Tag: Issue 2 Volume 20

New culinary club on campus gives new student opportunities

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By Daniel Johnson, Investigative Reporter | Photo by Daniel Johnson

Issue 2 Volume 20

Having a club that will allow culi­nary students to step out of the classroom and be able to learn new things is a great opportunity, said Culinary Arts major Jessica Vallejos.

The High Altitude Culinaraian Organization was organized to con­nect students with the local community as well as work with different organiza­tions in the culinary field to provide different types of learning experiences to students so they will know where and to whom they might like to take their degrees to in the future, she said.

“We are going to be doing tast­ings and tours of different restau­rants and companies around the state, which will let us have a chance to taste yummy food that we would not nor­mally experience,” Vallejos said.

Culinary major Kattia Rojas said an opportunity to be more involved with local restaurants and how they make decisions on their menus is extremely beneficial for her.

The major thing is that we get to learn advanced skills and gain a further knowledge of culinary arts, she said.

“If someone loved cooking or thought of cooking as a passion, this club allows them to build up that love and express it in new ways,” she said.

Faculty Advisor and part-time Culinary Arts instructor, Chef Brianna Dennis said the club will take field trips to dif­ferent culinary organizations for off site learning experience as well as work in house by learning how to utilize new techniques in the kitchen.

The club will participate in different types of competitions as well, which are held in the state and will hopefully create more in house competitions for culinary students, she said.

Culinary major Alyx Lopez said another benefit of this club will be that members will be able to get the CNM name out there and be able to compare ourselves to the rest of the city and state.

“The public will no longer be clueless about the fact that CNM has a legit culinary program,” he said.

Culinary major Krystal Torres said, the new club is an opportunity to get the CNM culinary program out to the public.

“This club will allow me to be more involved with the local community, as well as give me real world experience to better prepare myself for a future in the culinary world,” she said.

Chef Dennis said, the club will be able to put the CNM Culinary program in the eyes of the state with an opportunity to give stu­dents the connections they need to survive in this industry.

“Even though this club is still pretty new to CNM there is a lot of potential for the local community, school, and us as students and mem­bers to benefit from what this club has to offer,” Vallejos said.

Chef Dennis said the club is going to be working with the Farm and Table Restaurant at 8917 Fourth St NW at an upcoming event for the club members.

The event will be a tasting of foods that are professionally prepared by this restaurant that has its own farm located on the property, assur­ing the product that is provided is as fresh as possibly can be, she said.

This event will be great for the group to experience what it is like to eat locally grown and organic foods that are served at Farm and Table’s restaurant quality standards, she said.

Another project will be a gas­tronomy day, where the club mem­bers will be working first hand with the advancements that have been made in molecular gastronomy in the kitchen, Dennis said.

Lopez said, molecular gastron­omy is definitely something that is unique and not covered in most basic culinary classes.

“We are going to be able to make different kind of unique sweets and I can’t wait to try them and see how they are different than regular sweets, because that seems really interesting,” he said.

This club is going to provide us with opportunities to explore new ideas that are being introduced to the culinary industry, Lopez said.

Torres said the club will be involved with the school by running the new retail outlet area, where stu­dent made foods will be sold to raise money and get people excited about the culinary program.

The retail area for these foods is located in the RPM building on Main campus, she said.

“It will be nice to see us getting food made by the students out to the students with the use of this space,” she said.

Chef Dennis said the selling of foods out of the on site retail space will help fund the club and the culi­nary program.

The ability to provide a dining experience out of the RPM build­ing in the dinning classroom is something that is being set up for the future, she said.

The club became an official CNM student organization in January of 2014, she said.

“This club was my creation on behalf of students, so they could learn more in the culinary world that is not offered by the culinary program,” Dennis said.

The club has an application process as well as a $10 fee, that students must pay to become a member, she said.

The club is available to all stu­dents in the Culinary program, but it is preferred that they have at least received credit for the principles of safety and sanitation class prior to submitting an application, she said.

“Students that want to take a chance at thinking out of the box or just want to see if they have what it takes to work in this industry, can contact me at bdennis10@cnm. edufor applications or more informa­tion about the club,” Dennis said.

Mentors making a difference

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By Rene Thompson, Editor in Chief
New students anticipated to come in for the fall semester will have an added advantage to their educations and will get a leg up more so than other new students of the past, and will be that incoming students will get more comprehensive orientation sessions with current student mentor orientation leaders and on campus tours, said Katie Boyle, Student Orientation Manager in the Media and Communications office.
Not only will incoming students benefit from this new program initiative, but current students who have become mentor leaders for the program will qualify for up to $1000 in scholarships for the fall semester after completing orientations with the school this summer, Boyle said.
“It’s an exciting time for new students at CNM I feel because we’re really creating a program designed around what students feel like they need to be successful in their first year,” she said.
Boyle said that the school has been working with the presidential fellows for curriculum development since January to improve the curriculum for the orientation sessions, which includes developing learning outcomes and including what students really want to get out of the orientation.
The presidential fellows who made the curriculum for orientations are Josh Krause and Kelly Peters, who are both instructors in teacher education, she said.
“From that we’ve identified that we need some help, we needed a number of people who could be able to help with small group activities, and we did a bunch of focus groups with high school seniors, current CNM students, and staff and faculty to kind of figure out what our needs were for orientation and what people really wanted to see from it,” she said.
A couple of years ago the school did a pilot orientation program with in person orientations and Boyle said that students were more likely to be successful in their first year of attendance at CNM.
“What we’re doing differently this year with new student orientation is that we are working toward offering more in person orientations so students can actually come to campus and get to know the campus in person, and kind of get a better feel for what it will be like to be a student here,” she said.
When new students arrive at the orientations they will be split into small groups, then orientation leaders will lead them on a campus tour and will help with orientation set up and tear down, Boyle said.
Orientation mentor leaders will also be in charge leading some small group activities in helping students engage with the content of the orientation session, she said.
For students to qualify to be become orientation mentors they had to have at least a 2.5 GPA or higher, had to have completed at least one full term, which is 12 credit hours, and planned to come back in the fall term, as well as being available for all orientation sessions and training over the summer semester, she said.
“Our final team has just been chosen, and they’ll do a two day training next, and we’ll start the orientation sessions on June 6— it’s going to be awesome,” Boyle said.
The program had been granted the scholarship money from student services which are supporting this new initiative, and the scholarships will be applied in the beginning of the fall semester to students who volunteer as mentor orientation leaders, she said.
Students can earn up $1,000 each in scholarship money, which will be determined by a number of factors and will be assessed individually to decide the amount each student will get from these scholarships, she said.
“We had a very large pool of applicants— I was really pleased, and the final team that we’ve selected are really great enthusiastic students and I’m really looking forward to working with them— I think it’s going to be really fun,” Boyle said.
For more information on orientations go to CNM’s new online student orientation at cnm.edu.

EMT community loses longtime instructor

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By Nick Stern, Copy Editor | Photo provided by Wildmed.com
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Since Thursday, May 15, the CNM community has been at a loss for words and has been mourning the passing of Health, Wellness and Public Safety instructor Cy Stockhoff, who was also an icon of the Emergency Medical Services community, said Michael Voss, Associate Dean of Health, Wellness, and Public Safety.
Stockhoff was survived by his wife Jan and his two children Paul and Maren, who he put before anything and everything else, Voss said.
“First and foremost he is a father and husband and then beyond that he is an icon in the Emergency Medical Services, from seeing a need to create an EMS system in Northern New Mexico when there wasn’t one—Cy Stockhoff was a great man who knew where his priorities were,” he said.
Even though his family was his priority, he still managed to reach a well-known status through his many different endeavors and accomplishments, Voss said.
One of Stockhoff’s many achievements include working as one of the first supervisors for Albuquerque Ambulance when it was much smaller than it is now, Voss said, and he also saw the need for an EMS system in Eagle Nest, NM, where he succeeded in establishing one, Voss said.
Stockhoff has also helped in developing CNM’s paramedic program, worked as the EMS Program Director and followed his passion for teaching as an instructor at UNM and CNM, Voss said.
His influence as a teacher and mentor has had a huge impact on the EMS field across New Mexico, from the curriculum which he developed and is used throughout schools in New Mexico, to the massive population of students and instructors that have been taught by him, he said.
“I think he was really a humble man who could have had an amazing ego for all the things he did. Over the course of 39 years, I think it would be fair to say he personally taught 20 to 25,000 students. I can’t think of a person in the EMS field right now that has had a more profound impact. If you mention his name to pretty much any provider in the state, or certainly any educator in the state, they know who Cy Stockhoff was and they have a personal account,” Voss said.
Stockhoff had a great eye for potential, which he saw in Voss and many others, which Voss said had an especially large influence on his life and personal career after they met.
Voss had heard of Stockhoff, who already had a huge reputation, but they had the pleasure of meeting when Voss had him as an instructor in med school, and then again for an instructor coordinator class when Voss was wrapping up paramedic school, he said.
Voss was also compelled by Stockhoff’s expansive vision for CNM’s paramedic program and was talked into leaving his full-time job with a fire department in Santa Fe in favor of a position at CNM where he has since then been successful and worked his way to leadership positions, eventually becoming Associate Dean of HWPS, he said.
“From being sort of like my boss, hiring me and then being a mentor, but then over the years just being a friend— and for me, in a lot of ways, he became a father figure because I am originally from Minnesota and all my family is from up there,” he said.
Voss said there are a lot of people who have had the fortune of knowing Stockhoff and plenty of them would also consider him to have been a “surrogate father” to them, because he was incredibly wise and good at giving advice to anyone who needed it, and also had great core values, which he also shared, Voss said.
Stockhoff was cherished by everyone and was also known for his unique habits, always wearing shorts every day throughout the year, no matter what season or weather it happened to be, which was just another reminder of what kind of a “cool customer” he really was, Voss said.
New Mexico and especially the CNM community are better places because of Stockhoff and that his involvement in CNM; like the large amount of the school curriculum that he has helped to establish, or the countless instructors and students whose education he devoted so many years to, has truly left his mark on the community in many ways, Voss said.
“His legacy at CNM will live on for a long time. There is an amazing instructional cause right here tremendously influenced by him. Much of what we have, and we have lots and lots of curriculum, has got his fingerprints all over it,” Voss said.

Starting students off right

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By The Chronicle Editorial Board

Starting anything new can be a struggle, so it is beneficial and necessary to have orientation programs that help students to start off their educations right here at CNM. Community colleges have not always been effective in fostering student success, but early intervention programs such as this one starting at orientation will facilitate a better academic understanding of student expecta­tion and will give a chance for improved social integration throughout a student’s educational career.

Student retention is based on how a student is going to perceive the school when first starting, as well as learning what resources they can use to succeed throughout their time at CNM, so when students are not given those tools at the beginning chances are they are more likely to fail without knowing that there are many resources available to new students.

Getting current students involved in the process orientation is just another great step in ensur­ing students stick around for the long haul, because current students who know the ropes and what it takes to get through each semester to help guide newbies, since current students know exactly how it was for themselves when they first started, so they can help students much more than an administrator could with new student inquires and issues, because they have gone through it as well.

Also, having a scholarship incentive set up for these orientation mentor leaders gives students a great initiate to not only help potential incoming students, but also helps them in leadership skill learning and gives students a much needed opportunity to get a substantial scholarship to help them get through next semester.

CNM is revealing that the school does care if students flourish on to getting their degrees with this new orientation program, and the Chronicle hopes that CNM keeps up the focus on what students really need to be effective here at CNM.