he said.
“People look at me and just see the cane, they don’t see the man behind the cane. They let their eyes deceive them, and just assume they know what I can and can’t do,” Diekmeyer said.
Diekmeyer said he is extremely active and self reliant, using a cane and a talking smart phone with an advanced GPS application to get around town, and all over campus, on his own.
He began attending classes at CNM seven years ago, back when the accommodations for blind students were not nearly what they are today, he said.
“It was extremely difficult because CNM was not set up for blind people as well as they had led me to believe that they were. They boasted about all these things, but when I got here it was not happening at all,” Diekmeyer said.
Diekmeyer said that things have improved a lot, but that there is still a lot of work to do, particularly around the subject of sensitivity training for instructors and staff.
Birbiglia said that there is no mandatory training for instructors on how to deal with the special needs of disabled students, although she would like to see some happen.
Each disabled student is given an Accommodations sheet that is created by their counselor, that describes the special needs that the student will have in class, like having chalkboard notes or PowerPoint presentations read out loud for them, Birbiglia said.
But some instructors do not always do these things happily, and sometimes do not feel the need to do them at all, Diekmeyer said.
He said that he has brought up the problem several times to deans and administrators, and that he takes it upon himself to personally try to educate people on how they can best interact with him and other blind students.
“I’ve said that I will personally sit down and take the time to instruct people and show them. The school needs sensitivity training for the faculty and staff, and maybe even some of the students,” Diekmeyer said.
He said that he has fallen into open trenches and holes that were not properly blocked off, and that he has failed many classes because of the challenges created by a system that is not fully prepared to deal with blind students.
“They have made progress, but there needs to be a lot more progress. I do the best that I can, I try to be as self reliant as possible, I take it very seriously. I’d like to see the campus and the institution work a little bit more with me,” Diekmeyer said.
He said the main thing he hopes is that instructors and students will take the time to get to know disabled students, and not just assume that they know what they can and cannot do.
Chronicle Photo Contest Winner and Runners Up
Thanks to everyone who sent in photos for our contest, and to all who voted for their favorite one on our Facebook page. Congratulations to our winning photo by Calvin Burgstahler, and the runners up, Calvin Burgstahler and Carrie Ratkevich. Keep shooting, shutterbugs!
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