Vaccination Mandate Approved by CNM Governing Board

By Daniel Johnson

Editor in Chief

The Zoom Governing Board meeting held on Wednesday August 8th which consisted of Chairman Thomas Swisstack, Pauline Garcia, James Chavez, Annette Chavez y De La Cruz, Nancy Baca and Robert Schoenfelder voted, in a roll call vote, to approve CNM President Tracy Hartzler’s plan for a vaccine and mask mandate as presented on the CNM website– A Vote to Affirm the Mandatory Covid Vaccination Policy for Faculty Staff, and Students.

In casting his vote, Swisstack said the measure was necessary to protect folks at CNM from “the more contagious Delta Variant” (of the Covid-19 Virus.)

 Baca applauded President Hartzler for her hard work in putting together the policy.

No other questions, comments, or discussion, on the mandate were discussed at that time measure.

At its Public work meeting of August 4, the board had asked President Hartzler to consult with legal counsel as to whether a board vote was necessary to make the mandatory vaccine policy effective, or whether she had authority to implement the policy on her own.

The meeting on August 8th was originally scheduled for in person at Smith-Brasher Hall, but Swisstak said he switched it to remote, because, under President Harztler’s policy, the board members would have been required to wear masks, and that he has a hard time hearing people speaking through masks.

A Message

Photo by

Mark Graven

Staff Writer

Electronic Sign

The electronic sign in front of CNM’s Security Building was flashing a forward looking message on Thursday, August 12, to passers-by on University Boulevard: “Create Your Future at CNM.”  Currently “about 14,000” students are enrolled at CNM, according to  President Tracy Hartzler–which she told the Governing Board on August 10, is down approximately 11 percent from this time last year.  Enrollment was 25,760 in the Fall of 2015, according to the CNM Fact Book–off a peak of more than 29,700 students in 2011.

Workshops offered to help transfer students

By Nick Stern, Senior Reporter

Transferring from a two-year college to a four-year college can be intimidating for some stu­dents, and CNM has taken that into consideration by making transfer work­shops located at the Student Services Center in room 203, where students can come at their leisure and do not need to register for these events.

These workshops will be at 1 p.m. from Monday, Feb 10 until Thursday, Feb 14 and again from April 7 until April 10 for CNM students to learn just how easy it can be to transfer over.

The CNM website advises that students inter­ested in transferring to a different degree-granting institution should begin by meeting with an academic advisor at CNM to figure out which courses can be completed for a transfer degree, and it also encour­ages students to look into academic programs at col­leges by attending these transfer workshops. UNM Advisor, Sarah Kieltyka said CNM Academic Advisement and UNM intend to co-host these four CNM to UNM transfer workshops.

Kieltyka said that the workshops will teach students how to learn the necessary steps to properly exit CNM, the transfer process to UNM, how to determine which courses transfer to UNM as well as how they transfer.

If students are unable to make it to the workshops, Kieltyka said she would be more than willing to meet with students at scheduled appointments to give advice.

“If you cannot make it to the workshop but you are still interested in transferring from CNM to UNM, please contact me so that we can set up a one-on-one advisement appoint­ment,” she said.

To contact Kieltyka, call 659-6488 or email skieltyk@unm.edu. for more information on how to get started on transferring to a four year college.

Ariel Tyson, Psychology major and former CNM stu­dent said she has had much experience with transferring between colleges, and trans­ferring from CNM is actu­ally easier than some students might think, so students just need to know the right steps needed to do so.

Tyson said she is a former CNM student who transferred to UNM quite successfully and said that the process of transferring from CNM to UNM was surprisingly pain­less and simple.

“It was the easiest school to transfer from. Other schools usually involve running all over campus tracking down different people and getting totally lost in the ridiculous bureaucracy that is a university system,” Tyson said.

She was very fond of the way that everything she needed was all in one building, which was Main Campus’ Student Services Center, she said.

The best time for stu­dents in their undergraduate career to start applying and to transfer is definitely prior to the junior year, she said.

“Lots of classes may turn out to not transfer to your new school and it is a real pain to have to take prerequisites as an upperclassman. Furthermore, because many classes may not transfer, the less you have taken the better, because you are less likely to have to retake a bunch of classes,” she said.

Ordering transcripts, which she had been told was hard to do, was easy at CNM, because all she had to do was pick up the form or print it online without waiting a long time, she said.

The first thing students should do after applying and being accepted into their desired institute is to make sure to have their official tran­scripts from every previous college attended, and sent to the school the student is trans­ferring to before doing any­thing else, she said.

Students can have their previous schools either mail transcripts to them directly or transcripts can go directly to the school they are transfer­ring to after community col­lege, she said.

Tyson said it is also very important to prepare for the transfer as early as possible because it is good to have a great deal of time to take care of anything and everything that may come up like websites crashing and mail getting lost.

Other than that, the CNM transferring process is very streamlined and the courses are basic enough that most classes will usually trans­fer, she said.

The CNM website also has tips and advice for stu­dents who wish to trans­fer, along with some very helpful resources, which can be found at cnm.edu/ students-resources/transfer/ transferring-from-cnm.

The transfer process, according to the CNM web­site, says that students should first review all the transfer agreements between CNM and other colleges, which also includes a link allowing stu­dents to review those agree­ments for many different pro­grams within New Mexico.

According to the CNM site students should research their college of choice and then begin requesting their official transcripts and also includes the link that leads to the form for requesting official transcripts.

The final step in the transfer process is to meet with an academic advisor from the intended insti­tution a student wishes to transfer to in the near