UNM Must Become All Things for All New Mexicans

A free offer: I'll give this blog and it's name to the University of New Mexico for $1,000. It's a steal!

UNM is so hide-bound with it's traditonal division between being a serious academic institution who supports world-class graduates, and being local ra-ra sports teams. So the Alumni Department publishes Mirage three times a year for the alumni and alumnae, full of gossip, good stories and news about UNM alumni and current sports of note. Go Lobos! Meh.

OTOH, the Vice President or Provost of Research side of UNM publishes it's own lay-oriented survey of the most interesting exploratory work by UNM students and faculty called Quantum.

Who knows what the independent New Mexico School of Law (at UNM) and the University Health Sciences program (at UNM) and the University Hospital (at UNM) publish. Do the alumni who receive Mirage also read Quantum? No. The university is schizophrenic. Too many personalities.

S   i   g   h.

Then there are all the other graduate departmental newsletters and magazines that go to their special graduates. My, aren't we proud of our provenance!

Oh, and then there's that radical "community-powered" radio station, KUNM and a TV station called KNME with all their programs that have almost nothing to do with UNM, but receive student fees. At least KUNM devotes an hour each Friday to interview faculty of interest. KNME? Zilch.

The internet is a whole new animal I can't describe.

Lets get real here, really serious about how the University markets itself and its successes. And the faculty will have to come off their ivory (ivy-covered?) pedestals and talk to the people (who pay a very small fraction of their salaries, but who UNM needs to support the institution and keep it from becoming a overblown community college).

UNM should consolidate all its paper-published articles for a lay audience into one sandbox, one publication for mass consumption. It's called sharing (or cross-fertilizing). UNM is a great and big institution that does a myriad of great things for the world and New Mexico, but it's apparently crowded with brilliant silos and fer sher no one imagines that anyone else is interested in what they do. Every silo-dweller and silo-builder should get in the sandbox and share their good news with everyone they can! Including the public, taxpayers and legislators (not to mention the federal government and private grantors).

The University needs to take a lot more interest in its broadcast entities and use them to proclaim the work of all University programs. Like when did a favorite Anthroplogy professor get a chance to record an hour for public broadcast?

How's that working for ya'? NOT

UNM can't maintain its paranoid and selfish attitude. Shout out the good news to EVERYONE!

Call this new monthly magaine New Mexico Review (like my blog!) and push it out in print on the newstands as hard as you can. This is not an original idea.

MIT was first with their monthly Technology Review that is sold on newstands and mailed to alumni. The only distinction is that alumni get a newsprint insert with all the alumni news and gossip of note, along with the glossy public news of all the great stuff MIT is doing! And UNM's publications can become a foundation for regular programs on KNME and KUNM!

What great stuff is UNM doing, and who knows? Who cares?

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