ENMU grad donates $1 million to project

An Eastern New Mexico University graduate has donated $1 million to launch a new co-teaching project with the Portales municipal school district.

ENMU alumna Gay Su Pinnell, of Dublin, Ohio, previously funded a $310,000 grant to the ENMU child development center in Portales, added a two-year-old pre-school classroom and enhanced the birth to pre-kindergarten students’ hands-on learning and early childhood literature library.

According to a news release from ENMU marketing and communications assistant vice-president John Houser, the co-teaching project is designed to recruit, train and retain teachers within ENMU and the Portales school system, utilizing a system in which a prospective teacher is paired with a clinical teacher. In this way, mentor teachers and prospective teachers can learn more about their profession while incorporating teaching strategies best administered as a team.

Patrice Caldwell, ENMU President said the university values Pinnell’s nationally recognized expertise in her specialty areas and her engagement with the ENMU campus and faculty in bringing the funded projects into being.

Pinnell is a 1966 graduate of ENMU. She was inducted into the ENMU Educator Hall of Honor in 2014 for her exceptional career developing internationally renowned teaching methods in early childhood literacy. She was named “Philanthropist of the Year” by the ENMU Foundation in 2019.