Ghost town campus

The $13.5 million state-of-the-art facility, with its 13 classrooms and several conference rooms, was a ghost town on a weekday in early February. Only a few students were on campus, and two said they were taking a class there solely because it wasn’t available at the main campus.

UNM West has seen a steady increase in enrollment, from 393 students in spring 2010 to about 600 now, but students still must attend the main campus to get all the courses required for most degrees.

While UNM West has strong support from UNM president Bob Frank and Rio Rancho Mayor Tom Swisstack, both agree it needs to beef up its course offerings. But its future — what it will focus on and how it will get there — is uncertain.

The campus opened in 2010 after nearly 63 percent of Rio Rancho voters approved the new higher education tax for the facility. The tax brings in about $2 million a year, although some Rio Rancho city councilors want to reduce it by half and introduce a new eighth-cent tax to fund police and fire departments.

UNM student Sabrina Borunda, a senior, works on a quiz at the UNM West campus in Rio Rancho last month. “It’s quiet; there’s a lot of resources,” she says. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal)

The 42,700-square-feet building, just north of Rio Rancho’s City Hall, offers about 70 upper-division classes, including some graduate-level ones.

“We’ve been moving right along. Our enrollments are steadily increasing,” campus director Beth Miller said. “I think it’s time we sit down with the new president and community folks and really talk about where we want to take this campus.”

When it first opened in the 1990s, the UNM Rio Rancho campus offered mostly continuing education and non-credit courses. The campus moved to a site on American Road, near the border between West Side Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, in the mid-1990s.

But when UNM opened its new facility some 12 miles from the old one, it began offering upper division and graduate level courses.

Now, the new focus could be anything from health care to education, Miller said.

“I really don’t know,” she said.

Convenience

UNM West is unlike any of the university’s other branch campuses.

While those in Gallup, Los Alamos, Taos and Los Lunas serve as two-year community colleges, UNM West offers only upper-division courses with the goal of helping Rio Rancho residents get a college degree without having to drive to Albuquerque.

The school has an agreement with Central New Mexico Community College under which students take core curriculum courses at CNM and then transfer to UNM West for upper division classes.

But offering enough courses so students can get a degree from UNM West alone has been a challenge. So far, it’s possible only for those getting a bachelor’s degree in university studies. Most degrees require a senior seminar course, and very few of those courses are available in Rio Rancho.

Sabrina Borunda, a senior scheduled to graduate in December, drives about 40 minutes each way to UNM West from her home in Old Town Albuquerque. This semester is her first in Rio Rancho.

The Sandia Mountains and the recently opened UNM Sandoval Regional Medical Center are visible from a balcony inside UNM West, the university’s Rio Rancho campus. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal)

The drive is long, Borunda said, but worth it.

“I love it. … It’s quiet; there’s a lot of resources. I like the layout; it’s very open,” Borunda said. For example, the Rio Rancho campus has free printing, free parking and a computer lab.

Although the rest of her classes are at the main campus, Borunda said she likes to study and do homework at UNM West. The silence beats the bustle of Zimmerman Library in Albuquerque, Borunda said.

But would she step foot on the Rio Rancho campus if she weren’t forced to take a class there?

“Probably not,” Borunda said.

Anita Benson would also not be enrolled at UNM West if the course she needed were available in Albuquerque.

“When I first came out, it seemed like a big waste of resources because it’s so empty … but I appreciate so much what was put into it, and I am sure it will be well-used in the long run,” Benson said.

Like Borunda, Benson said the building’s dependable quiet makes for good study sessions.

“It’s really nice. My classmates and I come out here a couple of hours early just to study and print our stuff,” Benson said.

Frank’s ideas

Frank, who took the reins at UNM in June, already has ideas of where he wants UNM West to go — including offering more courses at the campus, but going beyond that.

He said UNM West could offer hybrid degrees, such as one that combines engineering with medicine. The campus could focus on new degrees that specifically target New Mexico jobs.

Margarita Arango cleans an empty classroom at the UNM West campus. The new building opened in 2010 and has about 600 students. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal)

“We need a laboratory to develop new models. UNM West is that laboratory to do that. It’s a perfect place for us to do some innovation things,” Frank said.

He said he has assembled a team of faculty members and others who are developing different kinds of programs for UNM West.

“We decided we wanted to be more innovative than we originally thought. They’ve gone back to the drawing board,” Frank said.

He raised the idea of experimenting with new academic calendars and schedules.

“A lot of different kinds of models that are being talked about in higher education we would do out there in this kind of innovation campus model where we could be much bolder and experimental than we can be on (main campus),” he said.

But Frank cautioned that those are only ideas in the early stages, and any changes would have to be approved by UNM leaders.

“Nothing that’s happening out there is ready for prime time,” he said.

Relationship with city

Rio Rancho Mayor Swisstack said the city’s relationship with UNM has so far been successful, but that the school needs to work on its course offerings. He said constituents often tell him they’re forced to take courses in Albuquerque because not enough are available in Rio Rancho.

Down the road, he wants the university to play a greater role in economic development.

(Journal)

“I really want the university to become more engaged in Rio Rancho. I want more classes available, because I think if we take the data, by 2035, they’re anticipating about 180,000 more people in Rio Rancho,” Swisstack said. About 90,000 people live there now.

Swisstack said UNM is already headed in the right direction by re-evaluating its purpose, but the school could serve an even greater role than educating and stirring economic development. It could also help Rio Rancho figure out where its own growth is taking it.

“They could actually help us lay out the growth and determine the social issues that will develop over time in our community, whether it’s substance abuse or mental health or the senior population. That’s part of the role UNM can help with,” he said. Meanwhile, Rio Rancho City Councilor Chuck Wilkins is proposing to reduce that quarter cent tax by half and introducing a new one that would fund the police department.

Police Chief Robert Boone recently told councilors the department was reaching a “crisis” due to understaffing and the fact that 40 percent of its vehicles have more than 100,000 miles on them.

At least one other councilor has publicly supported the idea, and several others say it’s worth considering. Wilkins would like it to go before voters in the 2014 municipal election.

But UNM’s Miller has said the full tax, which is supposed to continue for 20 years, is “crucial to the continued development of the campus.”

‘Interesting time’

UNM West’s course offerings last semester ranged from organic chemistry to Bible as literature to UFOs in America, an American Studies course.

The Anderson School of Management has a strong presence at UNM West, as does the School of Public Administration, which offers more than a dozen graduate-level courses. Anderson offers a mix of upper division undergraduate and graduate classes. The Rio Rancho campus is also now offering a dual-licensing program in education and special ed, said Beth Miller, the director.

Clare Stott, a visiting associate professor, said she has been recruiting College of Education students “that are in this part of the world” to join the program, which places student teachers in and around Rio Rancho, instead of in Albuquerque schools.

Miller said the school will continue to find new ways to serve the Rio Rancho community.

“It’s an interesting time, and we’ll see what (decisions are made) in the next few months,” Miller said.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal