By Lynn Janes
On April 24, 2026, the board of regents held a board meeting. The board consisted of Steven Neville, chair, Joseph "Dean" Reed, John Wertheim, Gregory Trujillo and WNMU student regent Keana Huerta. All had attended online except Huerta. Dr. Chris Maples, interim president, also attended.
The board approved the agenda for the meeting and past minutes.
Public comment none currently.
Presidents report
Maples started with turning the reports over to various groups on campus.
Carlos Carranza, student body president, reported that they had a very successful election and the results finalized, and he had been reelected as student body president. Some of the students that had served would be graduating this year. He added the Great Race had gone really well.
Dr. Gregory Robinson Guerra, faculty senate president, thanked everyone for his election and Dr. Andrea Nica and the trust and confidence they have in him. His update would be from the last meeting in January to now. The twenty-first Academic Symposium would take place April 28, 2026, in person and April 29, 2026, online. Both the faculty senate and the general assembly had discussed and approved the first and second readings of the faculty handbook revision for elections on the president and vice president of the faculty, section 402, modifying the composition of the MBO process from five to three categories for tenured faculty. This change aligns more closely with minimum requirements within the new Mexico statute governing post-tenure review. Some other times listed faculty budget review committee, membership from five to seven members, faculty handbook Spanish translation update of the university mission and vision. All of these items will be included in the Board of Regents agenda for the day
Bart Brown, outgoing staff senate president, said this would be his final report to the board and congratulated the incoming staff senate president Dean Foster. Foster said he will be glad to serve as staff senate president again and looked forward to working with the incoming new university president. Brown said he had the privilege of serving on the staff senate for the past six years, four as a senator and the past two as president. In the time he had learned a deep appreciation for the role the staff senate plays and the people it represents. He thanked the board for their continued engagement with the staff senate. "Shared governance is strongest when all voice are present." In the past two years they had worked hard to refine the governing documents and placed an emphasis on engagement with the broader staff.
The board thanked the outgoing for their service and congratulated those who had won. Maples said that these presidents of these groups had been great to work with and had worked to make the job easier.
Maples in his report said they had a lot on the agenda and this time of the semester students will be preparing to graduate. He had attended a scholarship luncheon where they had a lot of extremely accomplished students in attendance. He encourages everyone to look at the WNMU home page because they had news items about different students that would be graduating and the path they had taken to achieve their degrees. They all had come from different backgrounds, and some had taken a long time to come to this point. "It is the beauty of our community college charter that goes with a university like us." He ended by saying, "We are here for all students, all ages and we will continue to be here more than 130 years down the line."
Neville said he didn't know if they would have another meeting before Maples tenure would be over but wanted to take the opportunity to thank him for all his efforts in helping right the ship and get it back on course. Maples thanked him for the opportunity and said it had been a warm and welcoming place.
New business
Dr. Jack Crocker, provost and vice president of academic affairs ,recommended that Dr. Jose Coll, incoming president of the university, to be appointed to the faculty at a rank of professor of social work with tenure. The associate vice president of academic affairs and dean of the college of professional studies also recommends this. Maples pointed out this would be proper to grant the tenure to the incoming president. The board approved the recommendation.
Crocker had a new program to recommend on a five-year plan for expansion of bachelor certificate programs. The board approved his recommendation. They have also been discussing three-year plans that have been started across the country. The school of business has been looking at a shortened MBA graduate certificate and would be mostly classes on the weekend and online. It will be aimed at professionals already in business , who want to further their education. A different basic fee will be charged rather than regular tuition. They also spoke about a 90-hour bachelor program as opposed to 120 hours that would not eliminate basics required by the state but electives that would consist of 30 hours. Crocker said many times higher education has been accused of general credit hour creep and often times they add courses but never do away with any. This would be what they actually need for a degree. Reed applauded the effort and said this would allow them to compete with other universities that have been doing this.
Crocker had recommendations for promotion and tenure. The faculty must put together their portfolios to be evaluated by their peers and then will be evaluated on three areas, academic, primarily teaching, scholarship research and service. He had provided a list for the board of the faculty that accomplished the standards for promotion and tenure. The board approved the promotion and tenure list as presented.
Crocker had a recommendation for post tenure review that is a state requirement. Every five years all tenured faculty must reapply for tenure and be re-evaluated. A similar process must be done like the promotion and tenure. The board approved the recommendations as presented.
Crocker had a last item of recommendation, the sabbatical leave of Shannon Rivera. It will be a semester and will be done for research and professional development. The process for this goes through a faculty committee. The board approved the recommendation.
Robinson-Guerra presented the faculty handbook changes for the board to approve. They had translated the mission portion into Spanish but had to make some corrections. He reviewed some of the other changes and the board approved all of them.
Kelly Riddle, vice president of business affairs, had the final fiscal year 2025 audit reports that the board approved after the presentation. Typically, it would only be one, but because of changes in federal regulations they had to do two. They had done an exit meeting of the audits prior to it being submitted to the state. Scott Peck, MP Group, LLC, had a presentation for the board. They had received the final audit approval from the state, and it had been listed on the state auditor's website along with other public institutions in the state. Peck said they had done the two reports as required because of federal regulation changes and the state then required the issuances of two reports, one for financial statements and then one on the single audit area.
Peck said they had received an unqualified opinion meaning they had not found any issues in relation to the financial statements along with any significant material weaknesses. They had identified a few findings. Almost all of them had to do with the report Jaramillo Group which had been the fraud report. The state required them to include this although they had been mainly suggestions and not findings. He explained how that had happened and what it had entailed.
Wertheim suggested everyone go to the website and check out the audit. It has quite a bit of information. He had Riddle explain some items further. He wanted to point out that an extensive number of policy changes had been made on procedural changes that have been implemented. Those could all be seen on the audit report.
The board approved the budget adjustments presented by Riddle for the final fiscal year 2026 and must be submitted to the higher education department by May 1, 2026. Riddle went over each adjustment. Neville spoke to the decline in tuition numbers and Riddle concurred it had been largely due to the cyber-attack. It had been down 10 percent last fall, and the spring had been down 6 percent. Reed said when they lose 1 percent enrollment it equates to a loss of roughly $360,000 but if they have a 1 percent increase that would be a gain of $360,000. He thanked Riddle and her team for being patient and explaining everything to him and Huerta.
The board approved the fiscal year 2027 operating budget. Riddle said once it had been submitted to the higher education department by May 1, 2026, it would be published on the website and will be just under 200 pages. It will include all departments and budget lines. She went over some of the significant changes from last year to this coming year. The tuition fees had been reduced due to the loss in enrollment. She hoped that she would be coming back to the board for budget adjustments due to enrollment increases. During the past legislature a one percent increase will be made with salaries. Benefits will increase ten percent, but the university will continue to cover ninety percent of the premiums with the employee paying ten percent. The utilities will increase $140,000 and IT expenditures will increase to $400,000. The IT had been putting programs in place to better protect from cyber incidents. She had increased the legal fees to just over $200,000 because of some outstanding legal cases going on. Riddle continued with expenditures and the reason for the changes from the previous year.
Reed asked Riddle to touch on shared governance and the budget. They had implemented bringing in the cabinet members, faculty, and staff while formulating the budget to be more transparent and open. Riddle said in the past the process had just included the budget office and president in the formulation. This year they had included the people Reed had mentioned in this process. With this approval they will have a follow up meeting with those individuals and will continue this practice moving forward.
Riddle had provided two lists of the asset disposal items to the board. One list would be items that cost more than $1,000 but less than $5,000. The items do not depreciate and are not required to be reported to the state as a capital asset. The items over $5,000 have been depreciated and recognized as a capital asset. The board approved the asset disposal list provided.
Riddle told the board, as mentioned earlier in the audit presentation, that they recommended a special audit and have an internal auditor. It had been determined that they would outsource this to a third party rather than hire an internal employee. They had sent out an RFP (request for proposal) for this service and received three. It had been reviewed by the audit committee which also consisted of Reed and Huerta, but they had a question before the award would be made and submitted it to the office of the state auditor and have been waiting for their guidance. All information must remain confidential. The award will be done no later than April 30, 2026.
The board approved the resolution naming the authorized representative for the LITEPATH project.
Riddle requested the board table the resolution for the student regent scholarship and the board tabled the resolution until the next meeting. Riddle explained the university had in place since 2021 a Student Regent Scholarship, and it came about because as a Regent, the student has not been able to be employed by the institution and the scholarship had been put in place. The reason Riddle asked for this to be tabled had been to fine tune the language so that they can make sure that this doesn't exclude any type of scholarship that has been given to Regents in the past. More specifically, this wording sounds like it's going to be a tuition only scholarship but missing the graduate assistant salary portion. At the time when this scholarship had been put in place it had a cap of $5,000 and Riddle wanted to either remove the cap or increase it. This had been calculated by hourly rates they would have lost and tuition, both of which had increased.
The board approved the resolution adopting notice procedure pursuant to the New Mexico Open Meetings Act. Geno Zamora, Law, joined the meeting online to explain. Zamora said the board has a requirement by the state to adopt an annual Open Meetings Act resolution. It had been updated to how they would be informing the public of meetings and how to obtain agendas. He recommended the regents consider adopting fixed dates for quarterly meetings.
The board voted to keep all the same officers as they have currently.
Regents' information
Neville wanted to mention that Reed and Huerta had been working very hard on the budget and thanked them.
Wertheim thanked Reed and Huerta also for the hard work on the budget process. He added how much Reed had been present in Sliver City and helped with the president search.
Reed said he is semi-retired and has had the time. He had some time with his granddaughter attending the university, but she would be graduating in May. He added that this would probably be Maples last formal board meeting, and he agreed with Neville about how he had steadied the ship and thanked him. Trujillo and Wertheim echoed that sentiment.
Meeting adjourned.
