Outgoing UNM President Gets Standing Ovation

Speaking before the Economic Forum of Albuquerque on Thursday, Schmidly correlated UNM’s success as a flagship research university to the state’s own economic ascent. The president, whose reign ends in May, will return to UNM as a tenured professor, but not until after he takes a yearlong sabbatical to write several books. Schmidly will be replaced by Kent State Provost Bob Frank, a UNM alumnus.

Schmidly, who received a standing ovation after his almost 40-minute speech on Thursday, said New Mexico relies too heavily on federal and state government jobs.

“We we’re getting ready for the second wave of the double whammies, and that’s cuts in federal spending,” Schmidly said. “That’s gonna have a big impact on us. New Mexico could lose as many as 20,000 jobs… And we have to be prepared for that.”

One solution: improve education in New Mexico, Schmidly said. For UNM, that includes tightening admissions standards, improving graduation rates, and continuing important partnerships with Kirtland Air Force Base and the Los Alamos and Sandia national labs, he said.

Having so many federal research and technology-advancing institutions makes New Mexico unique, and the state should take advantage of that in different ways, Schmidly said.

“How do we use that to build a new economy, one that’s not built around state and federal jobs?” he asked. “That’s what people tell me they wanna see happen and I think that’s our future.”

One way to use local resources to their full advantage is pushing the national labs to have closer working relationships with universities, Schmidly said.

Another way to prosper is investing in higher education, especially in the state’s three research universities. He cited the state of Utah’s 2006, $111 million investment in two major research centers at Utah State University and the University of Utah. According to the state’s Office of Economic Development, the investment, approved by the state legislature, was meant “to strengthen Utah’s ‘knowledge economy’” by recruiting the world’s top researchers.

So far the number of science and technology jobs in Utah has spiked by 10 percent, Schmidly said.

“It’s not rocket science,” he said.

Schmidly said UNM is already at the forefront of bringing innovative science and technology jobs. He touted STC.UNM, the school’s non-profit corporation which aims to foster innovation while engaging the university in the state’s economic development.

The kind of start-ups STC helps create end up being successful in the long-term, Schmidly said. For example, 68 percent of university start-ups founded between 1980 and 2000 were still in business in 2001, while regular start-ups have a 90 percent failure rate, he said.

Schmidly said New Mexico has the opportunity to be an cutting-edge state.

“I guess what I’m saying is we shouldn’t feel bad about where were are. The question is what are we gonna do,” he said.