For Leopold, the naturalist who first proposed setting aside a half-million acres surrounding New Mexico’s Gila River as wilderness, “thinking like a mountain” meant appreciating the profound interconnectedness of the elements of an ecosystem.

That interconnectedness is demonstrated and meditated upon in a new exhibition at the Francis McCray Gallery of Contemporary Art at Western New Mexico University. Flagstaff-based artist Shawn Skabelund used elements of nature to create a mixed-media installation that takes full advantage of the gallery’s space.

“For over thirty years,” Skabelund said in his artist’s statement, “my work as an artist has been to ‘collaborate with a place’ as I prepare for exhibitions and installations all over the United States.” For the exhibition at the McCray, Skabelund took inspiration from the landscapes along the route between Flagstaff and Silver City.

His materials are gathered from the forest and include everything from a burnt tree to Ponderosa pine pollen to a mummified hummingbird. These natural elements are assembled to create four place-based installations in the gallery.

The exhibition, said Skabelund, “is my rumination on the life of Aldo Leopold as it intersects with my art, which has focused on land health, land ethics and justice for over thirty years.”

Development of a land ethic is central to “A Sand County Almanac,” in which Leopold claimed that there were two things that interested him: “the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to the land.” These relationships are what Skabelund explores in the exhibition at the McCray.

“I believe that to think like a mountain is a creative process akin to collaborating with a place,” said Skabelund. “Driving through the landscape of the Mogollon Highlands along U.S. Route 180 helped me focus and develop the four place-based installations in this exhibition. The drive, or the route, became my studio, and the landscape out my car window, where Leopold once lived and worked, the place.”

The exhibition, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” will be on display until October 2. Gallery hours are Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.

Learn more about ¡Fiesta Latina! and the important role this event plays in celebrating the university’s designation as a Hispanic-Serving Institution and its ongoing commitment to diversity and community, .

WNMU, an Hispanic Serving Institution and a charter member of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, has several activities planned in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. The university is kicking off the festivities early with an Hispanic Unity Ball, Hasta la Raiz, on Friday, September 12. At the ball, which is sponsored by MEChA, students will be recognized for their grades, student leadership, and student athlete status. The ball will be held in the WNMU Museum, 7:00–9:00 p.m., with an after-party on the Student Memorial Center Patio 9:00–11:00 p.m.

On September 16, Student Life is hosting a game of Loteria, a traditional Mexican board game of chance, with prizes relevant to Hispanic culture. The game will be 12:00–2:00 p.m. in the Student Life Lounge.

A Hispanic Heritage Fiesta will be held September 19 in the Intramural Gym, sponsored by Con Ganas, a program funded with grant money awarded under the U.S. Department of Education’s Title V Developing Hispanic Serving Institutions program. The event will include Dual Enrollment students from Deming, Cobre and Silver High, WNMU HSI Student Ambassadors, local Chicano Historian Javier Marrufo, Grant County League of United Latin Citizens (LULAC) Council 8003, and the Los Angeles-based art collective Kalli Arte. The event, which runs 10:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m., will feature performances from Mariachi Plata and the Deming High Folklorico Group, and there will be an art display and a conversation with the artists hosted by Mónica Ortiz Uribe.

The artists of the Kalli Arte collective will also be conducting a linoleum block printing workshop on Saturday, September 20, in McCray 105. Registration for this event is required.

MEChA will be holding a salsa competition, and in conjunction with the Black Student Union, they will also be hosting a fútbol (soccer) tournament. Dates and times for these events will be announced through social media.

Hispanic Heritage Month runs through October 15.

The meeting began with Chair Neville welcoming to the meeting Greg Trujillo, who was recently nominated by NM Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to join the board. Trujillo will be attending Board of Regents meetings as he awaits confirmation.

Neville then invited Interim President Christopher Maples to report. Maples began by discussing the university’s fall semester challenges surrounding enrollment. “The biggest immediate challenge is that we are down about 365 students at this point in time,” he said. “That is about a 10% decline.”

As a result of the enrollment decline, the university’s revenues are down approximately $3.3 million for the year, Maples reported. The decline can largely be attributed to the cyber incident in the spring, which resulted in the university not having a web presence for a time.

Maples said that the university is actively looking for ways to return to having a robust web presence. “We have requests into the appropriate channels with the state for supplemental funding,” he said, adding the university is looking into other funding sources as well.

He also noted that the university is getting rid of barriers to enrollment and looking for ways to increase student support services.

Maples also reported that WNMU is working with NMSU Global Campus to increase enrollment in online courses, including recently developed 8-week courses.

Maples then ceded some of his time to ASWNMU President Carlos Carranza who announced the Hispanic Heritage Month Unity Ball and described for the regents ASWNMU efforts to have outdoor charging stations installed on campus.

Following brief reports from Faculty Senate and Staff Senate, the regents heard an update from Regent Reed about the search for a new university president. Reed reported that the search committee has been formed and a prospectus for the position completed, which will be available on the university’s website.

Vice President of Business Affairs Kelley Riddle then reported on two submissions due to the Higher Education Department. The first was a report on the university’s Research and Public Service Projects. This year, the university is requesting additional legislative funding for ongoing projects, including Athletics, the Child Development Center, expansion of programs in Nursing on the Silver City campus as well as in Truth or Consequences and Deming, the web-based network for teacher licensure, and the Center of Excellence in Early Childhood Education. The regents approved the requests as described in the report.

Riddle then reported on the university’s endowments received through the state. The regents voted to approve the report.

Riddle asked Assistant Vice President of Compliance Debra Noble to explain some proposed changes to the university’s Title IX policy. The proposed changes, said Noble, are meant to make the university’s policy consistent with recent language changes in the FBI’s user manual. The board approved the changes to the policy.

After inviting the public to comment, the meeting concluded with regent comments. Reed requested that the next meeting include a report on capital outlay priorities. Neville then announced that he and Regent Huerta would be serving on the Higher Education Regents’ Coalition.

The next Board of Regent meeting will be held on a date to be determined.

Any employee of WNMU with at least three years of service who works in a regular, benefits-eligible position is eligible for nomination, except faculty and senior leadership.

Nominations will be vetted by a committee that will consider the qualities that demonstrate outstanding achievement and leadership as well as a commitment to excellence: Ambassadorship, Service to WNMU, Teamwork, Innovation/Creativity/Process Improvement, and Transformational Leadership. A strict scoring matrix is used to assess each nominee. The names of the top three nominees will be shared with WNMU Interim President Chris Maples, who will then select the winner.

University staff, faculty, students and affiliates of WNMU as well as members of the community are welcome to submit nominations. Employees of the university may also nominate themselves. This year, the nomination window will open on Monday, September 8 and remain open for three weeks. Once the nomination process is closed, nominees will be notified and receive a letter of recognition, and they will have three weeks to submit a portfolio that reflects their service to WNMU.

The winner of the WNMU Presidential Leadership Award will be announced at the university’s Welcome Back Convocation in January.

“In 2020, I was looking for a new position.  The one that I was in just wasn’t completely resonating with me,” said Olney-Larson, explaining how she found her new line of work. “We were all getting pretty introspective in 2020, and I had set up a Google alert looking for jobs that were in conservation but that involved marketing. One of the options that came up was this conservation cemetery that had not yet opened.”

After she accepted the position, the team that hired her let her know that it was her marketing degree that set her apart from other candidates. “This is a job that has a lot of parts behind it, and in the conservation field, a lot of people have strong science backgrounds, but may not have what it takes for a start-up business,” said Olney-Larson. “For us, in addition to it being this unique green burial movement—which is really something that is growing all over the country—it was a start-up, it was this nascent idea, so it really needed someone with a business background to help build that.”

“I was able to help build the business from the very beginning,” she added, “from getting all the business licenses to where we are now, coming up on five years of operation. … The Green Burial Council is the board whose standards we uphold, and being able to have a business background and a business degree is one of the things that allowed us to go through the pretty strenuous process of getting that certification.”

Casper Creek is part of a growing national trend toward natural burial. But her organization, with its focus on conserving and restoring the environment, goes beyond what many other natural cemeteries do. “A natural cemetery is one that does not use embalming or [grave] vaults, and all of the burial materials are biodegradable,” explained Olney-Larson. “A certified conservation cemetery,” she continued, “is a natural cemetery that has also been recognized by the Green Burial Council for work to preserve and restore native habitat and species.”

“In Illinois, where our cemetery is located,” she added, “that means short grass prairie, including restoring habitat for species such as the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee, which is listed as federally endangered.” There are only about a dozen certified conservation cemeteries in the country, according to Olney-Larson.

In addition to directing the cemetery, Olney-Larson is also certified as a death doula and is studying thanabotany through the School of American Thanatology. “There are different kinds of death doulas,” she explained, “but in my practice, I work with people approaching the end of life and their families to understand the kind of death they want, whether that is at home … or in a hospital. As they approach one of life’s great unknowns, I try to ensure that their wishes are carried out.”

Olney-Larson’s interest in studying thanabotany reflects the intersection between her work in conservation and her position as director of Casper Creek. “Thanabotany is the study of the role plants play in death and bereavement,” she explained. “That might mean understanding why someone chooses to place roses on a loved one’s grave, or it might mean studying the plants used by ancient Egyptians in the mummification process.”

In Olney-Larson’s view, becoming certified as a death doula and studying thanabotany take her further down a career path that has become a life-calling. “It is an honor to work with clients and their families in their end-of-life planning,” she said. “To do that work in a way that has minimal impact on the environment—that is peaceful and in harmony with nature—that is a gift.”

TimelyCare services will be a supplement to in-person care provided by Hidalgo Medical Services (HMS)—which offers medical, behavioral health and dental care—and to the mental health care provided through the campus counseling center. Services will be available to both undergraduate and graduate students.

One of the advantages of partnering with TimelyCare is that it makes services available to those students who attend WNMU remotely and are not present in Grant County, said Vice President of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Betsy Miller. The services provided by HMS, she noted, are not accessible to online students from other parts of the state or country. “They are paying student fees, and they need the help as well,” she said.

WNMU students can now have free access to virtual care from any state, at any time. “It will be available for students after hours, during our breaks [and] on the weekend,” said Miller.

Another advantage is that TimelyCare provides services in over 240 different languages, said Miller. If a student prefers to communicate in Spanish or another language, they will have that option.

One service TimelyCare provides is Talk Now, a free counseling service that allows students to quickly connect with professionals to discuss their mental health concerns. Students can have an unlimited number of Talk Now consultations, up to twelve scheduled counseling sessions, and unlimited medical consultations.

Miller said that she hopes the partnership with TimelyCare will also ease the workload of Shelby Wilkie and Sarah Guck, who both provide counseling services on campus. “Their caseloads are high,” said Miller. “They deal with a lot of students on our campus and in our community. … I hope this will help them.”

As TimelyCare is rolled out at WNMU in the coming days, students will be able to access it through Mustang Express.

This past January, though, Rummell decided to return to WNMU for a graduate certificate in Political Science. Working with Associate Professor Joel Blaxland, Rummell not only completed the needed coursework but also had a chance to engage in an in-depth research project, thanks to a research assistantship funded by a Student Research and Professional Development grant.

“We were examining why Afghan civilians either do or do not protest against the Taliban after the U.S. withdrawal,” said Rummell of the research. Blaxland, he explained “realized that most of the rural population would not rebel against the Taliban, whereas the urban population would. We were trying to key in on some of the reasons why.”

“Our tentative conclusion is that basically the Taliban leaves the rural people to do their own thing,” explained Rummell. “The urban population is the group more affected by the U.S. intervention, by foreign aid, and the rural people really did not get a lot of that. The rural Afghans are very pragmatic. As long as they are allowed to work their fields and grow their crops, they don’t really care who is in charge.”

Rummell said that he expects his coursework at WNMU and his research with Blaxland to have a strong impact on his new role as an Assistant Professor of History and Political Science at Illinois Central College, a position he accepted this summer. “I have taught history for 16 years, but this is my first time teaching political science,” he said.

Rummell added that the research assistantship not only provided him with examples to use in his teaching but also gave him a more thorough appreciation of how data is used by political scientists. “Getting to see how the data is used and how it can be interpreted really was helpful,” he said.

The mentorship Blaxland has provided has been invaluable, said Rummell. “He has been one of the most helpful professors I have ever had. … When I started taking his classes five years ago, he knew that I had already been teaching for ten years, and he definitely treated me like a colleague.”

That collegial relationship is one that Rummell plans to sustain as he launches into the next phase of his career.

“While the assistantship was just for the summer,” he said, “we will probably keep working on this project for another year. … I look forward to hopefully getting a publication out of it, which would be my first political science publication as a coauthor.”

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