Other NM universities announcements

New Mexico State University Global Campus has partnered with the City of Las Cruces to expand education and career advancement opportunities for city employees while supporting long-term workforce readiness across municipal operations.

The collaboration is designed to support city employees in building skills aligned with public service, leadership, technology and business operations through flexible, online education. By leveraging NMSU Global Campus programs, the City of Las Cruces is investing in its workforce readiness to better meet the evolving needs of the community it serves.

As a teenager, Ida Angelina Lopez often rode her bay quarter horse, Lady, for miles across the Mesilla Valley, seeking solace and space to grieve. Two weeks before high school graduation, her father, Victor, was just 43 years old when he was killed by his own brother in a family feud. 

"I told Lady everything," Lopez said. "If it wasn't for my horses and our arena, Lopez Arena, I wouldn't have made it."

The tragedy fractured her once tight-knit family. Uncertain about the future, Lopez turned to her mother for guidance. 

A day before New Mexico State University welcomed students back to campus, staff and faculty came together for NMSU's spring 2026 convocation.

Nearly 200 Aggies gathered in Atkinson Recital Hall to kick off the new semester and celebrate a group of staff and faculty who received some of the university's highest awards. Before the awards presentation, President Valerio Ferme greeted all those watching the ceremony, either in person or remotely, via a video message.

With more than two decades at New Mexico State University and recognition as one of New Mexico's Top 50 Women Leaders, Winnie (Yu-Feng) Lee has been appointed interim director of the university's Arrowhead Center and CEO of Arrowhead Inc. 

Lee holds a Ph.D. and a bachelor's degree in economics from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, having been accelerated from the master's program into the doctoral program during her graduate studies. With over two decades at NMSU, she most recently served as department head and professor of economics in the Department of Economics, Applied Statistics, and International Business at the College of Business. She has directed the Doctor of Economic Development program since 2019 and was recognized as one of New Mexico's Top 50 Women Leaders by the Women We Admire Organization in 2024. 

Since taking over the Sam Steel Café in Gerald Thomas Hall, Kelley Coffeen has led a team from New Mexico State University's Department of Family and Consumer Sciences in developing a retail concept tailored to students' tastes and budgets.

After months of working with FCS staff and students from her buying class, Coffeen has landed on what she believes is a bankable model. She gave the space a new name, ACES Coffee and Gifts, introduced a streamlined food and drink menu of affordable options, and added a few extra touches to keep customers coming back.

"We decided as a team that we wanted it to be affordable for the students," said Coffeen, fashion design and merchandising associate professor. "We dropped all the prices, and we tried to keep our markups fairly low where we make a reasonable profit, but we're not overcharging."

Learn about the neighborhoods of Chicago in a series of short stories as part of the Nelson-Boswell Reading Series. La Sociedad para Las Artes will host a public reading by Barry Pearce, author and New Mexico State University alum, from his most recent publication "The Plan of Chicago: A City in Stories."

The reading begins at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6 in NMSU's CMI Theater in Milton Hall, Room 171. A free reception will follow, where copies of "The Plan of Chicago: A City in Stories" will be available for purchase.

Archived on YouTube, a video of the historic New Mexico State University women's rugby victory in April 2025 highlights the aggression, speed and brute toughness that helped these Aggies to upset the defending national champion at the Collegiate Rugby Championship National 7s tournament near Washington, D.C. 

NMSU players plow through opponents. They spring back to their cleats, unbothered, after slamming into the turf, maybe taking a quick second to verify their hair tie survived the latest core-rattling collision. 

Aman Priyadarshi Kumar, New Mexico State University astronomy Ph.D. student, didn't start his graduate studies with solar flares, but he's always been interested in them. When NMSU Astronomy Assistant Professor Juie Shetye asked him to lead a data cataloging project, that interest led them to notice small, compact brightening areas on the sun that preceded nearby solar flares. Today, Kumar's paper, "Compact Ca II K brightenings precede solar flares: A Dunn Solar Telescope Pilot Study," was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the third-most impactful scientific journal in astronomy.

The chromosphere is a dynamic layer of the sun that is home to flares and other types of solar activity. Astronomers make observations of this layer using a specialized filter, tuned to the wavelength of ionized calcium K (Ca II K) for a more targeted view, and then plot that data into a light curve. A solar flare appears as a peak in that curve.