Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Music professor awarded grant
ENMU Communication Services
A number of Eastern New Mexico University faculty have received internal grants from ENMU to further research projects.
Dr. Tracy Carr, assistant professor of music, explains what she will do with her grant in the area of oboe and bassoon reed-making.
“All serious double reed (oboe and bassoon) students, teachers, and professionals make and adjust their own reeds. In terms of developing both artistically and musically, oboists and bassoonist must make their own reeds. Tone development, musical and technical artistry, as well as teaching those skills to one's private studio is imperative. The Germans use the term Tongestaltung, meaning concept of sound and overall artistry and how it relates to our entire musical experience.
“Both oboe and bassoon reeds ‘live’ very short lives, thus, we are continually replenishing our supply by making new reeds. The process is never-ending. I recommend, as do most other professionals, for my students to have at least four working reeds and three in-progress reeds at all times. Additionally, weather, altitude, humidity, barometric pressure and other natural occurrences continually affect (even finished) reeds, thus, making the adjusting process an ongoing learning experience.
“The reed on an oboe or bassoon is created from arundo dorax, a bamboo-type of material that is predominantly grown in Southern France. The ultimate goal is to be able to make a reed from scratch, i.e., from its most basic tube cane form through many stages to finally becoming a fully working, responsive, playable reed.
“Students begin by purchasing a knife and basic tool kit to first learn how to adjust the (working) reeds they currently have. As they progress, they purchase the cane in less processed forms so that they can have more and better control over their final outcome.
“Personal sound preference, jaw, teeth, and individual ‘bite’ all influence and affect one’s sound-producing cavity, thus sound concept and reed-making are very personal and ongoing skills. (By sound concept, I mean that different type reeds are used in different type performing situations and venues — a woodwind quintet performance in a small hall can require a reed quite different from a large ensemble performance in a larger hall).
“In order to best serve my oboe and bassoon students here at ENMU, it is vital that they practice and perform on the best equipment possible and have the best opportunities for musical and artistic development and advancement. One’s reed, or mouthpiece, makes the sound from an otherwise silent instrument. Thus, having the best reeds and reed-making skills are vital for one’s success.
“My students currently are quite sufficient in adjusting their own reeds and are now beginning to master the making of their own reeds. As a professional performer and teacher, my goal is for myself and my students to be as self-reliant as possible. I believe that to truly be an artist, one must have the most thorough understanding and mastery of all aspects of performance and musicianship. This is my hope for my students.”
ENMU active in biodiversity program
By Dr. Darren Pollock
ENMU Assistant Professor of Biology
The New Mexico Institute for Natural Resources and Analysis (INRAM) Biodiversity Program is a consortium of the four New Mexico universities, which house major natural history museum collections of New Mexico flora and fauna. The collections are at the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico, the ENMU Natural History Collection at Eastern New Mexico University, the Gila Center for Natural History at Western New Mexico University, and New Mexico State University Natural History Collections.
A major goal of the INRAM Biodiversity Program is to make information about New Mexico's biodiversity readily available to the general, professional, and scientific public throughout the world. INRAM Biodiversity has been funded by the National Science Foundation beginning in 2002 to construct an electronic database of natural history specimen information from the collections of the consortium partners. The database contains information from over 300,000 specimens from 25 collections held by the consortium.
The New Mexico Biodiversity Electronic Database is on the Internet at:
The database integrates plant and animal information into an easily searchable format. A user anywhere in the world can easily obtain information on the occurrence of particular species in New Mexico, collection dates, habitat information, and county-level maps of species distributions. The completion of the database is of major importance to land managers, governmental agencies, researchers, private industry, and agriculture.
New Mexico is enormously rich in biodiversity. For example, it houses more species of mammals than any other similarly sized area of non-tropical North America and is fourth in terms of birds. The vascular plant flora contains nearly 3,000 indigenous species. The arthropod fauna is similarly diverse, but poorly understood. A new source of biodiversity with mostly negative impacts is the tremendous influx of non-native species into New Mexico. The online database provides desktop computer access for anyone to obtain information about indigenous New Mexican as well as invasive plants, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, insects, spiders and mites, fishes, and birds.
The database took three years of collaborative effort by faculty, staff members and students at the participating institutions.
Urban students learn art of debate
By Doug Gross
The Associated Press
ATLANTA — Adrienne Glover admits to getting emotional when her inner-city school’s debate team faces experienced, well-funded squads from exclusive private schools.
The emotion? Joy.
“It’s really fun when you beat them,” said Glover, a rising 14-year-old at Benjamin Mays High School in southwest Atlanta, where all the students are minorities and half qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. “They think they’re so good.”
Mays is part of the Urban Debate League — part of a national program started by Atlanta’s Emory University that instructs public school kids from poor areas in the traditionally upscale art of debate.
Founded in 1985, leaders at Emory reasoned that debating would provide students in Atlanta’s inner-city schools with communication skills useful in conflict resolution, advocacy and other aspects of their lives.
Since then, the program has gradually grown and now, through the National Debate Project, includes more than 2,000 middle and high school students supported by leagues in 17 cities.
The leagues work with schools, recreation directors, public housing officials and others to establish, fund and support debate teams in areas where the competitive talkathons are far from traditional.
“Historically, if you’re white and male and affluent, this is a game you play,” said Melissa Maxey-Wade, the Emory-based executive co-director of the National Debate Project. “But when you level the playing field, everybody wins.”
Students in urban debate leagues from New York City to Los Angeles made up about half the roughly 120 students attending Emory’s National Debate Institute, a two-week summer camp at the university that recently concluded. The camp gives debate team members a crash course on topics expected to dominate debate competitions in the coming year.
This year’s debate topic was civil liberties and the U.S. Patriot Act.
One afternoon at the camp, Glover was acting as timekeeper in an Emory classroom as four students debated whether the act needs to be scaled back.
The two teams took turns stepping to a podium and making rapid-fire speeches, reading as much of their arguments into the record as possible in a limited amount of time.
When they were done, their opponents stepped up and, like defense attorneys, worked to poke holes in the other side’s argument — from questioning whether a speaker’s opinions were backed by documented facts to making him prove he knew the definition of terms such as “pre-emptive arrest” and “military detention.”
Fifteen-year-old Sarayfah Bolling, a sophomore at Atlanta’s Southside High School, said the skills she’s honed on her school’s debate team have already led to at least one benefit — she wins more arguments with her mother.
“I like to argue,” said Bolling, laughing. “You can pull out those logical things she can’t think about.”
Glover says she’s been teased by classmates who have never heard of competitive debating and don’t understand why she sometimes misses basketball practice to attend debate competitions.
She says she just uses the opportunity to try to get her teammates involved.
“I tell them it’s fun,” said Glover, who described herself as a straight-A student. “I tell them, ’You should come; it’ll help get those F’s up.’ “
For Ed Lee, debate did more than that. It changed the entire course of his life.
Lee was a student at Harper High School in Atlanta when he joined a debate team sponsored by the Urban Debate League. Before that, school had never clicked for him.
“I was not one of those students who saw themselves going to college before starting to debate,” said Lee, who earned a master’s degree from the University of Alabama in 1999 and is currently director of the university’s debate team.
ENMU Briefs
BRAC goers to be served lunch
Eastern New Mexico University employees who attended Operation: Keep Cannon events in Clovis on Friday may receive a “thank you” lunch.
The lunch is at the Campus Crossroads between 11:45 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. on Tuesday. There will be a sign-in sheet by the cash register in the dining hall.
Santa Fe opera tickets available
ENMU’s Upward Bound program has acquired a number of Santa Fe Opera tickets for the July 9 performance of “Turnadot.” Upward Bound is hoping to expand the balance of its scholarship fund. Officials are accepting minimum bids of $20 per ticket.
Proceeds will go directly into the scholarship fund. Tickets will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
For information, contact Andrew Mason at [email protected] or call the UB office 562-2452.
ENMU-Ruidoso to hold celebration
Officials are asking those associated with ENMU join ENMU-Ruidoso as it celebrates its new Branch Community College status. The community celebration and Branch Campus Ribbon Cutting will be from noon to 2 p.m. on Friday at 709 Mechem Drive.
There will be music, food and fun.
Scholarship golf tourney slated
The 2004-05 Leadership ENMU group is sponsoring a scholarship golf tournament on Aug. 27, at the Clovis Municipal Golf Course.
The entry fee will be $200 per four-member team, which includes green fees and golf carts. It will be a scramble format in which each team member hits their shot from the spot of the player with the best previous shot.
Leadership ENMU will offer four scholarships to students from Curry and Roosevelt Counties.
For information, contact Wendel Sloan at 562-2253 or e-mail [email protected]
Registration for sessions offered
The second summer term at Eastern begins July 5. Currently enrolled students may register now for the summer or fall terms.
Students need to contact their advisor before registering. New students should contact the Advising Center at 562-2338.
Those not yet admitted, can apply online at
For more information, call 562-2178 or e-mail:
University notes
l Michael F. Shaughnessy and retired Lt. Col. Larry Gnadt have had a paper accepted for the Southwest Disabilities Conference to be held in September in Albuquerque.
l Anyone interested in items that did not sell during KENW-TV’s Tele-Auction, can go to the following link to view and/or purchase them:
http://www.kenw.org/auction/notsold05.html
l The 30-minute “Touring Your Future” show, which features ENMU and other educational institutions, will air again in July and August on KAMR, KCIT and KCPN TV stations in Amarillo. ENMU also has a 30-second spot that will air 50 times on the three stations.
Extended Learning
A brief survey of China class set
Zheng Liguang, who has the Americanized name of Claire, is an exchange student at ENMU from Sichuan University in China who wants to share her native country this summer. She will offer two classes on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Chinese Written Characters: Tonight and Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., COB-137, $20.
Chinese Cooking: July 5-7, 6:30-8:30 p.m., FCS-98, $15 and $5 lab fee, payable to instructor.
Scuba diving to begin in July
Mike Hale, Scuba Ventures in Liberal, Kan., teaches this open-water scuba class over two weekends, July 8-10 at ENMU and July 23-24 at Blue Hole, Santa Rosa.
The registration fee of $200 includes all equipment and air the student will need. There is an additional $120 open-water fee, payable to the instructor, which includes the cost for certification.
Contact Extended Learning for information on material costs. Please register by July 5.
Stained glass class is offered
This is a four-Saturday beginner’s class to learn basic glass cutting exercises and procedures, pattern preparation, foil wrapping, soldering techniques, use of patina and polishing methods.
The instructor will share some of the more expensive tools and suggests waiting to see if you are truly into this art form before purchasing a glasscutter and soldering iron of your own.
She will provide some of the necessary materials with a $10 kit fee, payable to her.
Students should wear tennis shoes (no sandals) and bring safety goggles for eye protection if they have them: Saturdays, July 9-30, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., TECH-112.
The fee is $85. Please register by July 6.
The information/registration number is 562-2165.
– ENMU Communication
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