In 2016 fifteen cars were stolen from main campus, said John Corvino, Chief of Security and Safety, and so far in 2017 seven cars have been stolen from main campus.
That is just a dent in the 10,000 cars that were reported stolen in Albuquerque and surrounding counties in 2016.
Chief Corvino and his officers are doing their best keep main campus safe from motor vehicle theft, he said.
One of the things the security department is doing is putting fliers on the top cars that the bad guys want, he said.
Honda Civics and trucks are the top stolen cars, Corvino said.
About one week ago a 2000 Honda Civic was stolen from main campus and two months ago a 1998 Honda Civic was stolen.
“You need more than just locking your car,” Corvino said, “You need to have a club or a similar device.”
Although security is constantly patrolling all the parking lots, even the secluded ones, it is important to park in a good area where there are a lot of people, he said.
Also, if students have early morning or late classes, they should try to park closer to the building that their class is in.
The security office is located in the DPS building on main campus at 725 University Blvd. SE.
“Crime is rampant, it’s more outrageous than it’s ever been,” Corvino said, “but we’re doing our best.”
The security department is being innovative in their approach to increase safety on main campus.
They just implemented a new bike patrol system in which officers can patrol the entire perimeter of campus four to six times an hour.
They also have portable security booths that they set up at different locations around campus.
“We choose locations that we believe might have more crime than others,” Corvino said.
Students can also go to the booths to ask security related questions.
“The officer in the booth is visible,” Corvino said, “I want predators to see us. We are looking for predators to be off our campus.”
Welding program students are currently building two new booths for the security department.
The consensus among students who attend classes on main campus is that they feel generally safe.
Physics major, Ethan Johnson, who is usually at main campus for the majority of his day stated, “I do feel pretty safe. Security does a good job to make this campus feel protected.”
Bike theft victim, Geovanny Castillo, stated that he does feel safe on campus but his one recommendation for security would be to spread out more.
“I usually see them all together in a group,” he said.
What Castillo could be witnessing is one of the new approaches that Corvino implemented to increase visibility.
Corvino and his officers used to hold briefings in the office but have recently changed to field briefings.
‘Presence, presence, presence, that’s what we have to do,” he said.
If students encounter and emergency they can call security at (505) 224- 3001.
Students can contact security for non-emergencies at (505) 224- 3002. This line is open 24/7.
CNM Instructor Jason Witter, Artist/Director/Writer/Actor/
Jason Witter teaches Theatre appreciation and Acting 1, “I love the academic part of art, and I also love to feel that I’m participating in what I’m teaching outside the classroom” said Witter, CNM instructor since 2008.
What CNM has to offer, is arguably just as strong as a four-year university, in the sense that the college might not have as many classes but, the classes that CNM does offer are taught by top notch instructors who encompass many aspects of theatre with very strong acting and performance backgrounds; and strong movement and voice backgrounds, as well, Witter added.
The Coal Avenue Theatre, (CAT), gives students the possibility of creating shows in an on campus theatre that is open to the public. Witter says, it is a fantastic opportunity for students to have a theatre that produces shows.
“Theatre becomes a real sense of community and family; I fell in love with it from the beginning, due to that sense of belonging”, said Witter.
After receiving his master’s in theatre in dramatic writing, Witter started a sketch comedy troop called Eat Drink and be Larry with some people from UNM. He says, we’d do parodies; horror classical comedies of the plays theatres were putting on in town. All the acting, directing, writing and producing shows in the community was a great learning experience that started at the Reptilian Lounge, part of Tricklock Theatre Company.
Witter’s got into theatre after going to Wales for an exchange program, upon his return to New Mexico he found auditions going on at the Vortex and got a small part, then another small part, then got cast in Hamlet at UNM, “that was super exciting, I really fell in love with theatre, the people, the atmosphere the comradery of it, everything about it was so vibrant and exciting”, said Witter.
Witter did a lot with children’s theatre in grad school. He found a lot of freedom writing for a younger audience. He said, you can create worlds and characters because expectations and barriers don’t exist in kids, you can express anything that comes to mind.
A couple years ago Jason Witter started writing silly little poems and doing drawings for them, he said, they’re geared towards kids with a lot of stuff that adults understand and kids still dig it. I always loved Shel Silverstein, he added.
Witter loves monsters, he’s a horror movie fan and his take on it is to create silly poems about monsters and making them silly because it takes the fear out of them. “I love being scared but I also love being able to laugh at it, so that’s what I try to do with the poems”, Said Witter.
He gave himself a challenge a couple years ago, to do a poem and a drawing every day and post them on Facebook starting sept 1st until October 31st; Witter added that although he doesn’t really like social media, it worked for this. He did 60 poems and got through it.
By Halloween he had a rough draft for his book, friends suggested that he do a Kickstarter for it as a way to get it out to people and it blew up. The Tiniest Vampire and Other Silly Things ended up being supported and shipped out to people in Ireland, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Australia, “it was super cool!”, said Witter.
The following year he did the same thing and put out the Monsters Eating Ice Cream and Other Silly Things. As part of the “Silly Things” series of books, Witter plans to do one more this fall for the trilogy and then focus on something else, he said. The seed from it was loving children’s theatre.
Witter drew comic books growing up, his father and brothers were artists; his mother was a writer, and this is something that he wanted to revisit. He said, he feels fortunate to have been supported with that.
He added, “I love the arts in general and I love dabbling, they’re all an important part of our existence. I’m fascinated by every aspect of it and all the arts go hand in hand. They work together to create the humanities”.
Witter is working on a series of short books called Classics Kind of, where it retells the story taking the classics and putting them in very simple terms, “Kind of” geared for kids. He said, his goal with these little books is that they be fun for everybody, that’s the way he learned Shakespeare, by understanding the basic story and going from there.
He is doing Hamlet, The Raven, The Odyssey, Dracula, and Moby Dick in a series of 5 books he called tiny versions of the classics with silly illustrations. Witter’s undergraduate degree was in literature and naturally he’s a huge literature fan. His love for the classics and putting them in simple terms has led him to basically doing hamlet in 16 pages with drawings to go along, he said.
Some people might disagree with this, but according to Witter, most of Shakespeare can be summarized in a few pages. They’re fairly simple stories brilliantly written, “there’s so much meat to them” he said. It’s the language that is so broad and immense that it can be intimidating. But when you understand the basic story you start to understand the text, he added.
In his off time Witter is reading and researching plays that have been around for 500 years, yet people keep doing them because they’re great stories that we like as human beings, he said he loves seeing what people do with it, Theatre being an ephemeral thing, you do it and its gone.
Witter added a classical quote by William Shakespeare,
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players: they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.” – As you like it, Act II Scene VII
Witter’s is also directing a parody of Macbeth that he wrote for his Theatre Appreciation class to perform at the Reptilian Lounge Saturday June 24th
Jason Witter will be on stage at the South Broadway Cultural Center in Peter and The Star Catcher. “there are no small parts only small actors”
Between plays he’s producing or directing, classes he’s teaching, and books he’s writing and illustrating, CNM instructor Jason Witten sits down with The Chronicle. (Wade Faast/CNM Chronicle)
CNM offers plenty of clubs for students to join and participate in. Clubs are a way for students to learn a new skill, be a part of a group of people with similar interests, or to simply relax and have a good time. Listed below are five clubs that are accepting new members for the summer term.
Club: Montoya Writing Group
When and Where: Starting June 7th, the group will meet every Wednesday through the end of July in H 129 at Montoya campus from 3:30-5:00pm.
Club activities: This group invites writers of all genres to develop their voice, cultivate a supportive creative writing community, and learn more about their craft. This summer, the creative writing group has invited local writers to share their work and lead the group through activities and exercises that will help us develop our craft, all of whom are also CNM Faculty. See below for list of scheduled presenters.
Why students should join: This group is open to students, faculty, staff, and the greater community. Our club is for anyone who has always wanted to finish that novel, play with poetry, or simply cultivate a creative outlet. No writing experience necessary! Newcomers welcome.
Contact: Maria DeBlassie, Lead Faculty of the Montoya Campus Writing Group at mdeblassie@cnm.edu
2. Club: Improv Club
When and Where: Coal Avenue Theatre at 4:30pm on Fridays
Club activities: The club practices different types of comedic Improv (improvisational acting). On occasion, they will also perform.
Why students should join: The students should join if they like to laugh and make people laugh. They should join, if they plan on a profession that requires quick thinking and team work.
Contact: Leonard Madrid, faculty mentor of Improv Club, at lmadrid35@cnm.edu
Community of Gamers: Community of Gamers gather to take a self timed photo. Photo courtesy of: Dominic Alarcon
3. Club: Community of Gamers
When and Where: Currently waiting for permanent room assignment. Contact club president for details.
Club activities: We meet up as a group in our club room and we play games, have tournaments, have group meet ups outside of school, discuss all things gaming.
Why students should join: Students should join because it’s a fun place to hang during the stressful semester to relax have fun and meet new people.
When and Where: Tuesdays from 4:30-5:30pm in MS 313 at Main campus and Fridays from 1:00pm-2:00pm in the H building commons at Montoya campus. Meetings will occur every week until the end of the summer term.
Club activities: That will depend on the level of the students who show up. We may start with the alphabet and simple conversation. If the students are more advanced, they may want to review more advanced vocabulary. Basically, we will be practicing American Sign Language.
Why students should join: It is really fun and it’s a great way to practice ASL and meet interesting people. The club may even get some deaf people to come and sign with them.
International Women’s Month may be winding down, but CNM’s lecture on Women in Nontraditional Jobs performed at the Montoya campus has provided students with lots of concrete advice for women entering the work force.
Here are nine pieces of advice from Police Captain Andrea Taylor, Fire Department Captain of the Arson Investigation Division Jackie Lance-White, and engineer and part time CNM instructor Srividya Iyer.
City Fire Department Drivers Erin Brandow and Jesse Davis were on available at the Montoya H building to answer students’ questions about getting a job. Brandow said the CNM Fire science program is a good way to prepare yourself for becoming familiar with the equipment and concepts of fire fighting.
You’re going to have to prove yourself.
Iyer said that she still has to remind men in her field that “women can do math” so remind them that you have the same experience and education as them and that yes, women are also good at math. She said that a lot of girls grow up with society giving them a subtle put down in school that you are not smart enough to do math and science.
Iyer said she had worked with four women engineers out of 300 at Motorola in her department and there has been no increase in women engineers lately. She said you have to prove yourself and work twice as hard. “There is a lot of attrition. Right off the bat there are subtle put downs that you are a woman and you cannot do it.”
She also recommends letting your hard work speak for itself. She said “The most competent people I work with never brag about what they do.”
Taylor said the academy was hard but standards are the same for women and men so she was encouraged by her other students. Her captain really wanted her to succeed and out of the five women in her class she was the only one left. Currently, she said there are only about 10% women in her department and out of 320 sworn in, they have about 30.
You must have passion for your work.
Lance-White said that seeing the best and worst parts of humanity is not for everybody. “You delivery babies and you go to child rapes. It’s difficult to see that day in day out.” She also said that the firefighter suicide rate is pretty high right now. To be in the job you have really got to love helping people she said.
Taylor agreed with the sentiment of making your job a passion. She said that even though the graveyard shift can be tough, but it is the best job and she can’t imagine sitting at a desk all day.
She said the “I didn’t do this job for the glamour and the glitz or driving with lights and sirens. It was to help people.”
Iyer also loves her job in engineering where she makes network equipment, routers and she was even on the design team for the razor cell phone. She said “The most rewarding thing is building things and getting them to work.” She also said there can be some boring mundane stuff in the beginning of your education or training, but engineering is actually a very creative job.
Dayan Hill dropped in to hear the event out of curiosity because she is interested in learning about the careers. She said “Each woman was different, but they shared similarities and in the end I think the message is the same; we can do it.”
Have a strong support system and a way to decompress.
After long hours of stress on the job, Taylor says it’s a good idea to have separate life outside of work where you can decompress. She said a lot of cops have ADHD and PTSD so you need a strong support system.
At home, Taylor cares for a special case rescue dog that had been abused. “My work life balance is a lot simpler for me because when I put my hair down and I take off my uniform you would not recognize me,” she said. When she is done with work she works out, rescues animals, gardens, reads and gets her nails done. She says she manages her job by having balance.
Lance-White said fire department works a 48 hour shift, so it is difficult to balance a family at home. Most of the women (25 out of 700) will try to get a job off the street and in an office so that they can balance that work life challenge. It’s a really difficult balance and it may be why there aren’t too many women working in the fire department. With the four days off in a row, the first is usually used to decompress.
Work on your communication skills
Although typing skills is a very important part of the job because of all the reports to write, all three women agree millennial students should work on their verbal communication skills.
Taylor has said she believes that younger officers are not communicating with the public or coworkers as well, and she suspects that it stems from their reliance on technology to talk to each other. Iyer recommends students who go on to get a bachelor’s degree to take a course in negotiation in order to learn how to work with coworkers or negotiate your salary.
One of the things that have benefited Taylor on the force as a woman is she uses her words more than her strength. She said women have a naturally soothing voice and “I do box, but what I have used 99% of my career is my words to talk people into handcuffs.” She also said a lot of the suspects see their sister, mother or girlfriend and they don’t want to hurt you.
But remember, as a young woman, you have a unique perspective.
Lance-White said she loves the millennials. She said “the generations are just getting so much smarter and unique in the way they approach things.”
Iyer said that she had read in an economy magazine that she “had heard that men in manufacturing jobs, because of their ego, they will not want to go and retrain themselves. But women got up and got themselves retrained and got on with their life.”
“Women have a bigger advantage when dealing with the public because we are a little more nurturing,” said Lance-White. She said they have the ability to network and work with other networks. “Guys want to be the ultimate knowledge on a topic and I am OK with asking for help.”
Don’t be embarrassed by your degree.
Iyer said that it is a common misconception that employers are looking only for Harvard graduates. In actuality, companies respect students who have accomplished their training through community colleges, especially if they have had to overcome hardships to graduate. “As long as you prove you can do the job, you can still get the job,” she said.
Lance-White said that she had learned in a Ted Talk by Regina Hartley about the concept of the silver spoon applicant who had received all the resources they need for a career, versus the scrapper who had to “fight against tremendous odds to get to the same point.” Hartley, a human resources specialist who performed the Ted Talk, recommends giving the person with a lot of odd jobs on a resume the chance to have an interview.
She also said that in a smaller college she was given a lot of personal attention and felt that the faculty cared about her success. She said that she was able to learn the coping mechanisms she needed to overcome her rough childhood and make it on her own. “If you can find that kind of environment that has incredible support, almost like a family, than you can do incredible things.”
Don’t be discouraged by your difficult background.
Taylor said she grew up in around abuse and had problems with drug addiction, but her life was saved by a deputy with the Bernalillo sheriff’s department. She also said that because of her background with drugs, she was able to be a better undercover narcotic cop while she lived in an apartment for several months as a drug buyer. She said that no matter who you are however, she will always treat you like a human being.
She encouraged all students interested in the police department to be very honest on their questionnaires and having a drug problem may not prevent you from joining the force if you have not had a drug addiction for at least three years.
She also said she feels like having grown up made her a better cop around verbally abusive suspects. “When I go to work I put on my uniform and I’m a deputy. I call it my wonder woman outfit because nothing can penetrate me. Words can’t hurt me.”
Address sexual harassment instances early.
While all three speakers agree that the new generation of men is more respectful of women, there are still men from the generations before that had been working during the cultural shift in the seventies when women started entering the work force. Iyer said she “Is confused why people talk about the good ‘ol times. I don’t know what was so good about it.”
The speakers recommend sticking up for yourself early so that everyone knows not to treat you “like a girl.”
Lance-White said you have to teach people how to treat you. She said she had only had to set someone straight once, but that was it and the rumor had spread that you shouldn’t mess with her. She said by standing up for herself she made a difference and other people took notice. It was rewarding.
Encourage other women.
Taylor said when she started on the police force that she had overheard gossip or harsh words directed to each other. Taylor believes in mentoring other women and to “challenge yourself to be the person that brings someone up instead of brings people down.”
“It’s so simple to bring people down, but I challenge you to make them a better person than when they woke up that morning,” she said.
Taylor said her coworkers often tease her and call her the therapist, and when she retires in two years at the age of 40, she intends to become a therapist once she gets her masters in mental health counseling.
Jordan Masters is in her second semester as a full time student at CNM after taking a five year hiatus from school. She said she had just recently learned more about wage gap in her social problems class. She said she was interested in attending the speaker event because “with me growing up it was always a competition with other women and I think it’s just important that we build ourselves up because we go so much further. We have enough against us as it is.” She plans to continue to Highlands University for her bachelors and masters degree.
Here is more information about the presenters.
Captain Andrea Taylor
Captain Andrea Taylor has been commander for 16 years of the South Valley Area. She received her bachelors from UNM in criminology and has a master’s in forensic psychology, working on another master’s in mental health counseling.
She started in 2001 on patrol, then promoted to detective rank where she worked undercover narcotics for five years where her specialty was cartels and methamphetamine and was the only woman working undercover in the state of NM. In 2014 she was promoted to the captain of criminal investigations unit.
She also created the world’s first Animal Cruelty Task Force that goes out street by street looking for animal abuse. This program has now taken off across America. “It combines my passion for animals with my passion for Law Enforcement,” she said.
Srividya Iyer
Srividya Iyer is a part time instructor at CNM, currently teaching Linux Essentials, which she said currently only has two women out of twenty students. She is an electrical engineer and has been an engineer for 20 years. She has her own company, Caniv Tech, which does network analytics with funding from the National Science Foundation, for customers in the private and government sector. She also does a lot of mentoring for high school and middle school students who are interested in going into the STEM field.
She said she grew up in India and came to the United States for graduate school. What really made her interested in engineering was a physics teacher she had in high school. “He really brought physics to life; otherwise they would just make us memorize things. I never realized how creative one could be; he is the one who made me want to get into this field.”
Captain Jackie Lance-White
Albuquerque Fire Department Captain Jackie Lance-White grew up in Canada and attended a junior college before attending UNM on a softball scholarship. She later went on to compete with the Canadian Olympic team for softball in 2000 and 2004.
At 27 she thought about being a cop, but didn’t qualify because of her Canadian citizenship, so she applied for the Fire Department. She also attended paramedic’s school.
She highly recommends the CNM EMT class because she said about 80% of her job is medical like heart attacks and car accidents. She taught at the academy for a little while and then went on to work in the Arson Investigation Division as Captain where she works with firefighters from both county and city departments.
She is also in post grad school with the Navy working on her Masters in Homeland Security.
January 31, 2017. Story by Heather Hay. Featured photo by Wade Faast
Albuquerque’s only indoor roller skating rink has scheduled building upgrades and discounts to encourage college students to get in from the cold, exercise and release some stress according to new general manager and CNM alumni Blake Ballew.
Roller King, near Juan Tabo and I-40, offers all college students with an ID a discount of three dollars per person for a group of five, on Wednesday nights from 8 to 10:30 pm and you may rent skates for three dollars if you do not have your own skates or roller blades according to Ballew.
General Manager Blake Ballew, shown here at the skate rental counter, said he plans to open a skate shop inside the rink where you can order skates, buy wheels, bearings and tools to fix skates. Photo by Wade Faast
“Most people are surprised to find that when they come back to skating they had forgotten how much fun it was,” he said, and also added “many past employees will say that this was their favorite job that they have ever had.”
Ballew said he is working with two promoters to create after hours events, like the Pajama Jam Party scheduled for February 11, which includes seven DJs, a couple of bouncy houses and a special photo booth that will take pictures and automatically upload them to the web for you.
Ballew said that skating to good music in the large pillar free rink area can help people who are experiencing cabin fever, (feeling depressed from being inside a small space throughout the winter).
“It’s the only real positive place that parents can afford to take kids to for six hours at a time,” he said.
Ballew also said he is changing the food choices in the snack bar to include healthier recipes that utilize the pizza oven and new food displays and every week there will be new food specials.
He said “It will be just as much of a food experience as it is a fun skating experience.”
CNM Alumni and Chemistry major at UNM, Katie Pechin Thompson enjoys skating with her family at Skate City on weekends. Photo credit Katie Pechin Thompson. Photo courtesy of Katie Pechin Thompson.
The rink had been closed since a sudden powerful wind current on June 6th tore off 10,000 square feet of the roof and the monsoon rains afterward flooded the skating floor he said.
He said he “went through months of 12 to 16 hour days,” and since the roof has been repaired he said he has installed lasers and a disco ball.
Ballew also said he started the toy shop for redemption games when he was 11 years old, but he will be changing the arcade games and they will include foosball tables and air hockey tables.
Improvements scheduled include a new parking lot by summer and RGB (red, green blue) lights and reflective paint on the exterior of the building that will allow the building to glow in 16 different colors and be seen from the West Side.
Ballew said he had taken classes at CNM, then TVI, when he was 16 years old because he had completed three years of high school at El Dorado in just two years. He also said that after experiencing some health problems for seven years he came back to CNM to take classes more recently.
“Most other places have college night, but you have to be 21 to go to and this is an 18 and over event. But if your younger, like me and you have a college ID if you are 16 we’ll still let you in,” he said.
Ballew said he also attended UNM as well, but that he learned more at CNM because of the personal attention from instructors, smaller class size and lower cost.
“One thing I noticed from school versus experience is school definitely helps you out. One thing it does is it gets you familiar with the topic. Even if you don’t understand it, it brings familiarity because when it come back up again in real life, you think ‘Oh I remember this,’ “ he said, “and you don’t think that you retained it at the time but you did and because you have a familiarity with it, it’s a lot easier to work off of that versus if you had never heard about that thing before.”
Ballew’s father Ken Ballew built it from the ground up in 1979, and Blake took over as general manager in July of 2016.
College Student Night: Wednesdays. 8-10:30pm. Show your college ID and groups of 5 will pay 3$ each. Regular admission is 5$. Skate rental is 3$. Each week will be a new food special.
DJ Chill is scheduled to perform Wednesdays and Sunday nights (which are also adult night).
You don’t need to know how to speak Spanish to take the new Latin American Film studies class, said Jean Silesky, class instructor.
The Latin American film class will be offered for the first time in the 2017 spring term and it will fulfill a humanities elective credit, Silesky said.
It is a part of the new Latin American studies associates program, she said, but anybody can take the class.
To register for the class students can find it under LTAM 1111, Silesky said.
The class will be at main campus in Tuesday evenings from 6:00-9:20pm, she said.
The class focuses on themes such as migration, war and conflict, women’s issues, and environmental issues, she said.
Students will watch eight critically acclaimed feature films in class and will also be required to watch films outside of class, she said.
There is not a required textbook for the class, said Silesky.
“The movies are our text,” she said.
The class includes films from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Paraguay and more, she said.
The class is about encouraging students to look at the world from a different perspective, Silesky said.
“Foreign films allow us to travel vicariously,” she said, “I just want to open students up to see the world.”
Film in Latin America can be used as a learning tool rather than just entertainment, Silesky said,
And it can be intense and in your face.
“When we go elsewhere we see that there are other ways to live and to be and yet everyone is the same in the sense that everyone wants to be happy and to have a family; these things are a part of the human experience,” she said.
Silesky encourages students to study abroad both through film and in person, she said.
She spent time studying in Costa Rica when she was in school and it was an eye-opening experience, she said.
Students often think that studying abroad is for people with money but there are so many opportunities to be able to go abroad, she said, you just have to seek them out.
Overall, Silesky wants to promote global perspective and outlook, she said.
“It can be scary,” she said “but it can also be very eye opening.”
Photos and Photo illustration and cutlines by Heather Hay, Design and Layout
CNM may be an unlikely place for a diverse writer’s community but that is exactly what is happening every week at Main and Montoya campuses, said English instructor Maria DeBlassie Phd.
The group meets every Monday from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Montoya Campus Library and 1:30 to 2:30 in the SRC Room 201A on Main Campus.
According to DeBlassie, it is a place for not only writers, but creative souls and anyone who wants to relax and have fun writing outside the classroom.
The purpose is to bring students, community and faculty together to write; to encourage people of all majors to attend, no writing experience necessary, DeBlassie said.
The meetings allow people to work on what ever they want, she said.
People work on novels, web comics, poetry, blogs, and short stories so it is very open, DeBlassie said.
Students gain a big sense of community and support from attending, she said.
“As writers we don’t have to write in isolation to figure things out,” she said.
The writing group began five years ago on Main Campus with CNM’s full-time English instructor and published award-winning author Rebecca Aronson.
“Generally it’s really a group that focuses on generating new writing and talking about issues of a writer’s life, like publication and stuff we are reading,” Aronson said.
The Main Campus writing group usually begins with someone bringing a piece of writing to discuss, something they found interesting and also a writing prompt open to all genres, Aronson said.
“We are friendly, anyone is welcome, it’s not a class, so you don’t sign up ahead of time, I guess the most important thing is, it is fun, “ she said.
The writing group started for students and faculty to carve time out of busy lives to write, Aronson said.
For some students writing has not always been something they pursued.
CNM student biology laboratory technician Audrey Smith, who is currently pursuing an accounting degree, finds the writing group to be a godsend.
Photo was taken at the Write Club’s Halloween party, when they dressed in costumes. From left center: Audrey, Nina and Madeline.
Smith attends the writing group to work on a novel, something she does in her spare time outside of biology and studying for accounting she said.
“For someone who has been so right brained for so long first with biology and then with all of this accounting stuff, it is like my left brain is exploding all of sudden,” she said.
The writing class helps with confidence, community, and support.
“We do a lot of creative exercises to get us to think differently about the craft and it leads to a lot of inspiration,” DeBlassie said.
Mia and Daniel are writing a short creative piece based on the scary prompts they were given.From left: Chris, Brianna and Instructor Maria DeBlassie.
The CNM bookstore helped students save $420,000 by offering rental options at all three bookstore locations last year, said Ann Heaton, CNM bookstore area manager.
This year the bookstore is offering to price match other major bookstore vendors to help students save even more money, Heaton said.
Book prices can prevent students from succeeding, Heaton said.
If a student is using financial aid to purchase their books then they either have to buy it full price at the bookstore or wait for their disbursement check to arrive in order to get a discounted price, which is already 3-4 weeks into the term, she said.
They decided to start offering the price match program to help students stay within budget, to make sure that they can help them prepare for success of their higher education career, Heaton stated.
Now students do not have to wait for the books to be shipped to them from Amazon or Chegg, she said.
“We are willing to price match for them right here, right now,” Heaton said.
The goal of the price-matching program is to help further drive the expense of course material down for students to give them a better chance for success, she said.
The price matching system was implemented in the spring term of 2016 but this term it has risen in popularity, Heaton said.
Many students have been excited about it.
“We had one girl who was literally in tears because we price matched for her,” she said.
The price match is given to students in the form of a CNM bookstore gift card, Heaton said.
The students pay full prices for the books and we give them back the difference, she said.
The gift cards never expire and can be used at all of the campus bookstore and café locations, she said.
“We really are committed to doing our best to try to save students as much money as possible because we only want to see them succeed,” Heaton said.
They have been seeing a lot of success from this across the board and Heaton foresees this being an ongoing thing, she said.
