Michael Swickard
“It was an interesting choice for The Ohio State Football Team to play the Aggies. I guess Ohio State’s first choices of opponents were unavailable; Golden Acres Retirement Home had the flu and little Bobby’s Cub Scout pack was having a Halloween party. On the plus side I know it was a good thing financially. The announcers mentioned that the Aggie team couldn’t even provide snacks during training camp. And this is a division 1 team?” Abbey (via email)
The above e-mail highlights New Mexico State University’s leadership problems. In college football the be-all and end-all is the team’s win/loss record. Ohio State this last week posted a bogus win while NMSU suffered a bogus loss.
Bogus money games are short-term gimmicks meant for one season. NMSU has played them each year for three decades. Worse, this year the football leadership begged for snacks, thereby opening the program up to ridicule by the national television announcers. One wonders if sought-after football recruits will come to a program that is panhandling the public for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?
This is not a criticism of the Aggie football players and coaches who give their all in a flawed process not of their making. I attend every game and have liked the coaches. The bogus game issue is above their pay grade.
Speaking of those leadership issues, the NMSU Presidential Search Committee picked five finalists and was instantly embroiled in controversy. Two of the five were tainted by issues at their home institutions. The search committee chair stated they knew those two had baggage.
The professional fields represented by the finalists are: English literature, math, education, geology and agriculture. One even looks like former NMSU President Mike Martin, who came and left with baggage. Alas, that candidate is one of the two with possible issues and is the only agricultural professional.
Perhaps the search committee was complying with a political directive from Santa Fe to frame the presidential final list so that four of the five were inferior or had defects, so the politically desired candidate would be selected. I do not know, but with the Internet I knew of the scandal problems in less than 10 minutes of searching.
Why else would the committee do this?
Institutional identity
Educationally, NMSU needs a president matching the institutional identity, or NMSU will be led away from its 120-year identity. On paper, that requires agriculture or engineering leadership. Politically, outside forces might want the candidate with the education background. He is originally from the University of New Mexico and may be the choice of some politicians.
I do not know any of the candidates, but I have known all of the NMSU presidents back to Hugh Milton. I also come from a pioneer family and have written on New Mexico, history including the history of NMSU.
NMSU is a land-grant institution, so the role of the president is to support and enhance that identity. The commonality of NMSU presidents in the past is that each of them improved and expanded the institution but did not fundamentally change the institutional identity.
While I personally liked Interim NMSU President Waded Cruzado, her background was not agriculture or engineering, so her role was to just hold the reigns until the next president was selected. If the possibly already chosen president is not from agriculture or engineering, NMSU could flounder in regard to its core mission.
UNM, not NMSU, is the state’s comprehensive school
Currently the six New Mexico institutions of higher learning each have different core missions. Importantly, each must know what it is not since it cannot be all things to all people at all times and in all ways.
In New Mexico the only truly comprehensive institution of higher learning is the University of New Mexico. It has all of the components of a comprehensive university including undergraduate and graduate programs along with law, medical and pharmacy schools. UNM does not have an agricultural and cooperative extension role, which is New Mexico State University’s statewide role.
Likewise, there are regional roles that Western, Eastern, Highlands and New Mexico Tech fulfill in New Mexico. Each has regional undergraduate and graduate programs,but they do spend money trying to be another statewide comprehensive university. Why would New Mexico need or want more than one comprehensive university in the state? There is no reason at all for that expensive duplication other than mindless political ego.
Because of its core mission, UNM would not hire a president with an agricultural background any more than Western, Eastern, Highlands or New Mexico Tech would. That is why NMSU must always have the right land-grant institutional leader.
Otherwise, it would be like having the Aggie band director coach the football team. While he can blow the whistle well, the deep understanding of football necessary to make the program thrive would not be there despite how sincerely he wanted to lead the football team to victory.
Likewise, I am certain all five of the final candidates are swell people and would all have interesting things to contribute. However, only professionals who have worked closely with agriculture and engineering for their entire professional lives are really qualified to lead NMSU.
While I regularly opine about a variety of subjects, this institutional identity issue is important to me in part because my professional background and Ph.D. is in educational administration. To me, making a political choice for NMSU president would be as fundamentally flawed as the Aggies playing Ohio State.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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