NMSU formally inaugurates Valerio Ferme as new president

LAS CRUCES — Addressing a crowded ballroom on the New Mexico State University main campus Thursday morning, Valerio Ferme interrogated the familiar saying that knowledge equals power.

“Power is not tied to knowledge,” he said. “What is tied to knowledge is opportunity.”

Ferme was formally inaugurated as NMSU’s new president, a position he has held since Jan. 1 following his arrival in Las Cruces last November.

The ceremony incorporated his biography into a larger story about NMSU’s mission as a land grant institution in the present-day context for higher education nationwide: Plummeting enrollment trends, drastic cuts in federal funding and abrupt cancellations of foreign students’ visas — including at least nine at NMSU.

The Italian-born Ferme immigrated to the U.S. himself to attend Brown University, where he graduated with degrees in biology and religious studies in 1984. He went on to study comparative literature and Italian studies at Indiana University, was Fulbright scholar at the University of Turin in Italy, and earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1998.

NMSU regents selected Ferme as president in September, while he was serving as executive vice president for academic affairs, provost and a dean at the University of Cincinnati.

“Public education is a leveler of opportunity that allows those who come to it with grit and determination to succeed, and to access vistas that might have been unimaginable at the beginning of the journey,” Ferme said during Thursday’s ceremony.

At the time of Ferme’s selection, NMSU had been without a permanent leader for a year and a half. Ferme’s predecessor, Chancellor Dan Arvizu, left the university in April 2023 after regents voted to seek new leadership, amid turmoil and a faculty no-confidence vote over the university’s leadership, lawsuits by former administrators, a hazing and sexual assault scandal involving the men’s basketball team and other headwinds.

Ferme’s contract extends to Jan. 1, 2030, with a $600,000 annual salary and incentive pay of up to $50,000. He is also a tenured professor in the English department.

Thus far, Ferme’s priorities have been bolstering student retention and enrollment. On his second day in office, Jan. 2, he announced the firing of athletic director Mario Moccia following a scathing report by the state attorney general criticizing Moccia’s response to the sexual assault allegations.

In February, the university was redesignated as an R1 institution, the top rank in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, a distinction shared by Arizona State University, the University of New Mexico and the University of Texas at El Paso. NMSU reported $126 million in research expenditures during the previous fiscal year and an annual average of 102 research doctorates.

Montana State University President Waded Cruzado and Pulitzer-winning historian Elizabeth Fenn, a friend of Ferme, were the main speakers at Ferme’s investiture. Garrey Carruthers, former New Mexico governor and past NMSU president, was the emcee.

Fenn described Ferme as a leader who “dismantles silos” and referred to his athletic career as a rower to portray his view of leadership: “Unless you’re rowing in a single scull, it teaches you that rowing together is easier, more satisfying, more productive than suffering alone. Successful teams and successful universities are those whose members share a mindset in struggle, in learning, responsibility, sacrifice, gratitude, joy and love.”