I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
New Mexico State University officials are playing hard ball with two former professors who have been fighting their dismissal from the university since March. According to the Las Cruces Sun-News, the professors, John Moraros and Yelena Bird, received letters last month in which a university official said the two had never submitted proof that they had earned medical degrees from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez.
The letters, from Valerie Pickett, director of New Mexico State’s Office of Enrollment Management, gave the professors until Aug.14 to provide final transcripts from the Mexican institution, or face “appropriate action, up to and including the possible revocation of your above-referenced graduate degree from NMSU," according to the letters.
Four letters from the Juárez university were presented to New Mexico State officials this week, the newspaper said. Those letters verified the couple’s degrees and asserted that the Mexican institution had sent final transcripts for Moraros and Bird to New Mexico State in 2002.
Bernadette Montoya, assistant vice president for enrollment management at New Mexico State, told the Las Cruces newspaper that graduate-school officials would go through the documents and verify them with the Juárez institution, and that the professors would be notified in writing of the decision from the graduate school.
Moraros and Bird, who are married, have been at the center of a roiling controversy at New Mexico State since their contracts as professors in its College of Health and Social Services were not renewed. The saga has included allegations of plagiarism against the couple that were pressed by the university’s president, who has since departed, and confrontations with the chairman of its Board of Regents.
