Tag: Angela Le Quieu

Tattoos that Stay Gold

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By Angela Le Quieu, Staff Reporter | Photos Courtesy of Facebook.com

Stay Gold

After years of work, tat­tooist Leo Gonzales opened Stay Gold on the corner of Yale Boulevard and Gold Street in 2004, and his ethi­cal and artistic approach has made his business one that is based on word of mouth and repeat customers.

Gonzales said that he is an oil painter which was his original career goal, but after a friend suggested that they get tattoo equipment he decided to try it as a new medium of artwork, he said.

“It just grabbed a hold of me, and I just became possessed by it, and I always thought that I would be a painter, and that tat­tooing would be my hobby, and it turned out to be the opposite, that painting has become more of a hobby,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales has been tattooing for 21 years and it was not until 14 years ago in 2000, that he felt he had put in his dues working for other people and said he was comfort­able enough to open his own shop.

Gonzales’ style is sur­realistic horror and fantasy tattoos, and he has an array of artwork for sale at his shop.

Because Gonzales has been working in the Albuquerque area for his entire tattooing career he is a well know tattoo artist and books appointments several months out, Pippin said.

Gonzales has definite ideas about the ethics of tattooing people, which he said is a canvas that moves, bleeds, and breathes.

“When I first started tat­tooing I took a kind of a moral stance that I wasn’t going to tattoo anybody until I had tat­tooed myself and earned my chops,” he said.

Although Gonzales did not go through a formal apprenticeship, and it took him 10 times as long to understand tattooing, the path he took was the best way for him, Gonzales said.

After he had practiced tattooing on his own legs he began to work on friends, and after a while he took jobs from people who requested them from him, he said.

It has only been in the past two years that Gonzales has felt that he could bring in his painting skills and tech­niques to the work he is doing with tattoos, he said.

“That was hard at the beginning, because I had such a background with painting I thought that I could bring what I knew about painting into tattoo­ing and I was completely mistaken, it’s completely different,” Gonzales said.

The oil paintings that he has done can be seen the Pop Gallery in Santa Fe as well as at Stay Gold, although he said he does not like to go through galleries because of the high percentage they take from the sale of art work.

Gonzales attributes his love of art to his mother who was a freelance illustrator for Los Alamos Labs and began to teach him how to draw at a very early age, he said.

“We thought that we were going to have to move out of the neighborhood and it turns out that this building came up for rent and it was right across the street from where we were at and we were like ‘oh we get to stay in the neighborhood’ and we were just bouncing names off each other,” Gonzales said.

The name came from his previous partner Danno Sanchez, and it references a poem by Robert Frost called “Nothing Gold Can Stay” which is related to the rough transitional time that they were going through, plus the new location was on Gold Street, Gonzales said.

Many people attribute the name to a line from the movie “The Outsiders” in which one of the characters says “Stay gold Ponyboy” but that line is referencing the poem as well, Gonzales said.

“We were staying in the neighborhood and we thought Stay Gold, we are staying golden and it was a perfect fit,” Gonzales said.

Mobile unit provides free STD testing

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By Angela Le Quieu , Staff Reporter | Photo By Angela Le Quieu

std

The Know Now mobile medical unit will be coming to the CNM area and will offer free tests for two of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in New Mexico, and the unit will also provide free pregnancy tests, Mobile Unit Director Joan Douglas said.

Starting March 17 the mobile medical unit will be parked in various places around the city from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., but mostly in the area around the CNM and UNM campuses near Yale Boulevard to provide access to STD test­ing and pregnancy tests to low income families and stu­dents, Douglas said.

“Being able to offer it for free and being able to pay the minimal fee that we have to pay to do that is a huge service and benefit to the students, and I hope they will take advantage of it,” Douglas said.

For more information on the Know Now mobile medical unit or to find a location where the unit with be, students can call 720-5537.

The Center for Disease Detection out of San Antonio, Texas pro­vides STD tests to orga­nizations such as Know Now to make the tests more affordable and so that people can get results quickly, Douglas said.

The mobile unit will be testing for chlamydia and gonorrhea, which are the two fastest growing STDs and have been a major concern in the state of New Mexico, Douglas said.

The unit will be spending the majority of its time in the campus area in the afternoon and early evening in order to be more accessible to stu­dents, because their studies and research have shown the

STDs to be in people around college age and near CNM or UNM, Douglas said. highest concentration of these

“It’s really scary, I would be afraid to be a college or early career person and dating multiple people at this time in our culture,” Douglas said.

Another reason that this unit will focus only on the two STDs mentioned, is because they are the ones most likely to lead to reproductive health issues in the future if remained untreated, Douglas said.

The test that they will be using for the STD screening is a urine test and one of the most accurate, and because they use a urine test, they can also test for pregnancy at the same time and with the same sample, Douglas said.

If a student’s test results come back posi­tive for an STD, the Know Now unit will send students to UNMH Student Health and Counseling and the New Mexico Department of Health for treatment refer­rals, Douglas said.

“With it becoming of epi­demic proportions, we feel that the responsible thing to do is to go in and offer test­ing and then treatment refer­rals, also it’s an opportunity to educate on those needs and why it is so important that they receive treatment,” Douglas said.

For positive preg­nancy results Know Now will offer free limited ultrasounds that can help determine the normal pro­gression of a pregnancy, Douglas said.

Although the mobile medical unit is providing preg­nancy tests the service is not just for women, as STD testing will also be available for men, Douglas said.

“If a woman’s test comes back positive, we would not be doing our job if we didn’t encourage her to bring her partner in to be tested also, both are going to need treatment,” Douglas said.

According to NMDH in their STD Surveillance Report for 2012, chlamydia rates in NM were well above the national rate, and gonor­rhea rates were below the national average but have risen rapidly.

The report states that there were 575 cases per 100,000 population of chlamydia and 90 cases per 100,000 popula­tion of gonorrhea in New Mexico for 2012, and that Bernalillo County had some of the highest instances of both STDs.

The Know Now unit will be working with the NMDH to help them to understand where some of the concentra­tions are and where the spread of STDs happen the most, so that in the future NMDH can direct their resources in an efficient way, Douglas said.

Even though they will help the state with a number of cases, the tests will be con­fidential, and there is a number that is needed to obtain the results, or Know Now will ask students to return to the unit to get their results in person and get a referral if needed, Douglas said.

There are other services providing STD testing in the campus area according to UNM SHAC’s website at shac.unm.edu, and the Sexual Health Resource Guide for STD testing in Albuquerque lists other places where stu­dents can have access to free or cheaper testing.

The guide details where and when testing services are available and what the cost may be.

Unlike sources for testing like Planned Parenthood and the UNM SHAC, the Know Now unit will be offering the tests for free, and because of the overnight courier system used, students will have access to their results quickly, Douglas said.

“So that’s going to be huge for some of these kids especially if they have sus­pected that they have an STD, but haven’t done anything about it because of money, or not wanting people to know, or not knowing what to do. I think that’s going to make a huge difference,” Douglas said.

The websites for Planned Parenthood and UNM SHAC at plannedparenthood.org and shac.unm.edu do not list the pricing schedule for STD test­ing or the rate at which the results return, but they do take Medicaid and other insurance.

Until the mobile medi­cal unit knows how many tests will be used in a week, the samples will be sent out on Thursday nights, and the results will be available on Friday morning before noon, Douglas said.

The Know Now medi­cal unit will be in the CNM and UNM area on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and on Wednesdays it will be at the New Mexico Veterans Memorial near Louisiana and Gibson, as well as on Fridays, when the mobile unit will be north of UNM at Lomas and Edith, Douglas said.

“It’s a smart move (to get tested) in today’s culture and it’s going to become a necessary one in the not too distant future, I think,” Douglas said.

Graduates encouraged to walk in ceremony

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By Angela Le Quieu, Staff Reporter | Photo by Angela Le Quieu

grad

The Student Activities office is working to help more students be able to walk in the Spring 2014 graduation ceremony, and in past semesters only a fraction of students receiv­ing degrees or certifica­tions participated in the ceremonies.

Brandon Seber, Student Activities Coordinator said there are a few steps that students eligible for gradu­ation need to take in order to participate in the gradu­ation ceremony, but that the first step is to go on line and apply for graduation, and after that, Seber said he can help students with concerns that they may have about the ceremony.

The graduation cer­emony for the Spring 2014 semester will take place at Tingley Coliseum on May 3, 2014 and graduates must arrive between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. to check in and then the ceremony will begin promptly at 12 p.m., Seber said.

“Generally speaking I think that all students who receive an Associate degree or certificate should walk in the grad­uation ceremony to cele­brate their academic suc­cess since they put a lot of effort, time, energy, and sacrifice into get­ting the degree or cer­tificate,” Seber said.

The deadline for stu­dents to apply for gradua­tion who want to walk in the ceremony is March 28 by 5 p.m., but if a student does not want to walk they have until May 1, Seber said.

Seber and his office want to get more students to participate in the gradua­tion ceremony, he said.

In the Fall 2013 semes­ter there were more than 2000 students awarded a degree or certificate and only 500 students walked the line in the graduation ceremony, Seber said.

“It’s nice to walk on stage, celebrate with the family, but also I try to persuade the students who don’t want to walk that maybe they should if they have younger kids or cous­ins, so that way they can be the role model to inspire the younger generation to want to complete high school and college,” Seber said.

Student concerns include economic issues like being able to afford their cap and gown, or mobil­ity impairment for disabled students, but there is help if a student has notified the Student Activities office, Seber said.

If a student has economic concerns about their regalia for g r a d u a t i o n , Seber said stu­dents can work with him to make sure that they can still walk.

There is also a system in place that can help stu­dents with mobility and other impairment issues, Seber said.

“Since I’ve been on board on the team and working with the gradua­tion, there has not been a problem we were not able to assist with,” Seber said.

Diana Myklebust, Administrative Technical Assistant is in charge of organizing assistance for students, she said.

After a student has filled out a graduation applica­tion, if students indi­cate that they have an impairment issue, their information is sent to her and she calls stu­dents to see what assis­tance they might need in order to walk in the graduation ceremony, Myklebust said.

“The biggest part of the process is letting us know that there is an impairment that we need to assist them with,” Myklebust said.

Myklebust has helped students walk who have had mobility problems, students with diabetes and blind and hearing impaired students, she said.

After a student is called by Myklebust, she will ask about what their needs are, if they can walk up stairs or ramps, if they have trouble sitting or standing for long periods of time, and then she will make an arrangement for that student, she said.

“We try to accom­modate all spectrums of impairment, so that we can make sure they can still be a part of that process,” Myklebust said.

There are volunteers at the graduation cer­emony that help students with these needs from the moment they arrive to check in until the end, Myklebust said.

On the occasion that a student cannot make it up the stairs or ramp Myklebust’s group will inform the dean of that student’s school and CNM president Dr. Katharine Winograd so that they can come down from the stage and shake the student’s hand, Myklebust said.

“The goal is to have them involved in as much of the process as pos­sible and make it easy and comfortable for them,” Myklebust said.

There are other con­cerns which students have about participation in the graduation ceremony and this includes students who receive an invitation to be in the graduation, but have not applied under their declared major, Seber said.

Two offices handle graduation and because of this the gradua­tion process is in two parts; the first office is Enrollment Services which oversees grad­uation applications, and the second is Student Ac t i v i t i e s which runs the gradu­ation cer­e m o n y i t s e l f , S eber said.

Enrol lment services has begun “farming out” people who are qualified for different degrees or cer­tificates regardless of a student’s program of study, Seber said.

“We in the office of Student Activities have been encountering lots of questions as to why they are being invited to the gradu­ation ceremony, because they are still pursuing their declared major,” Seber said.

Seber’s offices will run a report of each graduat­ing term that is created by Enrollment Services based on the information that the office generates and then send out graduation invita­tions based on that, he said.

“And that’s been challenging for us in Student Activities, but it’s confusing for our students because we’re having to answer all of these questions,” Seber said.

Students say mods do not affect their employment

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By Angela Le Quieu, Staff Reporter | Photos by Angela Le Quieu and courtesy of Facebook.com
Photo courtesy of Facebook.com UNM Professor, Bruce Potts with facial tattoos.
Photo courtesy of Facebook.com
UNM Professor, Bruce Potts
with facial tattoos.
Lindsey Taylor-Wise talks to customers as she works at Il Vicino’s tap room.
Lindsey Taylor-Wise talks to customers as she works at Il
Vicino’s tap room.

Tattoos and other body modifications, Lindsey Taylor- Wise, Fine Arts major, said that for her and some other stu­dents they are able to find work with their ink and piercings.

She works for Il Vicino tap room and said that her body modifications have never been an issue for her.

“I haven’t been told to cover up or take any of the piercings out, they seem to enjoy my color­ful hair too, which is nice,” Taylor-Wise said.

Fine Arts major, Alicia Garrett has not had an issue with her tattoo, but instead said that one of them may have influenced an employer to hire her over other candidates.

Garrett said that her tattoo of a band logo gave her interviewer a connection to her personally that might not have been there otherwise.

“I think maybe with tat­toos, when you’re interview­ing don’t hide them, because it may be a conversation starter to help them learn a little more about you on a personal level that may make them want to work with you more,” Garrett said.

In 2012 Albuquerque had over 50 tattoo parlors accord­ing to “Are tattoos becom­ing more socially acceptable in the workplace?” an article in UNM’s CJ 475 News, and the article also named New Mexico as one of the most accepting states for tattoos in the work place.

Taylor-Wise said she has had experience in several aspects of the restaurant indus­try and her ability to sport her body modifications has, in the past, depended on where she was working and what her job was at the time.

“I feel like it just depends on the owners and the management, depending on if they have tattoos or if they are open minded people,” Taylor- Wise said.

Although the tattoos and body modification may affect her employ­ment in the future she said that her choice in a career in art should allow her to not only sport her tattoos but to get new ones as well.

Both Taylor-Wise and Garrett have visible tattoos and stretched ears, and both also work in places where they are visible to the public.

“If I’m applying some­where, I want to make sure that I can be myself and put it out there, if I have and inter­view I try not to hide stuff,” Taylor-Wise said. “Tattoos No Longer a Kiss Of Death in the Workplace,” an article from Forbes magazine highlighted a UNM professor, Bruce Potts, who has a facial tattoos and other body modifications and had not affected his employ­ment with the university.

Forbes also said that 14 percent employment aged Americans have tattoos and that policies on tattoos vary from industry to industry and workplace to work place.

At CNM the official Employee hand book con­tains no language pertain­ing to tattoos or piercings, but does say that wearing inappropriate clothing may be grounds for disciplinary action or termination.

Director of Communications & Media Relations Brad Moore said that CNM does not have a specific policy regarding tattoos.

“The standard for tattoos in the workplace at CNM depends on the work environ­ment,” Moore said.

Supervisors can use their own discretion to deem what is appropriate for a specific workplace or a specific job position, Moore said.

Tattooist and shop owner Leo Gonzales said some of the shift in attitude about tattoos is because of the popularity of shows about the indus­try making it mainstream and more acceptable.

“Depending on where you live and what your job is having/being heavily tat­tooed isn’t as big of a deal these days as it was even ten years ago, and I think that has a lot to do with tat­toos being portrayed in the media as much as they are these days,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales said that this acceptance may have opened up the job market to people with tattoos, but that it is a double edged sword, mean­ing it has also taken away the mystery of tattoos, which used to not be socially acceptable.

Fellow tattooist Mathew Pippin said that the trend of television shows that highlight tattoos has not changed the overall taboo of body modifi­cation as a whole.

“That has always been a thing and that will always be a thing regardless of how many cool TV shows there are, there will always be that stigma,” Pippin said.

Taylor-Wise said that Albuquerque is a good town for people with body modifi­cations to work, because it is college and the large amount of people have tattoos.

With so many people in town that are tattooed it has become less of an excuse for an employer not to hire a person who is well qualified and has the needed experience for a position, Taylor-wise said.

“I think it’s changed a lot and it’s continuing to change, because I feel like the people who are getting tattooed are only going to get more tat­tooed; then the next genera­tion is going to be so used to it and everybody’s going to have tattoos and it won’t be such a big deal anymore, it’s just going to be an acceptable way to express yourself,” Taylor- Wise said.

Band provides pipeline to Celtic culture

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By Angela Le Quieu, Staff Reporter | Photos By Angela Le Quieu

band 1 band 2

The bagpipe and drum band Mac-Tire of Sky Pipes and Drums connects with CNM and Celtic heri­tage through community involvement and perfor­mances, Suzanne “Aden” Kemp, Psychology major said, who is the Pipe Major and President for the band.

There are three people in the band who are also part of the CNM community, and the band also plays twice a year at CNM gradua­tions, Kemp said.

“And we’ll keep it, we have CNM pride here,” said Tara O’Mahony, English major, and who is the Drum Major for the band.

Although the band plays at multiple occasions every year, such as Veteran’s Day events in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque and mul­tiple St. Patrick’s Day events, CNM is one of the band’s main supporters, Kemp said.

The bands sponsors and supporters help to cover expenses and allows them to offer free lessons to students who wish to learn how to play the bag­pipes, Scottish drums, or to learn about Celtic heritage and the history of bag pipes, O’Mahony said.

“The most good we do is the free lessons we offer,” O’Mahony said.

The lessons are offered on Thursdays from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Hope of Cross located at 6104 Taylor Ranch Rd NW church and more details can be found at their website mactireofskye.webs.com, O’Mahony said.

The free lessons that they give often help parents who want their kids to have more musical experience, but who go to schools that do not offer music programs, Kemp said.

The band also does educational performances at schools in the commu­nity, teaching people about the origins of the bagpipe, Kemp said.

“A lot of people are just drawn to the sound and the feeling they get when they hear bagpipes and drums,” Kemp said.

Chef Carmine Russo, Culinary Arts instructor, who is also in the band, said that his wife was interested in bagpipes, but that it was not until he saw a pipe band play at a TVI graduation that he got interested.

During Russo’s early years with TVI, he and another teacher were trying to get other teachers to attend graduation, and for him, one of the main rea­sons to go to the graduation ceremony was to see the bagpipes played at the end, he said.

There was one teacher at the time who was not interested in going to hear the bagpipes because her husband was in the band, and it was that teacher who told him about free bagpipe lessons being offered and how he could start learning to play, Russo said.

“I had never heard of free lessons, nobody gives free lessons, I’m saying you’re kidding, and she said no it’s free, you have to buy a practice chanter and a book and they’ll get you started,” Russo said.

Currently there are 40 different kinds of bag­pipes around the world, Kemp said.

Another part of the band’s connection to Scotland comes in the tartan kilts that are a part of their uniforms, the tartan that they use is the Ancient Urquhart which comes from a clan near Loch Ness in Scotland, Kemp said.

“The Irish have what they call a saffron kilt which is a solid color, but the Scots have the tartan and I hate to call it plaid, but people call it plaid; plaid is when there is no name assigned to it, no any­thing assigned to it, it’s just like a made up tartan,” Kemp said.

A tartan belongs to a clan or a family, O’Mahony said.

Pipe bands like Mac- Tire of Skye are a recent development in the last two hundred years, but drum corps had marched with military regiments,and that military tradition is still with the bands who operate the same whether they are military or civilian, O’Mahony said.

“Before the drummers used to march in front of the pipers when they first started putting pipe bands together and that’s a, us pipers are a little proud for that so now we are in front of the drummers when we march with the military regiment,” Kemp said.

Linguist teaches Navajo to Anthropology class

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By Angela Le Quieu, Staff Reporter

Former instructor, Ph.D. and linguist, Jay Williams came to CNM on Thursday Feb. 20 to speak with students on Navajo language and culture, and why the Navajo language should still be important in today’s society.

Williams, who is now a technical writer with Chemega Federal Systems, spoke to Anthropology Instructor Shepard Jenks’ class on linguistic anthro­pology and to give a prac­tical demonstration about how linguistic anthropolo­gists work, Williams said.

“I love teaching, spread­ing light and spreading knowledge,” Williams said.

Williams has a passion for teaching, and although he left CNM for a position with Chemega to better support his growing family, it is speaking to students that he enjoys, he said.

Williams said when he speaks with anthropology students, he gives a two-part lecture, which is com­prised of an emersion exer­cise in Navajo and then does a PowerPoint presentation on Navajo place names around Chaco Canyon.

Jenna Abuhilu, Anthropology major, attended the lecture, she said.

“It was awesome,” Abuhilu said.

She described the presentation as starting out all in Navajo, with­out any English, and said that no one understood what Williams was saying, but that he pointed at and passed around objects repeating what he said five or six times, Abuhilu said.

After that Williams talked with the class about what he was saying and the class began to figure out how the Navajo language was constructed, Abuhilu said.

In Navajo sentences, the subject of a sentence is at the beginning and then the verb, and the way the language works is that the sentence has no meaning until the speaker qualifies or gives the content of the sentence, Abuhilu said.

“It stuck with you, it made you more inter­ested,” Abuhilu said.

Jenks said the first 15 minutes is all in Navajo and most students do not know any Navajo at all, but then after 15 minutes the stu­dents realize that they do know some Navajo now.

This part of the lec­ture fits in with what Jenks was teaching during this portion of the class, which is on language, the phenology and morphol­ogy, as well as how lan­guage is connected with culture, Jenks said.

“He (Williams) explains the structure of the language and how it’s different than English and it really reinforces some of the things I do in terms of the nuts and bolts of lan­guage,” Jenks said.

The second part of the lecture was on how the Navajo mythology and place names relate to the geographical features of the Four Corners area, Jenks said.

The Navajo use stories from their mythology to orient themselves in the landscape, Jenks said.

One example of this from Williams’ presenta­tion is what Albuquerque is called in Navajo; it means “suspended church bells,” because it was where people went to church and where you could hear and see the church bells hung in the seventeenth century, Jenks said.

“That really gives stu­dents a really good perspec­tive on living here because it has this mythological meaning that it doesn’t have to most people who live here,” Jenks said.

Williams describes the place names and their sto­ries in mythology as an oral Rand-McNally, he said.

By knowing the stories, a person knows physically where they are in the land­scape, and then they do not get lost, Williams said.

Williams said that he likes to come back to teach students about Chaco Canyon and the Navajo language which he worked on at UNM for his Masters and Doctorate level degrees.

“It’s a feeling that you don’t get any­where else, you know when you run into a stu­dent and they are a better writer or they say ‘Hey Dr. Williams, I made an A on my sociology term paper because of you,’” Williams said.

When Williams worked at CNM he taugh most of the differ­ent types of English and technical writing classes offered at Westside, Main and mostly Montoya cam­puses, he said.

For Williams, teach­ing is a passion for making things and society better, by giving his students the tools to go out in the world, to be successful and to teach others, he said.

“It’s part of what makes me, me. I think what makes a lot of teach­ers, teachers is that you have a passion for teach­ing, that you have a pas­sion for going further for making things better than what they are, making society better, but teach­ers do it one class at a time with one student at a time,” Williams said.

Instructors get students out of the classroom

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By Angela Le Quieu, Staff Reporter | Photo courtesy of Carmine Russo

8

Students are getting out of the classroom and going on field trips around New Mexico thanks to many of the CNM instructors initiating outside classroom activities and learn­ing tools for a variety of the classes offered in the Spring 2014 term.

Presidential Fellow of Innovation, David Valdés’ said teachers who partici­pated in the Fall 2013 Focus Groups of faculty, admin­istration, community, and students suggested field trips as a way to improve academics, and accord­ing to the report “Focus Groups Report: Part 1 Ideas Generated by the groups from Fall 2013.

The program of innova­tion and the report’s public access are ways in which ideas from the focus groups find implementation at CNM, Valdés said.

These focus groups, how­ever, do not represent the entire population of CNM, Valdés said.

Larry Bob Phillips, Fine Arts instructor, will be meet­ing with his Art History of the Southwest class at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the UNM campus on Feb. 13, and he said that this trip is an opportunity for his students to see the artifacts that they have been studying in his class.

“I think being in the actual environment, like a museum setting for a his­tory class, students get a feel for the subtleties that cannot be gotten any other way,” Phillips said.

Ideally he would take at least one field trip for every section he teaches in art history and studio arts, Phillips said.

In class guest lectures are also important tools used to enhance the learning experience of their students, Phillips said.

Every Spring term Anthropology Instructor, Shepard Jenks Jr., Ph.D. holds an unofficial trip to Chaco Canyon as well as other events on campus, he said.

On Feb. 20, 2014 former CNM Instructor and Navajo linguist, Jay Williams who is working with the Bureau of Indian affairs, will be speak­ing with living anthropology students at CNM about Navajo langue and culture, Jenks said.

“I offer it to anthropology students as a tourist thing; it’s a wonderful place for students to see.” Jenks said.

Students that go on the Chaco Canyon trip arrange their own transportation and meet up with Jenks who acts as a tour guide where he shows students Pueblo Bonito and other historical structures, he said.

Though most students stay only for one day, the trip offers a camping opportunity that sometimes allows them to look at the night sky as Chaco is a Night Sky Heritage site, Jenks said.

The Albuquerque Astronomical Society has tele­scopes in the area that scien­tists and park rangers can set up for students, Jenks said.

“Chaco feels like you are on another planet. You really feel like you’re just in a completely different place and I like it because it gets students out of their urban mindset,” Jenks said.

Jenks said he lets students know the weekend he will be going up to Chaco and invites them to join him.

The trip is an oppor­tunity for students to com­plete a paper in which they visit a site or an event and write a response on the trip, Jenks said.

Anthropology instruc­tor, Sue Ruth works with the CNM Anthropology club who also goes on field trips, such as, going to Petroglyph National Monument to do voluntary cleanup of construction and other debris dumbed at the site, she said.

She also takes classes on field trips to Petroglyph National Monument when she can, Ruth said.

“It’s great for people to see archeological sites first hand rather than just reading about them,” Ruth said.

Theater Arts Instructor, Joseph Damour said that instead of students going all at once to a play, they are required to go to a play on their own and write a paper on their experience.

Students chose one of three showings during a given weekend, which is then discussed in class, and in that way they still get a field trip experience that would oth­erwise be difficult to arrange, Damour said.

“It’s almost impos­sible to get 15 to 16 people together to go to a play outside of class time and at night.” Damour said.

Jenks said that he thinks field trips are just a wonder­ful opportunity for students in terms of organization and the real world where people are working around town.

“CNM should be bending over backwards to accom­modate this process so that we have legitimate field trips,” Jenks said.

Culinary arts instructor, Chef Carmine Russo has taken his classes on field trips regu­larly over the years, he said.

Due to budget and time constraints he is unable to take his first term class on any field trips, but in the past he has taken classes to restaurants, food suppliers and warehouses, and to see renown Chefs such as Rick Bayless, Russo said.

“I believe students can learn more out of the class­room then if they spend all their educational experience in lecture and lab,” Russo said.