By Jonathan Baca , Copy Editor
Nursing major, Aliishea Flook has been working to get into the competitive Nursing program at CNM for four years now, she said.
And because of the recent changes to curriculum, eligibility requirements and the coordinated entry process, Flook said she has struggled to pass many classes that are no longer required, and although she originally intended to just get an associate degree, she has ended up taking a lot of classes that are only required for a bachelor’s.
She said she only has enough financial aid to pay for 25 more credit hours, and worries she won’t be able to afford school much longer, that is if she manages to get into the program at all.
Flook said there are many other students like her, who have been caught in the middle of a Nursing program that changes from year to year dramatically, and who are all competing for a very limited number of coveted spots.
“I do appreciate the fact that I do have all those classes under my belt, but at the same time I feel like I’ve kind of wasted my time and I’m not really where I want to be. And now my financial aid is almost drained, so I’m sitting back and thinking, what am I going to do?” Flook said.
Diane Evans-Prior, Director of the Nursing Program said that CNM, along with every nursing program in the state, has been transitioning as part of the New Mexico Nursing Education Consortium (NMNEC), which was created to standardize curriculum and eligibility requirements and to make it easier for students to transfer to other schools.
“It will ultimately result in the increase in the number with of nurses, especially those bachelor’s degrees. This is not just good for students at CNM, it is important to the entire state. CNM is proud to be a first implementer,” Evans-Prior said.
For the last few semesters, both the old and new pro¬grams were running simultaneously at CNM, and the number of open slots for new Nursing students was drastically reduced, leaving students like Flook in a kind of limbo.
Amanda Lopez, Program Coordinator for the Office of Coordinated Entry said the process of getting into the program has changed dramatically as well, in an attempt to help with some of the challenges that students like Flook have been dealing with since the changes have been made.
But beginning this fall, the new program will be fully implemented, and will go from 24 back up to 64 slots for new students, with the goal of increasing by eight slots each semester as new instructors are hired, Lopez said.
Instead of the old petition process, where students with the highest GPAs and exam scores had a better chance of getting in, there will now be a pre-registration screening process, where all students who meet the minimum requirements and fill out the pre-registration form will be cleared and given the chance to register, Lopez said.
Students have from May 23 to June 23 to fill out the form on the school’s Coordinated Entry website, and will be told within two weeks if they meet the requirements, and will then be given a registration date, she said.
“All students who meet the minimum requirements will have an equal opportunity to register for the program,” Evans-Prior said.
There are still a limited number of open slots, how¬ever, and they will be given out on a first-come-first-served basis, so there is still no guarantee that a qualified student will get in on their first try, she said.
There is also a new option for what Evans- Prior called the “highly, highly qualified students.”
CNM is teaming up with UNM to offer a Bachelor of Nursing degree, where students will take many of their Nursing classes at CNM and pay cheaper tuition before transferring to UNM to finish their degrees, and these slots will be reserved for students with the highest GPAs and test scores, Lopez said.
Another issue they are trying to fix is that in order to get the earliest registration dates, students used to have to be currently enrolled, which meant that many students were stuck taking classes they did not really need in order to get the best registration time.
Flook said this was the reason she had continued to take classes and use up her financial aid.
Now, once students meet the minimum requirements and fill out the pre-registration form, they will be able to get an early registration date and time, regardless of whether they are currently enrolled, allowing students like Flook to save their money for the actual Nursing pro¬gram classes, Evans-Prior said.
Flook said in response to the efforts made by the Nursing department that “It sounds like they’re trying, responding to all the complaints. I think that would probably be beneficial and could give people that little glimmer of hope to continue to try.”
Evans-Prior said she empathizes with students who have not been able to get in because of limited space and the transition, and she hopes that they will keep trying.
“My overall message to these students is one of per¬severance. Tenacity is a noble trait in a nurse—one we cannot teach. Look at options. Make informed decisions. Stick it out. The profession is worth the pursuit,” Evans- Prior said.
Although Flook said she has become very frustrated with this process and has considered switching majors, she still dreams of becoming a nurse, and hopes that these changes will give her the chance to fulfill her goals.
“I do hope and pray that someday I will get that opportunity to just be where I want to be, which is helping people and being a caregiver in a career that I enjoy. I just wish so much that I was working by now,” Flook said.
Day: April 15, 2014
Fine Arts changes requirements, adds new classes
By Angela Le Quieu, Staff Reporter | Photo by Angela Le Quieu
In the Fall 2014 Course Catalog there will be changes that will effect students with a Fine Arts major, including new program approved electives and classes such as jewelry making.
Fine Arts Instructor, Harley McDaniel said that the changes are intended to allow them more flexibility, to make the transfer to UNM simpler, and give students applicable skills in the work force.
“There are pretty major changes, previously we basically dictated every course you had to take and that was kind of difficult for students because it didn’t give them a lot of options,” McDaniel said.
The new curriculum for the Fall 2014 term is part of an effort that McDaniel has made to streamline both Fine Arts degree concentrations, Studio Arts and Art History, he said.
Rather than having specific classes that students would be required to take, they will be able to choose three classes from program approved electives, and this will allow students more freedom to tailor their classes and learning to their own needs, McDaniel said.
One of the big advantages of this is that new art classes can be added to the program approved electives without changes to the greater curriculum being needed, and McDaniel said that the new catalog will reflect that as three jewelry classes that will be added as well as a second level ceramics class.
Facilities for the jewelry classes are still in the works, so the classes will not be offered in the fall, but McDaniel hopes to have the classes available for the 2015 catalog, which would offer students embedded certificates such as a bench jeweler’s certification, he said.
“So the dream is that down the road we’ll have the opportunity for people to have other embedded certificates like production pottery, portrait photography, things like that that would increase employ-ability at local employers,” McDaniel said.
Another aspect of the changes that have been made involved cleaning up the requirements to match with UNM, and McDaniel said CNM already has an articulation agreement with UNM, but that the changes will be more in line with what UNM is doing currently.
It was changes in UNM’s classes from 2D and 3D design to Art Practices one and two that spurred the rewriting of CNM’s curriculum for Fine Arts majors, he said.
“I went and I worked with their curriculum, I worked with their fine arts advisement coordinator, so that we would be able to have a more flexible program that would serve the needs of everybody, those who are transferring and those who are just interested in getting their associate,” McDaniel said.
These changes should also make it easier for students to get their Fine Arts degree as some of the other requirements will be changing as well, such as students only being required to take one foreign language class instead of two, McDaniel said.
McDaniel’s intent when he was working on the changes was not to make it easier for more people to get degrees, but that he wanted to work with the program already in place to make it serve the needs of the students in a better capacity, he said.
“It removes some of the hurdles that were more difficult and of course there is an underlying goal to get more degrees, but it is my primary goal to best serve the student, and what is best for the student, and what is going to be best for their educational needs,” McDaniel said.
The changes will not be official until the fall semester 2014 Course Catalog is published, and once the changes are in effect any student who takes one class under the new catalog can use it; any Fine Arts majors interested in learning about the changes can speak to McDaniel, he said.
“I like to try to kind of serve as a faculty advisor to students who are trying to navigate the curriculum, because I know it really well after building it—I know it inside and out. I can look at what they’ve done, so if someone shows up with their transcripts, I can really give them a sense of clarity of what they should do moving forward,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel can be contacted by email at hmcdaniel@cnm.edu to set up a time to meet, and said he is willing to help any students planning for the changes who bring an unofficial printout of their transcripts.
School honors work-study employees
By Nick Stern, Senior Reporter | Photo by Nick Stern
This year the Student Employee Appreciation and Recognition Committee has once again hosted a luncheon, of the same name, in honor of the exemplary performance seen from student employees all over CNM, said Administrative Technical Assistant for TRIO Student Support Services, Willie Smoker.
The luncheon invited about 370 different student work-study employees and the Committee showed its appreciation and recognition by awarding one person with the Outstanding Student Employee Award and scholarship along with three honorable mentions, he said.
“We just want to show the student employees here how important they are, and to kind of let them know that all of their hard work is being recognized by ourselves and their supervisors and even administration here at CNM,” Smoker said.
Psychology major and student employee, Kallie Gibson, who won the Outstanding Student Employee Award, said she really loved what her supervisor had to say about her, and that she feels she has gotten really close to her supervisor explaining she became her go to person in their office.
“I feel very honored. It’s hard for me to accept a lot of recognition and acknowledgement from a large party, and to also be placed at all the campuses of CNM,” Gibson said.
The winner of the award was chosen by a nomination form that goes out to all student employee supervisors which they use to nominate the students in their departments who they think has earned it the most, Smoker said.
The nominations are then voted for by the committee in a blind panel and then the winner is declared and presented with the reward during the annual luncheon, he said.
“Kallie Gibson, who is a student employee at Montoya campus Student Services, gets the reward and scholarship for Outstanding Student Employee this year and we are all very proud,” Smoker said.
There was also a large amount of door prizes given out to all the people who attended the luncheon, so everyone who left did so with something in hand to go with the recognition they received, he said.
The luncheon was held on Friday, April 11 at the Student Services Center Cafeteria at Main campus and there were more than 210 RSVPs for the event, he said.
Smoker said that the student employees benefit greatly from the event because he believes that many of the working students go above and beyond their job descriptions, and that a lot of the different departments at school eventually come to rely on the hard work that is done by those students, he said.
Smoker said that many of these employees do not realize how important they are to the community and how much their hard work has a hand in the smooth operations of the school’s different departments, he said.
“We need to show them that is the case and that student employment is actually a really important job to have, because it helps you grow personally and professionally,” he said.
The Student Employee Appreciation and Recognition Committee at CNM actually follows suit with National Student Employment Appreciation, which is the association that first began the Student Employment Appreciation and Recognition week, Smoker said.
Student Employment Appreciation and Recognition week is officially held this year from April 13 until April 19 and CNM does plan to keep celebrating the week with their annual luncheon in the future for as many years as possible, Smoker said.
Students who are either employed or seeking student employment need to remember that it is a real job that they are getting themselves into and that means it is just as important that they take pride in it as they would anything else while also taking it easy on themselves, Smoker said.
“Just treat your job like a real job and do not overcommit yourself. Make sure that the department is a good fit for you and you might want to seek something you can get real-world experience on top of that,” Smoker said.
The SEAR committee is a very hard-working community that picks up the task of hosting the luncheon every year and it is such a big event that it takes the entire committee to run properly and feed more than 200 people, but the SEAR committee and its purpose are absolutely necessary to the community, Smoker said.
Editorial Cartoon Issue 40 Volume 19
Editorial Cartoon By Nick Stern
Students deserve better
By the Chronicle Editorial Board
Degree program overhauls should be a basic requirement at community college level academics, and it is good to see that CNM is stepping up some of their degree programs to better accommodate students, and to match up even better with four-year schools, such as with the Fine Arts and Nursing degree program changes in our front page stories.
For most nursing students it has been an arduous and stressful task to even get set up in the Nursing program, with many students up in arms about the small number of people that are actually let into the program during registration, and many students have simply given up, to move onto UNM or other four-year colleges just to be able to actually get in another nursing program offered elsewhere.
Not only is CNM losing copious amounts of money while students are forced to flock to other schools, but the issues have also left a bad taste for CNM with most health related students, leaving them to tell people to stay clear of the programs provided at CNM.
It is great to hear that real changes toward fixing the issues in the Nursing program are finally being addressed, but it seems the damage has already been done, so hopefully the department’s administrators can follow through and make these changes for the better.
Students that come here with the impression that they can finish their programs and degrees should be able to get just that, and should not be left high and dry every year while a small percentage of students get accepted.
The school should not mislead students into thinking they have a chance in succeeding in the program, and should be more upfront about the actual chances that students will have when entering into the Nursing program.
Any degree program should fit the needs of the students, plain and simple.
New 8 week courses offered for summer
By Carol Woodland, Staff Reporter
This summer CNM is offering more courses in online or condensed eight week format than ever before, said Brad Moore, Director of Marketing and Communications.
CNM began offering the eight week courses during the 2013 Summer term as a pilot program to test student interest and allow faculty members the opportunity to teach their curriculum in a condensed format, which was both well received and effective, he said.
“One of CNM’s core missions is to ensure that a CNM education is accessible to as many people in our community as possible. In addition to keeping tuition affordable, another important way CNM tries to make its courses easily accessible is by giving people multiple options on how, when and where they want to take CNM classes,” Moore said.
To achieve this goal, CNM has been increasing the number of online classes offered over the past few years to accommodate students who have busy schedules or have difficulty getting to one of the campuses, and enrollment in online courses reached an all-time high during the Spring 2014 term with 8,957 students taking at least one online course, Moore said.
“Enrollment in online classes has continued to steadily rise year by year, and CNM has continued to increase its offerings of online classes to meet student demand,” Moore said.
The new eight week format classes provide another option for students to complete courses over the summer, and provides them with the added bonus of a longer break between spring and summer terms since the courses start later, Moore said.
Another benefit to the later start date for eight week courses is they will allow for graduating high school seniors to attend classes, which was not possible before because CNM’s summer semester started before the high school year ended, he said.
The eight week courses are scheduled in smaller chunks of time, but spread out over four days per week to allow for time to cover the same amount of material as the traditional classes, Moore said.
“Taking a condensed course like this also requires more time per week devoted to coursework outside of the classroom,” he said.
Students who do take advantage of the summer semester course offerings will benefit from being on a faster path to graduation, Moore said.
“Many of our students work full-time and many of our students have children, so we try to offer courses in various formats, so they are accessible to anybody who wants to improve their lives through the power of education,” Moore said.
Speaking for the earth; School hosts sustainability speakers
By Angela Le Quieu, Staff Reporter | Photo by Angela Le Quieu
The Sustainability Speakers series is part of CNM’s ongoing efforts toward sustainability and is part of the week long celebration of Earth Day, as well as the Sustainability Beyond the Classroom project, which is scheduled to take place from April 16 to 22 at Main, Montoya and Westside campuses, said Psychology instructor and speaker Asako Stone.
The CNM community has been invited to participate in lectures and workshops across all three campuses, which will focus on spreading knowledge about what sustainability is and what people can do in response to it, Stone said.
“I think it’s very important— I think it’s the most important thing we can be teaching today. I think colleges like CNM that are arts, science, and technical have a unique combination of classes so that we can teach both the technical side of sustainability and we can teach the science and humanities side too,” Stone said.
English instructor and member of the sustainability curriculum team, Carson Bennett said Earth Day will be on Tuesday, April 22 and this year CNM plans to host a week-long series that will feature lectures on everything, from the definition of sustainability to composting and urban farming.
Faculty from all over CNM have been working throughout the spring semester to help make students aware of sustainability issues, as well as find ways to make it practically applicable to students, Bennett said.
Bennett is slated to present with Amy Miller, Director of PNM’s environmental programs, in “Defining Sustainability” on Wednesday, April 16 at 5 p.m. at the Westside campus in room WS I-304.
Bennett said that his definition comes from the 1987 Brundtland Commission in its report “Our Common Future,” which coined the term sustainable development.
The current understanding of sustainability involves the “three E’s” of environment, economy, and social equity, which all must be considered for a solution to be considered sustainable to the outcome it has on these three issues, Bennett said.
“Personally I think that sustainability is the ultimate problem solving tool. I think that if you understand how sustainability works and how a sustainable solution to a problem works then you look at problem solving in a very different way.” Bennett said.
English and Honors instructor, M.J. Zimmerman, spoke about sustainability, and how it is tied in to the way we think about the world in “Less stuff, more fun: Sustainability and the good life,” where she said that this is an important issue for all academic disciplines to learn.
When referring to her speech, Zimmerman said a quote from a bumper sticker helped her to realize what sustainability really means in the scheme of things.
“I should have put it in quotation marks because I saw it years ago on a bumper sticker out in Berkley California, ‘less stuff/ more fun,’ and implies that living sustainably is not necessarily a deprivation,” Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman’s discourse was on Monday, April 14 at Main campus, which was the kick-off to the week-long discussion about sustainability solutions.
One of the examples that Zimmerman gave for how people are starting to change the way they see the world, was how Bhutan (a small country between China and India) has moved away from measuring the success of their country in Gross National Product in favor of Gross National Happiness, she said.
According to grossnationalhappiness.com this concept defines and measures quality of life and social progress from a more holistic and psychological point of view.
Stone’s workshop “Sustainability beyond the classroom: Neighborhood cooperative” on Tuesday, April 22 at 5 p.m. at Main in room SB-132 will be about a more hands on way that people can reduce their ecological footprint, she said.
“I think it’s such a wonderful idea and I feel that this is the first time we are taking advantage of Earth Day more than a day. In the past couple of years we had an Earth Day celebration but we didn’t have a series of workshops in which students and staff and community members can come in and learn about something new,” Stone said.
Stone is herself a part of the Mountain-Forrester Neighborhood Cooperative where six households participate in bartering and the sharing of tools, she said.
CNM’s efforts in sustainability education do not stop at the end of April; in the upcoming 2014 course catalog students will have the opportunity for a concentration in Sustainability Studies for a Liberal Arts degree that will meet 75 percent of the requirements for UNM’s sustainability minor and a new class SUST 1134, Introduction to Sustainability, will be offered, Bennett said.
“It’s really exciting because there’s so many jobs out there right now that are looking for people who have a working knowledge of sustainability concepts and CNM is uniquely situated to offer students a really marketable degree,” Bennett said.
The new concentration is the work of Bennett, Stone, and instructor Sandra Rourke and students interested in knowing more about what classes CNM offers that involve sustainability can contact one of them, Bennett said.
Bennett also said that they are hoping to get a sustainability club going at CNM, and that one has been talked about but has not yet been developed.
Suncat Chit Chat; Issue 40 Volume 19
By Carol Woodland, Staff Reporter | Photos by Carol Woodland
How did you react to the Albuquerque Police Department report from the Department of Justice released on Thursday, April 10?
Science major
“I want to see a citizen’s oversight
committee that doesn’t need to go
through the mayor or the police
chief to fire or prevent the hiring of
any police officer. There’s a culture
of violence and the shootings are just
the tip of the iceberg. I understand
it’s a tough job, but they can’t go into
it with the mindset of destroying evil;
the easiest way to become evil is to
label something as evil and attack it.”
“Their job is to protect and serve and they’re not doing that. I’m
afraid to call the cops. If someone gets robbed, I don’t even know
if I want to call the cops because they might think that I robbed
the house.”
“They’ve got this military mentality, their job
isn’t to go to war with the citizens, their job is to
ensure the peace. You don’t do that by shooting
people, there’s other methods.”
“I think it’s great that they’re investigating. With everybody
watching, with the recent story of the shooting, it’s important for
people to protest responsibly because everybody’s watching. You
can’t protest violence with violence. If it’s done right, it can set
the stage for other cities doing right too, everybody’s watching.”
“I’m glad that the DOJ came in and did what they had to do, I think that was the first
step. My major issue with APD is when something like this happens, no one gets fired;
it’s been a repeating problem. Start making examples out of people, fire people. They
need to start making examples out of bad cops.”
“I understand that APD has a hard job, that’s not an easy job to begin with, but they
need to start making examples out of cops that make bad decisions.”
“It’s a sad situation and it needs to be dealt with. People that are bad cops need to be
dealt with and they need to lose their jobs and make examples out of them.”
Paper or plastic Westside campus showcases recycled art
By Nick Stern, Senior Reporter | Photos by Lea Anderson
pieces of art.
pieces of art.
Since March 1, the Westside campus has become the home of a number of collaborative art projects that have raised the standard of art and thoughts toward an improved world in different ways, Art Instructor, Lea Anderson said.
These different projects that are spread throughout the campus, from WS I to the Connect Center in the Michael J. Glennon building, proves how a multitude of different positive ideas can be conveyed through art like the importance of sustainability, community collaboration, and even the variety of communication through art in general, just to name a few, she said.
“Its purpose is to raise the bar when it comes to possibilities of what art can communicate to the public,” Anderson said.
Reference Librarian, Mary Bates-Ulibarri said that another big project that helped raise sustainability awareness and showed the importance of a collaborative community was the Bottlefall project in the WS I building.
The project was designed for community participation and used recycled beverage containers, which were strung together and hung by a window to catch light, she said.
The project is open to anyone who wants to contribute to its growth and will constantly be expanding until the end of the semester, she said.
“My hope is that a lot of people will participate and we will get a kind of mass effect. The concept is to redeem these materials that we are throwing in the trash, transform them and turn them into something beautiful and eye-catching that people will look at and realize there is more to recycling than just not putting something in the trash,” Bates-Ulibarri said.
Anderson said one of the assignments in her Art Practices I class that students worked on, which is in MJG Connect Center, is called the Color Installation.
The piece was made with recycled materials that each student was required to save up including junk mail, cereal boxes and cardboard, she said.
Leftover acrylic paint was even used on the project which was just another example of the collaborative effort towards a less wasteful community, she said.
The piece became a giant blanket and connected tapestry, which combined many different elements and messages from the artists that worked on it and the viewers who have walked through the building, Anderson said.
“It is an interconnected, unique piece and can symbolize a lot of things about our culture, people in the project, and how we have to become an interconnected community in order to make improvements. So there are a lot of ways to look at the piece,” she said.
Her students were also tasked with creating any kind of art they wanted, just as long as it was out of paper bags, plastic bags or both, she said.
The kicker was that each individual was instructed to research the history of their chosen material and how the bags are made, what cultural associations are tied to the bags, and what impact these bags have on the environment, she said.
The students took the project very seriously and through their research, many of them came to realize just how much waste is really involved with something that American society has used constantly, Anderson said.
“Once you start researching bags, you cannot help but be aware of how much production there is and how much waste there is,” she said.
Anderson said that the projects worked off of and reflected the shift that has happened among much of the art seen in current society, which has been to try and apply artistic ideas to sustainability, she said.
She said that she has noticed how people have popularized the use of recycled material in their art, in such a way that draws attention to the impact of waste on the environment, and what can be done to try to slow down that waste, she said.
“That’s the point of the project: to be conscious of what materials we are using, how we are using those materials, and talking about ideas and environmental issues by using materials related to those issues. So not making a painting of a trash dump, but actually using the trash to make a piece of art,” Anderson said.
Anderson said that her efforts in this project were initially to connect to the school-wide Recyclemania project, which has increased her personal awareness and even helped her increase how much she has recycled.
Bates-Ulibarri said the Bottlefall project conveys an idea that each and every person is part of a larger picture in the same sense that every bottle that is recycled can contribute to a larger cause and improve sustainability.
No one who participated was told what to do or how it should be done or even pressured into participating, which is an important part of the bigger picture being conveyed by the project, Bates-Ulibarri said.
“No one is forced to participate, but they have and it creates an opportunity for volunteering, inspiration, and for just seeing things a little differently. If it were not for little contributions of individuals, then there would be nothing,” she said.
Bates-Ulibarri wanted everybody to know that the project is open to everyone, because when more people participate, the more successful the project completion will be, she said.
For more information or to participate in the Bottlefall project, contact Ulibarri at ulimb@cnm.edu.