Tag: Volume 18

Student’s team competes in lego robotics world championship

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By: Rene Thompson, Staff Reporter | Photo By: Rene Thompson

Team Dutch 200 won the Inspire Award in the regional competition with their robot Hal (left) placing tenth.
Team Dutch 200 won the Inspire Award in the regional competition with their robot Hal (left) placing tenth.

A New Mexico chap­ter of the First Tech Challenge Lego Robotics program is raising money to compete in the FTC World Championship next month, dual credit CNM student and team leader Haley Hanson said.

Hanson’s team, Dutch 200, which competes against other teams using Lego Robot kits, has won a spot in the FTC World Championship on April 24-27 in St. Louis Mo., but must raise a $1,000 entry fee first, she said.

“The team is really happy about going to the championship,” team chaperone and Haley Hanson’s mom, Lori Hanson, said.

Dutch 200 was invited to the world championship after winning the Inspire Award in the regional competition on March 16, said Lori Hanson. The team’s robot, Hal, won tenth place in the robot competition, she said.

The team does not yet know what they will do to raise the entry fee, but will post the details and how others can help on their Facebook page at facebook. com/ftcteam5666, Lori Hanson said.

Haley Hanson said she learned about robotics when she was 11 when she and her brother joined a team in the junior league of the same organization.

“We build our robots to complete a certain challenge each year that is released in September, and challenges consist of game like competitions for children to better under­stand, such as this year’s form of a three-dimen­sional vertical Tic-Tac- Toe, taking objects from one point to another in a specific pattern,” she said.

The FTC and the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) organization work to get kids from Kindergarten through grade 12 inter­ested in learning about science and technol­ogy through robotics challenges, she said.

“It is a fun way to learn about new technolo­gies, as well as teamwork and strategy, with a very unique sports model,” she said. It also teaches gra­cious and ethical profes­sionalism at an early age,” Haley Hanson said.

Dutch 200 works with several chil­dren’s organizations and schools, such as the Albuquerque Sign Language Academy, the Albuquerque School of Excellence, and the Pruitt Reservation, teaching students about Lego robotics, she said.

“Our team has mentored over 60 First Lego League and First Tech Challenge teams in our five plus years with the FIRST organization,” she said.

For more informa­tion on Lego robotics and competitions visit usfirst.org.

Active Shooter training offered on Montoya, Westside campuses

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By: Daniel Johnson, Investigative Reporter | Photo By: Daniel Johnson

APD Patrolmen First Class James Vautier lectures faculty and staff in the Smith Brasher auditorium on what to do in the event of an active shooter on campus.
APD Patrolmen First Class James Vautier lectures faculty and staff in the Smith Brasher auditorium on what
to do in the event of an active shooter on campus.

Training will be provided on multiple campuses to teach fac­ulty and staff what to do if an active shooter situation should happen on campus.

Montoya and Westside campuses will each host two training sessions which will be similar to the two ses­sions recently completed on Main campus, APD Patrolmen First Class James Vautier said.

“I loved the turnout for our first session, I was surprised at how many people attended,” he said.

The training pro­vided by Vautier was created using data col­lected from the NYPD, the Virginia Tech mas­sacre, APD psycholo­gists and mental health case studies from past shootings, he said.

Vautier’s tech­nique is similar to the Run, Hide, Fight technique, but focuses more on what a person can do to prevent a shooting, Vautier said.

Vautier believes that getting people to be aware without being paranoid is the best way to ensure that someone will spot a shooter before anyone gets hurt, he said.

“I want people to have an idea of what to look for with a person who may need help, but I also want them to know what to do in case an active shooter event was to occur on campus,” he said.

Deaf Services Coordinator Faith Timm, who attended the Main campus session, said the training could have been more focused specifically on active shooters on col­lege campuses, but still felt it was helpful.

“I thought the training was good and worth my time and I would recom­mend that all staff and faculty make it to the training if they can,” she said.

Vortex gets that Motherf**ker with the hat

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Photo Provided By: The Vortex Theatre

Actors Ed Chavez and Alicia Lueras Maldonado share an intimate scene during the rehersal shoot.
Actors Ed Chavez and Alicia Lueras Maldonado share an intimate scene during the rehersal shoot.

The gleefully foul-mouthed play, “The Motherf**ker with the Hat,” is coming to Albuquerque for the first time later this month.

“Motherf**ker” will open on March 22 at the Vortex theatre and run for three weekends.

“The play is a chal­lenging, well-writ­ten and very funny examination of the choices we make about love. In many ways a coming of age story, the play is raw, yet deeply familiar and human,” Director Leslee Richards said.

The play is set in a blue-collar Puerto Rican community in New York City and is an intense verbal cage match about love, fidelity and a mis­placed hat, she said.

Elliot Stenzel, who plays antagonist Ralph, said the life-like char­acters struggle with problems that are familiar to most people.

“We all have flaws in our personality and how you manage those throughout life can dictate how well you do,” he said.

The off-putting title and the show itself is a reflection of modern American life, he said.

Efrain Villa, who plays supporting char­acter Julio, said the play will strike a differ­ent chord for everyone because it touches on many topics like fear, loneliness and addiction.

“In many ways this play is about how people can get stuck in really bad cycles and how difficult it is to pull yourself out of that cycle, he said.

The 2011 play was written by Stephen Adly Guirgis and was nominated for six Tony awards. It centers on Jackie, a former drug dealer out on parole, and his relationship with his long-time girlfriend Veronica. When Jackie finds another man’s hat in his girl­friend’s apartment, he is convinced she has been cheating and swears to find the motherf**ker who owns the hat.

There is a content advisory for the per­formance, which is for ages 18 and over.

“The Motherf**ker with the Hat”

Scheduled to run

  • March 22 to April 14,
  • 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays
  • 2 p.m. on Sundays.

General admission | $18

Student rush tickets five minutes before the curtain if seats are available | $10

Pay-What-You-Will | Sunday, March 24.

Audience Talkback | Sunday, April 7.

Instructor publishes book of poetry

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By: Shaya Rogers, Features Reporter

English and Cultural Studies instructor Felecia Caton-Garcia will be reading poems from her newly pub­lished book at a local bookstore next month, she said.

Caton-Garcia will read a selection of poems from her book “Say That” on April 17 at Bookworks on Rio Grande in the North Valley. This is her first published book, she said.

“It’s really exciting, more exciting than I expected it to be, just to actually be able to hold the book in my hands,” she said.

Caton-Garcia said she had been working on the poems for many years with no intention of putting them together for a book, but it fell into place.

“I have written for most of my life and I’ve written seriously and for publication for 10 or 15 years, so you always sort of have an idea that you’re evolving some­thing,” she said.

The poems stem from personal experi­ences with death and family, including the death of her father and an uncle who died just weeks before she was born, she said.

Although her poems are based on real events, they show a fictional outsider perspective of these events, she said.

“I don’t feel ter­ribly tied to facts of a the book is a combinaparticular narrative so tion of autobiographi­cal work, but often even much of the auto­biographical work is imagined,” she said. ­

Publishing “Say That” prompted her to consider how to recognize the artis­tic growth that takes place between the writing process, during and after publi­cation, and the present moment, she said.

“I am choosing to see it as a snapshot of that particular time and place and who I was as a writer right then, and the next one will also not be who I am when it comes out,” she said.

She credits “Say That” with helping her evolve her writing and bringing her to where she is today, she said. She hopes that by reading her work, others will be inspired by the imagery or ideas in the story.

“Ideally, that’s what art does; art changes you. The act of making art changes you,” she said.

Caton-Garcia said she would like for readers to feel inspired by her work.

“Say That” is avail­able at the UNM bookstore through unmpress.com/books and can be ordered wherever books are sold for $17.95.

Bookworks is located at 4022 Rio Grande Blvd. NW, Caton-Garcia will be reading her poetry from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, April 17.

Public Access offers students opportunity to produce television shows

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Students with an urge to try their hand at working in televi­sion can learn the ropes through U-public, the operators of Albuquerque’s Public Access channels.

The non-profit organization offers classes through meetup. com/upublicans which range in price from free to $10 and teach things like how to develop a show concept, how to use production and recording equipment and how to make money through programming, said U-public Director Toby Younis.

The program has offered 75 classes and trained 138 volunteers since July 2012, and has 35 more classes in the works, he said.

Since U-Public began operating chan­nels 17, 26 and 27 in the city, it has offered seven in-house productions and 18 independent productions. More than 30 more are in various stages of pro­duction, he said.

“We have been working on bringing in all types of content to public access, from shows such as an online web-series, to educa­tional and local based content, as well as sports broadcasts such as Women’s Liberal Basketball,” Younis said.

Theatre major Shelley Carney said U-public’s vision of training and support­ing budding TV pro­ducers has done a lot to bring public television back into the public forum in Albuquerque.

“U-Public has suc­ceeded in changing the face of public access television with educa­tional and local com­munity based program­ming, and U-Public’s main focus is to produce shows with quality content that add value to the com­munity,” she said.

Carney, who pro­duces a local talk show called “New Mexico Media Makers” on U-public, said the con­tent on U-public is education-driven and locally-based, which has made it valuable to the public.

“We have a show that educates on how to deal with the death of a loved one emotionally and financially, a show that gives legal advice on many common scenarios from legal experts and we have productions that show­case local community media,” Carney said.

For more infor­mation on U-public, visit upublic.tv.

Math League gets its π on

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After more than two years of dormancy, the Math League is available once again to students who love math, need help with their home­work or are just inter­ested in learning a little more about the often dreaded subject.

The chartered stu­dent organization meets every Saturday on Main campus and is open to students at any math level, said Engineering major and club President Myra Villalobos.

“It’s not a competitive group. You don’t have to be a math all-star; we just want you to come and do your math,” she said.

Studying at meet­ings has helped all group members improve their math skills, Villalobos said.

“We realized how dif­ferent each one of us is and how helpful it is to study together. We have different strengths and weaknesses,” she said.

The group re-formed during the fall 2012 term with four members and an adviser. The club now hosts about 20 stu­dents per meeting and a STEP-UP tutor is pres­ent to provide help if the group gets stuck, she said.

“We want to get people from the lower levels in math show up for help so they understand that it really is a process and that we all go through it,” she said.

The group’s home­work model has become popular, and is now being used for both a Physics and a Biology club, Villalobos said.

Math League

  • 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays
  • Main campus
  • Jeanette Stromberg Hall JS-208

Editorial: Preventing rape starts with education

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Editorial By: The CNM Chronicle Editorial Board

Rape culture needs to end and it must start with education.

Questioning what a victim wore or what the victim had to drink seems natural. Jokes about rape — such as the line sung by the men in “Summer Nights” from “Grease” — are so common in media that most people hardly notice.

Rape culture will not go away over­night. We need education on the subject, without judgment, spin or propaganda.

We need institutions like CNM to add rape culture to the list of cultural studies classes.

We need professionals to tell us how to handle situations where rape culture is happening. We need classes on preventing rape culture like the active shooter train­ing mentioned in “Active shooter training offered on Montoya, Westside Campuses” on the front page of this issue.

We need this because victims should not be afraid to come forward after a rape. We need this because teenagers think it is ok to video tape a rape, but do nothing to stop it.

The problem with rape culture is that it blurs the line. It can make people forget that we live in a world where actions have consequences.

Major news outlets like CNN have made comment about the recent guilty decision in the Stubenville rape case that lament the loss of promising careers – of the rapists, and of their lifelong labels as sex offenders.

What the national news media failed to acknowledge is the struggle the victim will have.

Images and video of her rape are on the internet forever. Her memory loss of the night will leave her with lifelong questions about how things got so out of control.

This case, from start to finish, is the product of a culture that embraces rape as funny or the victims fault or a common­place thing that happens all the time.

This is not ok.

Last spring, the CNM Chronicle wrote a special edition paper on sex and violence which included the story of a male rape victim.

He said his attackers were never brought to justice because the respond­ing officers did not believe a man could be raped.

His story can be read at thecnmchron­icle.wordpress.com/overcoming-stigma.

If the police can be taken in by rape culture, we must be educated in order to combat it.

So CNM, give us the option to learn.

There are so many instances where people tells us it is ok to think rape jokes are funny, that a person’s sexual history is relevant to a sexual assault and that a forceful or violent man is somehow sexy.

We need a place to that will help us examine the problem.

The CNM Six

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Image
(left to right) Melanie Mullens, Steve Fye, Crystal Perea, Natasha Spencer, Dr. Kathie Winograd, Adrianne Sanchez and Stephen Martos pose together after the students recieved their scholarships and medals commemorating he event.
All photos by Jonathan Gamboa

Students awarded two-year scholarship

By: Jyllian Roach, Editor-in-Chief | Photos By Jonathan Gamboa

Six students were honored at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe by the House and Senate Education Committees for receiving the All State
Academic Scholarship, which awards students with free tuition to any four year institution in New Mexico for two years for demonstrating leadership
and community involvement.

Melanie Mullens
Pre-Health Sciences

“It will be really helpful. I am a single mom, so paying for school is not easy.”

Mullens earned her scholarship by volunteering with the Mats Mobile Detox, which helps people with addiction and at Crossroads, an organization that helps women in domestic violence situations.

She plans to transfer to UNM and major in dental hygiene. Her goal is to open a private practice in a rural area.

Steve Fye
Culinary Arts

“I’m really honored to get this.”

Fye plans to attend UNM as a journalism major and weave his loves of food and writing into a career as a food writer.

He is a member of the six-month-old campus Veteran’s Club and is also a member of Phi Theta Kappa-Alpha Upsilon Chi.

Off campus, Fye volunteers with a non-profit called the Society for Creative Anachronism, an educational historical re-creation group.

Crystal Perea
Fine Arts Studio

“I feel proud and accomplished for the first time in my life.”

Perea helped to raise scholarship money with Miles of Coin, designed the Lobo Paw and fed the homeless through Stand Down.

On campus, she and three others organized a cleanup day on multiple campuses. She also created art installations for the Westside campus.

Perea wants to work with autistic and at-risk children hopes to do so by transferring to UNM and earning a master’s degree in art therapy.

Natasha Spencer
Pre-Health Sciences

“I am excited about this, it is such a relief.”

Spencer is a member of Phi Theta Kappa-Alpha Upsilon Chi and has participated in the group’s jacket and food drives, as well as other fundraisers.

She also volunteers at The Albuquerque Roadrunner Tournament.

She plans to transfer to UNM and major in either dental hygiene or medicine so that she can work in public health.

Stephen Martos
Criminal Justice

“I feel very honored to receive this award. It’s a really great opportunity.” 

As President of the Executive Council of Students, Martos is no stranger to community service. ECOS has volunteered with many campus-sponsored events, created campus safety trainings and safety walks and has held food, clothing, shoe and toy drives to help those in need.

Martos is unsure where he will continue his education, but eventually wants to attend law school.

Adrienne Sanchez
Integrated Studies

“I feel really good, it’s free tuition.”

Sanchez plans to transfer to UNM to become certified as both a nutritionist and a nurse.

She has volunteered with March of Dimes and the Storehouse.

She is also a SkillsUSA member and went to the State Leadership Conference in 2012.

Want to apply for next year’s scholarship? Here’s some advice from the winners:

“Don’t give up. People get intimidated with the amount of work you have to do to get the scholarship, but it is really not that bad.” – Melanie Mullens

“Do it. Stick with it and keep working on your essays.” – Steve Fye

“If you can help someone out with your time and get some money to go to school, it’s worth it.” – Crystal Perea

“Don’t be lazy. Write the essays. It is easy, but a little time consuming. It’s definitely worth it.” – Natasha Spencer

“Don’t be afraid to get out there are help in the community. It will benefit you in more ways than you can imagine.” – Stephen Martos

“Document everything you do. Make sure you have good references and you get everything done on time.” – Adrienne Sanchez

 

Part-time instructor goes ‘Old School’

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By Adriana Avila, Managing Editor

 Old School is teach­ing the arts of tradi­tional and sustainable living, said Part-time C ommu n i c a t i o n s Instructor and Old School founder Maggie Shepard.

Based in the Albuquerque Mennonite Church on Girard Boulevard, Old School teaches the basics of a viable lifestyle that have been used for centuries, she said.

“People are finally get­ting back to their roots and the natural way to live,” said Shepard.

The program offers several classes that include canning, cheese making, as well as a kitchen cos­metics class that teaches students how to make skin cream and lip balm.

Continue reading “Part-time instructor goes ‘Old School’” →