University ready with new staff

STAFF REPORT

Eastern New Mexico University has hired 18 new professors in time for what Vice President of Academic Affairs Jamie Laurenz called his favorite time of year, the start of a new school year.

“We have what we think are some great people coming in,” Laurenz said. “It’s an exciting time with all of the students and faculty coming back, and we’re ready to go.”

Laurenz described this year as a normal one in terms of losing and hiring new professors.

“We have 166 full-time faculty members, and any given year, you’re going to get around 15 to 16 people who have decided they’re going to retire, and we can’t prevent that,” he said.

Besides retirement, faculty move on for a variety of other reasons, Laurenz said.

“For some people, eastern New Mexico is just not their cup of tea, or some of them are just ready to move elsewhere, and for others, it’s just a mutual agreement between them and the university,” he said. “So generally, we see that there is going to be 15 to 20 people that we replace each year.”

Searching for new faculty is what Laurenz called “a pretty involved process” to make sure they have the best in the classroom.

“We look for faculty on a national basis, because we’re looking for people with Ph.ds in their discipline, and there’s not a lot of those people locally,” he said. “It makes the process last a little longer, because it’s not just as simple as putting an ad in the paper.”

Laurenz said the college advertises in national higher education publications, such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and HigherEdJobs.com.

“We generally look at discipline-based venues,” Laurenz said. “For example, if we’re looking for a nursing position, there are national nursing organizations that we will advertise through.”

Laurenz said they like to have the applications advertised nationally for at least a month to give people time to find and apply for the positions, which can be done online.

According to Laurenz, the university has been pretty fortunate this year in receiving a large pool of candidates for the number of positions.

“We have a search committee that is generally composed of faculty in the program, and they go through the candidates and narrow them down to people we really want to look at,” Laurenz said. “Often times, they will do a Skype interview to narrow it down to the top two or three candidates, and then, we actually bring them to campus, because we think it’s important for them to know who we are and see what we value.”

Due to the time it takes to fill the positions, the process can become a little more difficult when the university gets shorter notice of a faculty member’s leave.

“This isn’t uncommon, but this year, we had someone who didn’t put in their official resignation until around mid-May, which isn’t too bad, but it makes the time frame a little shorter,” Laurenz said.

The university even had one position who just let them know two weeks ago they were leaving.

“In that case, we don’t really look at doing a national search; we look to see how we can make sure that we can have all of the courses that person was going to teach covered,” he said. “A lot of times, we can hire an adjunct to teach one of those courses, or we can shuffle other faculty members’ schedules, and they’ll do what we call an “overload,” which is teaching five courses instead of four.”

Regardless of the situation, the university makes sure the courses are covered, Laurenz said.

“Sometimes some positions are harder to fill than others, but we make it work, and they’re always taught by someone qualified,” Laurenz said.

The following is a list of the 18 new professors that Eastern New Mexico University has hired for the fall semester:

• Robert Schneider, assistant professor of management

Schneider previously served as a professor and site coordinator of the MBA program at Park University in Austin, Texas.

• H. Doyle Brinson, assistant professor of education administration

Brinson previously served as an assistant professor and educational leadership/director at University Laboratory School at East Tennessee State University in Jefferson City, Tennessee.

• Brett Gleason, assistant professor of counseling

Gleason previously served as a doctoral practicum counselor at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, Virginia.

• Richard Johnson, assistant professor of career technical education

Johnson previously served as an instructor of environmental science at the University of Phoenix in Houston, Texas.

• Marshall Swafford, assistant professor of career technical education

Swafford previously served as an agricultural related professor in Clarion, Iowa; Albany, Missouri; Moore, Oklahoma; and Lindsay, Oklahoma.

• Diane Walker, assistant professor of elementary education

Walker previously served as an assistant professor of science education at New Mexico Highlands University in Rio Rancho.

• Patrick McCreary, instructor of technical theater and design

McCreary previously served as an assistant professor and technical director at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois.

• Robert Schaller, assistant professor of communication

Schaller previously served as enrollment management at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

• Janet Atkinson, instructor of communicative disorders

Atkinson previously served as a speech-language pathologist at INTERGRIS Health in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

• Steve Bellin-Oka, assistant professor of English

Bellin-Oka previously served as an assistant professor of English at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin.

• Omar Camarillo, assistant professor of criminal justice

Camarillo previously served as a lecturer of sociology at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas.

• Kathleen Cooper, instructor of nursing

Cooper previously served as a nurse at Interim Health Care in Clovis.

• Ivana Mali, assistant professor of biology

Mali previously served as a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Biology at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.

• Jesse “Jay” Martin, instructor of communicative disorders

Martin previously served as a speech language pathologist at Kingman Regional Hospital in Kingman, Arizona.

• Kathryn Putsavage, assistant professor of anthropology

Putsavage previously served as a graduate instructor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.

• Lynnette Roller, instructor of mathematics.

Roller previously served as a mathematics teacher at Dulaney High School in Timonium, Maryland.

• Kristin Waldo, assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice

Waldo previously served as a an assistant professor of sociology at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma.