DAILY LOBO new mexico
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summer June 17-23, 2013
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Presidency of Robert Frank: One year in
Q&A by Ardee Napolitano news@dailylobo.com
The beginning of June marked the end of the first year of the administration of President Robert Frank, the first three-time UNM alumnus to become the University’s president. The Lobo sat down with Frank to ask about his return to his alma mater, his administration’s accomplishments and about his plans for UNM for the future. Daily Lobo: “What can you say are your accomplishments of the past year?” Robert Frank: “One of the things that we started to do is the UNM 2020. It’s setting a plan, and we’ve talked about what the University should be doing by the year 2020. Now, we’re working backwards to achieving those goals, and we now have a fair and tangible vision and plan of where we want to be. We’ve had conversations about south campus with Fairmount Properties to help develop that area. Eventually, in a few years, that will be a vital bustling community that will serve all of the south area of Albuquerque. We’re in conversation around Innovate ABQ, which I think will bring economic development to a vital portion of central New Mexico. But most importantly, that will create jobs for graduates … and we create an opportunity to grow the New Mexico economy.” DL: “You were talking about establishing the first college of public health in New Mexico during the past year. What is the latest update on that?” RF: “We started the initiative on the college of public health. It’s a dialogue that includes the Health Sciences Center, the main campus and the Legislature, and it has received a lot of positive interest. The faculty is now working to create the college. That will be step one that will happen here in the next months. Step two is working with the Legislature to create more mechanisms for public health. We have a lot of steps happening in the next twelve months.” DL: “You started to develop the new Responsibility Center Management model of budgeting for UNM during the past year. How is it being implemented right now?” RF: “The RCM’s budget group has worked for a year and the reports are close to being finalized. As we talked about RCM, we decided to move toward a model called Result Oriented Management. It’s going to focus more on year over year budget outcomes, so every unit would have a budget target, and that target would focus more on performance. All of our executive vice presidents and the chancellor are working on a conversation about that, and (the model) would have revenue targets and cost targets. I expect
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Inside the
Daily Lobo volume 117
issue 157
Aaron Sweet / Daily Lobo UNM President Robert Frank sits at his desk in his Scholes Hall office Friday afternoon. June 1 marked the one-year anniversary of Frank’s appointment as the University’s 21st president.
Lottery Scholarship future still hazy Quick fix by the Legislature just delaying the problem
by Nicholas Salazar news@dailylobo.com
A year after UNM President Robert Frank was appointed to office, the University and legislators have yet to find a solution that will preserve the Lottery Scholarship for future students. As it stands, Lottery Scholarship funding will run out by July 2014. UNM Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Terry Babbitt told the Albuquerque Journal that nearly 8,700 UNM students received the scholarship last year. Frank said that during his administration, student leaders at UNM played a huge part in addressing the scholarship’s solvency.
“Our student leaders last year carried the University’s interests and they did a spectacular job,” he said. “I couldn’t have been more proud of our students showing the ability of UNM students to devise a model that became a state proposal.” During the spring semester, former Associated Students of UNM President Caroline Muraida and former Student Regent Jacob Wellman worked on drafting a bill that addressed the scholarship’s solvency. Muraida and Wellman brought up the possibility of making the award a merit-based scholarship by raising the GPA requirement of the scholarship from a 2.5 to 2.7. According to its official website, the Lottery Scholarship has helped more than 80,000 students pay for tuition since its
conception in 1997. According to the site, funding traditionally relied on a steady stream of revenue from the purchase of lottery tickets. Besides an increase in the required GPA, other proposals included changing the scholarship into a need-based model with multiple tiers of awards, and increasing the required number of credits taken to reduce the number of students using the scholarship. None of those proposals passed through the state Legislature. Frank said Muraida’s and Wellman’s ideas are integral for the Legislature’s future decision-making process regarding the Lottery. He said he supports
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Frank writes his own tweets #itsallme by Jamillah Wilcox news@dailylobo.com
UNM can now follow its president on Twitter. UNM President Robert Frank said he manages his own Twitter account to reach out to the campus community. Frank said he wants to use social media to help spread awareness about campus-related issues. “I want to use it to try to relate more to the University community and use it to get the message out about cutting-edge trends at the University that I want students to pay attention to,” he said. “So if we could get them to pay attention, then it’s a win for us.”
Frank, who registered under the Twitter handle “@Lobo_Pres,” said it’s common for university presidents to communicate with people in their communities through the social media site. He said he browses other presidents’ Twitter accounts and models his tweets on theirs. But Frank said he won’t bore the campus with tweets. He said he only tweets when it’s in the interest of students. “I use them … to say what important things are happening here that we want to talk about in the UNM community and what issues we want our students and faculty to be thinking about,” he said. Cinnamon Blair, the interim chief marketing and communications officer, said Frank wanted
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to establish a Twitter account himself so that he could talk to students. “He comes up with ideas,” Blair said. “It was really something that he wanted to do. He wanted to communicate in a way that students were communicating. He felt it was important.” The president has more than 500 followers on Twitter, Blair said. She said she helps the president interact with the community through social media to increase his followers. “I think it’s going to have to be one of the things which he starts feeling comfortable with,” Blair said. “We’ve talked about how he should start looking at followers and tweet at them and
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