New Mexico State University announces new president after six-month search

Half a year and two batches of candidates later, New Mexico State University has chosen a new president.

The Board of Regents unanimously selected Valerio Ferme of the University of Cincinnati to serve as president during a special meeting on Thursday, NMSU announced in a news release.

Ferme is the executive vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Cincinnati. It is unclear when he will take the helm at NMSU.

”We hope to see him in the coming weeks or months on our campus,” said Justin Bannister, a spokesperson for NMSU.

Ferme still has obligations at the University of Cincinnati, and the transition is a work in progress, Bannister told the Journal.

The contract for the incoming president, and when he will start, is still being negotiated with the Board of Regents, Bannister said. Until then, Mónica Torres will continue leading the university as the interim president.

The Board of Regents began the presidential search in March and selected five candidates that month that they would later take off the table. The search began anew, and NMSU announced the second round of finalists last month.

Arsenio Romero, the former New Mexico public education secretary, was a finalist alongside Ferme and had resigned from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s Cabinet after the finalists were announced. Lujan Grisham had asked Romero to pick between his PED job or the position he sought at NMSU.

Ferme graduated from Brown University with bachelor’s degrees in biology and religious studies. He went on to obtain two master’s degrees in comparative literature and Italian studies from Indiana University and received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California.

Ferme taught at the University of Colorado for 19 years and served as the chair of the Department of French and Italian. In 2017, he was recognized by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement at Colorado for his work in supporting minority students. Ferme later served as divisional dean for the Arts and Humanities at Colorado before moving on to serve as the dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Northern Arizona University in 2017.

At NAU, Ferme hired faculty from diverse backgrounds that were previously underrepresented at the university, the news release said.

Ferme joined the University of Cincinnati in 2019 as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, where he more than doubled funds for sponsored research awards. He also established the position of associate dean for Inclusive Excellence and Community Partnerships in his college, which was later implemented across the university.

New Mexico Higher Education Secretary Stephanie Rodriguez wrote in a Journal op-ed article earlier this month criticizing the university’s choice of candidates.

“This newest group of candidates, qualified though they may be in other areas, is as unsuited for the role of president of New Mexico State University as the first group,” Rodriguez wrote. “The recent history of leadership, with frequent changes and interim placeholders as well as alleged instances of hazing and assault among student athletes, suggests the search process must be more rigorous.”

The Journal reached out to Rodriguez for comment about the selection. She was unavailable.

New Mexico State has cycled through four presidents, one chancellor and three interim presidents in the past fifteen years. The last president was John Floros, who announced a year-long sabbatical in 2022 from which he never returned. Floros resigned amid student and faculty protests over his leadership, the Las Cruces Sun News reported.

The previous chancellor, Dan Arvizu, who was hired alongside Floros, stepped down last year after blowback from an alleged affair with a staff member and scrutiny of his redoing Athletic Director Mario Moccia’s contract in the wake of a hazing scandal involving members of the Aggie men’s basketball team.

“The Aggie students and faculty deserve nothing less than clarity and certainty moving forward — the ‘revolving door’ in this administration is untenable,” Rodriguez said.