ENMU candidate touts reshaping to meet pressures

PORTALES - To meet the pressures of state lawmakers and taxpayers, a university must be reshaped without losing sight of its mission, according to Eastern New Mexico University presidential candidate Jeff Elwell.

Elwell was the fourth candidate interviewed this week to succeed Steven Gamble.

During Thursday's faculty forum with Elwell, Associate Professor of Physics William Andersen asked for Elwell's potential response to a "growing conviction amongst taxpayers" that higher education isn't yielding enough tangible results. He responded that a university's responsibility is to the student, regardless of their ultimate success.

"If we accept the student, then to me, we have a moral obligation to support them so that they can be successful and graduate," Elwell said. "Ultimately, they are successful or not, but we need to provide the support, and figure out what they need to be supported

"My goals that I expressed were retention has to be improved. I have some ideas, I have some things we've done before. We have to recruit more. Graduations, four-year and six-year, have to really be improved."

Elwell offered growth as the only solution to a problem History Department Chair Suzanne Balch-Lindsay posed about balancing infrastructure with personnel in a trying financial period.

"We've got students who are on top of the mesa on the big res (reservation) who are taking a course, students in Afghanistan, and then the server, because it's so overloaded, crashes," Balch-Lindsay said. "How do you see us, in your leadership, keeping the best people, and also making sure that the tools that we've got also are being met in ways that lets us keep the competitive edge and lets us keep doing what we love to do?"

Elwell said fundraising would have to be pumped up, and that he'd spend 30-50 percent of his time fundraising and "friendraising" for the college.

"That's legislators, that's citizens, that's parents, that's alums, that's donors, that's people who could help to try to tell the story to get resources," he said.

Associate Professor of Business Law and Management Frederick Greene asked Elwell to provide his strategy for improving faculty diversity.

"Last year, we (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) hired 32 faculty; 10 were members of underrepresented groups," Elwell said. "You don't just place an ad. You look. You're very proactive."