2016, Spring

SPRING 2016

M A G A Z I N E THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO I ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

PROTECTING PUEBLO LANGUAGE | WORDS, THE BRAIN AND SCHIZOPHRENIA DANIEL ABRAHAM’S ‘THE EXPANSE’ | DECADES OF SCRIBENDI NEW YORK TIMES WRITER DEMYSTIFIES SCIENCE | MEET UNM’S POET LAUREATES

Contents

Hakim Bellamy (’14 MA)

5 GLOBAL IMPACT

message from UNM President A Robert G. Frank

5

ALBUM

6 CAMPUS CONNECTIONS

What’s going on around campus

10 GETTING PERSONAL

Keeping current with classmates SPRING 2016

Writer/director Gabriel Chavez’s intimate “More Than Words”

By Leslie Linthicum

13 HEARING VOICES

Brain researcher helps the schizophrenic

By Claire Sykes

14 POETRY IN PUBLIC

A conversation with UNM’s poet laureates

By V.B. Price and Leslie Linthicum

M A G A Z I N E THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO I ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

On the cover: Our theme this issue is ‘words’—words written by poets and authors, of course, but also how words inform the work of a linguist, brain researcher and film director.

Cover illustration: Andy Plymale

PROTECTING PUEBLO LANGUAGE | WORDS, THE BRAIN AND SCHIZOPHRENIA DANIEL ABRAHAM’S ‘THE EXPANSE’ | DECADES OF SCRIBENDI NEW YORK TIMES WRITER DEMYSTIFIES SCIENCE | MEET UNM’S POET LAUREATES

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MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Mirage was the title of the University of New Mexico yearbook until its final edition in 1978. The title was then adopted by the alumni magazine, which continues to publish vignettes about UNM graduates.

M A G A Z I N E

Spring 2016, Volume 36, Number 1 The University of New Mexico Robert G. Frank, President Dana Allen, Vice President, Alumni Relations Leslie Linthicum, Editor Wayne Scheiner & Company, Graphic Design UNM Alumni Association Executive Committee Ann Rhoades ’85 MBA, President James Lewis ’77 MPA, President-Elect Brian S. Colón ’01 JD, Past President George Johnson (‘75 BA)

20 ‘THOSE IDEAS

BEHIND SCIENCE’

New York Times writer George Johnson follows his curiosity

By Leslie Linthicum

23 A LITERARY LION

UNM’s Scribendi magazine roars

By Claire Sykes

30 A NEW V.P.

Dana Allen heads up Alumni Association

By Leslie Linthicum

32 HONORED ALUMNI 34 SHELF LIFE

Books by UNM alumni and faculty

24 KEEPING

LANGUAGE SECRET

UNM professor studies pueblo’s

36 SWINGING FOR FENCES

38 SHARING HOPE

The Beery family educates on

language tradition

By Leslie Linthicum

26 THE EXPANSE

Writer Daniel Abraham explores the universe

By Rebecca Roybal Jones

UNM baseball’s tournament hopes

By Terence Kelly

Segawa’s dystonia

By Michelle G. McRuiz

41 WATCH YOUR WORDS A message from Alumni Association President Ann Rhoades

Tom Daulton ’77 BS, BBA, Treasurer Members at Large Sandra Begay-Campbell ’87 BSCE Harold Lavender ’69 BA, ’75 JD Rosalyn Nguyen ’03 BBA, ’07 MBA, JD Henry Rivera ’68 BA, ’73 JD Alexis Tappan ’99 BA Executive Director Dana Allen Mirage is published two times a year by the University of New Mexico Alumni Association for the University’s alumni and friends. Address all correspondence to UNM Alumni Relations Office, MSC 01-1160, 1 University of New Mexico, 87131-0001, or alumni@unm.edu. You may also contact us at (505) 277-5808 or 800-ALUM-UNM (258-6866).

Web: unmalumni.com. Facebook: facebook.com/ unmalumni. Twitter: @unmalumni.

To comply with the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, UNM provides this publication in alternative formats. If you have special needs and require an auxiliary aid or service, please contact the Alumni Relations Office using the contact information listed above.

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“I’m here today thanks to my doctors and nurses at UNM Children’s Hospital.”

— Ethan L. cancer patient

When Ethan was just 18 months old he came to UNM Children’s Hospital, where we found he had a tumor the size of a baseball. So began his multi-year treatment by our team of pediatric cancer experts. They are trained to focus on the unique needs of children — because every child we see deserves special treatment.

Learn more about Ethan’s story at UNMHSLifeStories.org.

Global Impact Dear Fellow Alumni:

Y

ou came to UNM for an education and left as a member of the Lobo pack. Forevermore, you are connected to more than 176,000 Lobo alumni, as well as thousands of faculty and staff. You are part of a family that spans the globe and impacts communities in all corners of the world.

The Alumni Association has made notable changes this year, changes that will continue to enhance the connections we have to one another. The association’s website, unmalumni.com, has been revamped, making it easier than ever for alumni to connect from Albuquerque to Amsterdam, New Mexico to Nepal.

We have welcomed Dana Allen, new vice president of Alumni Relations and executive director of the Alumni Association, to the UNM community. Dana came to UNM eager and ready to carry on a legacy of authenticity, leadership and Lobo pride. She will be a great asset to our association and, if you have not already, I hope you have the pleasure of meeting her soon.

Our association raises the stature of this institution and everyone who has attended it. We set the stage for the University and all future graduates, because when we succeed we further demonstrate the value of a UNM education.

As you read about fellow alumni and our new association leader in this magazine, consider your role in the pack. Share your stories with us and stay engaged with your alma mater. No matter the distance between us—whether you are on campus every day, as I am, or live thousands of miles away—you are an important member of our global family, and forever part of the pack.

Kind regards,

Robert G. Frank (’74 BS, ’77 MA, ’79 PhD) President, The University of New Mexico

Look for a friend on every page!

Send your alumni news to Mirage Editor, The University of New Mexico Alumni Association, MSC 01-1160, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131-0001. Or better yet, email your news to mwolfe@unm.edu. Please include your middle name or initial!

Deadlines: Spring deadline: January 1; Fall deadline: June 1

1940s Barbara Herberholz (’48 BFA, ’53 MFA), Carmichael, Calif., received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Art Education Association for her 40 years of teaching, her work as the editor of the newsletter The Painted Monkey and the textbook she co-authored with her late husband Donald Herberholz (’53 MA), “Art Works for Elementary Teachers,” published by McGraw-Hill.

1950s Robert L. Cardenas (’55 BSME), a retired U.S. Air Force general, was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.

James M. Durrett, Jr. (’57 BBA, ’60 LLB), Farmington, N.M., has retired after 55 years as the San Juan County Attorney.

Dennis S. Peña (’57 BSPH), Albuquerque, a retired UNMH pharmacist and an active health care advocate, was awarded a Governor’s Distinguished Public Service Award for 2015.

James R. O’Gwin (’58 BBA), Corrales, N.M. and his wife Jeanne celebrated their 60th anniversary.

1960s Turner Branch (’60 BA) and Margaret Branch (’76 BUS, ’78 JD) were inducted into the UNM Alumni Lettermens Association Hall of Honor and received the 2015 Distinguished Service Award.

Nasario Garcia, Jr. (’62 BA, ’63 MA), Santa Fe, N.M., is the author of “Hoe, Heaven, and Hell: My Boyhood in Rural New Mexico,” published

by UNM Press in 2015.

Tommie Jewell Sr. (’63 MA) received a 2015 Living Legend award from the Black Alumni Chapter.

Erlinda V. Gonzales-Berry (’64 BS, ’71 MA, ‘79 PhD), Corvallis, Ore., has retired from Casa Latinos Unidos, a non-profit she founded and ran.

Her book, “Mexicanos in Oregon: Their Stories, Their Lives,” co-authored with Marcela Mendoza, was published by OSU Press. She retired from Oregon State University in 2007.

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Campus Connections THEM BONES Newcomers always alter the landscape, but UNM anthropologist Emily Jones wondered how quickly the Spanish colonists who arrived in the Middle Rio Grande Valley with sheep, cattle and pigs in 1598 altered the diets of the native inhabitants and how fast their livestock changed the landscape through intensified animal grazing.

To get her answer she turned to animal bones in household waste piles at archaeological sites of historic pueblos, missions and villages.

“The Columbian Exchange and Landscapes of the Middle Rio Grande Valley, AD 1300-1900,” published last fall in the journal The Holocene, suggests the change did not come quickly.

Mammal bones

Jones, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, found significant amounts of wild game— the rabbit, pronghorn and deer meat that had been the Native Americans’

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major sources of protein—alongside domestic animals up through the late 19th century, suggesting hunting remained a major part of native life through that time.

“I was expecting to see a turnover in the mammals people ate—a change from wild mammals to introduced domesticates, like sheep, goats and cattle—relatively early in the 17th or early 18th century,” Jones said. “You would start with wild fauna, which would then be mostly replaced by things like sheep, and goats and cattle.

What I actually found was that this change doesn’t seem to occur until very late in the game in the late 19th and early 20th century.”

Jones’ research focuses on the “Columbian Exchange” or the transformation of landscapes that came with contact between the Old and New worlds. Jones’ data may suggest that widespread overgrazing of the landscape did not occur until the time that rail travel brought many more people into the Middle Rio Grande Valley in the late 19th century – a time when other invasive species such as tumbleweeds also became a problem.

research project is situated in the larger question of when did that change take place and how—was it gradual or quick?”

Bryce Chackerian, MD

A VACCINE FOR CHOLESTEROL? Imagine managing your cholesterol and triglycerides the way you do flu season—with a vaccine.

A team of researchers at UNM and the National Institutes of Health has developed a vaccine to treat high cholesterol that could become a cost-effective alternative to expensive cholesterol drugs and another tool to reduced coronary heart disease and stroke.

Bryce Chackerian, MD, professor in the Department of Molecular “To me the Columbian Genetics & Microbiology, and MD/ PhD student Erin Crossey teamed exchange was an incredible event. with doctors at the National Institutes It shaped the world we live in now, of Health to develop the vaccine, causing environments in very different which targets a protein involved in parts of the world to look more similar cholesterol metabolism. Their study, to each other,” Jones said. “This

Ronald D. Miziker (’65 BAED), Toluca Lake, Calif., is an award-winning director and producer who has written “Miziker’s Complete Event Planner’s Handbook: Tips, Terminology and Techniques for Success,” published by UNM Press.

which demonstrated that the vaccine dramatically lowered cholesterol levels in animals, was recently published in the journal Vaccine and is pending patent approval.

“This technology is a strong candidate for successful commercialization and could be an entirely new and effective way of treating diseases that are a result of untreated high cholesterol,” said Lisa Kuuttila, the CEO of STC. UNM, the university’s technology transfer organization.

RENOVATED MUSEUM ROCKS The UNM Meteorite Museum has a new futuristic look, thanks to its first makeover since it opened in 1947. While the décor is new, the

rocks are still very old. The museum has specimens dating back 4.5 billion years. Some are small enough to hold in your hand, but the highlight of the museum is a one-ton piece of the meteorite known as “Norton County” that fell in Kansas in 1948.

The museum is still housed in UNM’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Northrop Hall and still displays the best of UNM’s Institute of Meteoritics’ extensive meteorite collection, which includes about 1,000 meteorite types, including rocks that have fallen from Mars and the moon. The new design also allows for showcasing a rotating collection of specimens on loan from noted meteorite collectors and dealers.

Meteorites, which fall randomly all over the earth, lend insight into the makeup of other bodies in the

Guy B. Wimberly (’65 BA), Elephant Butte, N.M., and his brother Herb (’57 BAED), Las Cruces, N.M., are the subject of a recent novel, “Walking with Herb: A Spritual Golfing Journey to the Masters”

by Joe S. Bullock.

J. R. Philp (’66 BA) is president of the United Arts Council in Naples, Fla. The council provides arts services, cultural information and arts education for at-risk students and low-income adults.

Jim M. Dines (’69 BA, ’72 JD), Albuquerque, represents District 20 in the New Mexico House of Representatives.

J. R. Philp

J. Charles Jennett (’69 PhD), Wimberley, Texas, received a 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award from the UNM School of Engineering.

1970s Glenn H. Fellows (’70 BAA), Albuquerque, is the principal emeritus for SMPC Architects and was appointed to the New Mexico Construction Industries Commission.

Larry J. Hancock (‘70 BA), Mountain View, Okla., recently had his newest book, “Surprise Attack: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11 to Benghazi,” published

by Counterpoint. He has also served 14 years on his local school board.

Alexander G. Schauss (’70 BA, ’72 MA), Tucson, Ariz., was inducted into the International Orthomolecular Medicine Society Hall of Fame and received the Linus Pauling Lecture Award for “contributions in the medical sciences” from Alexander G. Schauss the American College for the Advancement of Medicine. He is a professor in the Geoscience Department at the University of Arizona and serves on the board of the University of Arizona Mineral Museum and the Science and Conservation Council of the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum.

Meterorite found in Arizona, 1921

John W. Brown (’72 BBA), Albuquerque, is president and CEO of Silent Falcon UAS Technologies, a manufactuer of solar electric unmanned aerial systems. He serves on the board of directors of the UNM Alumni Association.

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Campus Connections vast solar system. The museum serves as a teaching tool for students from elementary schools into doctoral programs to experience tangible pieces of some of the most ancient material in the universe.

games, less attention is paid to less violent but repetitive head hits that may have severe long-term health effects, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

technology to discuss a patient’s clinical care with specialists in large medical centers.

“We want to move knowledge, not patients, to bring more care to more While sensors already on the market people, where they live,” said Sanjeev measure acceleration and deceleration Arora, MD, creator of the ECHO model and director of the ECHO during hard hits, the SmackCAP Institute at UNM. contains more nuanced sensors that record hard and soft hits and identify where on the head the blows occur.

“Too much focus is being placed on concussions alone when it’s being shown that every single hit to the head matters,” Urban says.

HEADS UP Young entrepreneur Michelle Urban (’14 MBA) is using technology developed by UNM’s Center for Biomedical Engineering to help protect athletes from head injuries.

Urban is CEO of Pressure Analysis Company, an Albuquerque startup that is marketing a skullcap embedded with sensors to record blows to the heads of athletes playing contact sports, such as football and soccer. Detailed data from the “SmackCAP,” a soft beanie that can fit under a football helmet, can be monitored in real time by coaches, team doctors or parents of school-age athletes via an app.

While leagues now have protocols to diagnose and treat players for concussions during practices and

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MIRAGE MAGAZINE

The Duke City Gladiators, an indoor football team based in Albuquerque, will test her company’s device starting in March. UNM’s Health Sciences Center will do baseline brain scans of the team’s 24 players and then monitor them for head injuries during the season.

This fall, Urban plans to have a prototype skullcap available for athletes of all ages.

MOVING KNOWLEDGE, NOT PATIENTS Children with complex chronic diseases who live in remote areas across the globe will get access to much-needed specialty care without leaving their communities under a new program being led by UNM’s Project ECHO.

Sanjeev Arora, MD

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents 60,000 pediatricians, is partnering with Project ECHO to serve as one of four new “superhubs.” Other superhubs include University of Wyoming ECHO, ECHO Northern Ireland and ECHO India. The superhubs will launch projects creating new access to specialized pediatric care, palliative care, behavioral health and services for learning disabilities.

“In areas where children with chronic diseases may not be able to access a medical specialist, Project Under the ECHO model, developed ECHO provides a way for primary care at the UNM Health Sciences Center, physicians to work in tandem with primary care providers in rural and specialists to care for children,” said underserved areas use teleconferencing Sucheta M. Joshi, MD, who helped

William P. Gralow (’72 JD), Albuquerque, and his wife Sharon celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.

develop the curriculum on epilepsy care for new ECHO sites. “This can be a powerful tool to educate and enable physicians to care for children with challenging medical issues in their community.”

A WAY OF SAYING THANKS The UNM Board of Regents has approved renaming the Hodgin Hall Alumni Center Plaza, the courtyard that sits directly east of the historic hall, in honor of the recently retired associate vice president of alumni relations. The new name will be the Dr. Karen Abraham Courtyard.

Abraham worked for the university for 45 years and served as associate vice president and as executive director of the UNM Alumni Association for 28 years before retiring in December. One of the accomplishments during her tenure was an extensive renovation of Hodgin Hall, the university’s original classroom building that now serves as its alumni center. Abraham has a BS (1967), an MS (1968) and an EdD (1971) from UNM. The UNM Foundation has created a fund to help beautify and maintain the Dr. Karen Abraham Courtyard.

For more information or to donate go to unmfund.org.

Anne M. Hillerman (’72 BA), Santa Fe, N.M., has published her second Chee/Leaphorn novel, “Rock with Wings.”

Edward A. Haddaway (’73 BAFA), Albuquerque, a fine art sculptor, and Dennis Liberty (’73 BUS), Albuquerque, a painter, were chosen for inclusion in the Albuquerque Museum’s “Public Selects: A Crowdsourced Exhibition.”

Neil Murray (’73 BUS) received the 2015 Trailblazer award from the Black Alumni Chapter.

Linda C. Niessen (’73 BS), Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has joined the board of directors of Vigilant Biosciences, Inc., a biotechnology firm specializing in the early detection and intervention of cancer.

Charles E. Becknell, Sr. (’75 PhD), Rio Rancho, is the pastor of Emmanuel Missionary Church.

Michael E. Dexter (’75 BSME, ’76 MSE, ’11 MEMBA), Albuquerque, received a 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award from the UNM School of Engineering.

Timothy J. Seaman (’75 BA, ’81 MA), Abiquiu, N.M., owns the Los Silvestres orchard, which grows apple varieties used to brew hard cider.

Laura Tohe (’75 BA), Mesa, Ariz., is the poet laureate for the Navajo Nation.

Christopher R. Bard (’76 MARCH), Albuquerque, is president and managing partner of FBT Architects.

Margaret Branch (’76 BUS, ’78 JD) and Turner Branch (’60 BA) were inducted into the UNM Alumni Lettermens Association Hall of Honor and received the 2015 Distinguished Service Award.

Joy Harjo (’76 BA), Tulsa, Okla., is the 2015 recipient of the Academy of American Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award.

Daniel A. Bryant (’78 JD), Ruidoso, N.M., was appointed to the 12th Judicial District Division III in Carrizozo. The district encompasses Lincoln and Otero counties.

Kerry C. Kiernan (’78 BA, ’82 JD), Albuquerque, has opened his own law practice, Kerry Kiernan PC .

Glojean Todacheene (’78 BSHE, ’84 MA), Shiprock, N.M., a Milken educator award winner and former Navajo Nation tribal councilor, and Kathleen M. Mechenbier (’79 BAED), Los Lunas, N.M., founder of El Ranchito de los Ninos, were both honored with 2015 New Mexico Governor’s Distinguished Public Service Awards.

Karen Abraham Courtyard.

Klaus V. Weber (’78 MS), Albuquerque, will retire after 15 years as soccer coach for Bosque Preparatory School. He coached for 27 years at UNM and it is estimated he has coached more than 2,500 games in his career.

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Writing from Experience

By Leslie Linthicum

I

t’s a common practice of parents of preschoolers: Rent or buy a movie, pop it in and keep the kids entertained.

Eric and Josie Chavez of Los Lunas were no different, except they didn’t offer up the usual 1990s kiddie fare of “Home Alone,” “Aladdin” and “The Little Mermaid.”

Instead, little Gabriel and Michael Chavez were treated to films like Orson Welles’ 1958 noir thriller “A Touch of Evil” and that not-so-kid-friendly Alfred Hitchcock classic “The Birds.”

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“They raised us watching films chronologically,” Chavez says. “So we started off watching silent films and black and white films.”

The Chavez parents had no particular background in cinema – he is an electrician and she is a lab tech. “They just loved old movies,” says Gabe, the older of the brothers.

“And they thought it was important that we appreciate black and white movies before we got into color films.”

(It wasn’t until years later that Gabe Chavez finally saw his first movie in color— “The Lion King”— and his mother was patient enough to take him back to the theater a dozen times.)

When he was six, Chavez saw “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” a silent German horror film from 1920 that has become a movie classic.

“That one is really the one that struck me,” Chavez says. “And even though I was only six years old, I knew that I wanted to make movies.”

Fast forward to today and that’s just what the 2011 UNM media arts graduate is doing. It’s not easy for a newcomer to make a full-time living in the industry; that’s where waiting tables or driving for Uber often come in. But since moving to New York in 2015, Chavez has had steady work as a grip, the camera crew member responsible for the equipment on television shows and films, while also working on his own movies on his days off.

He uses his full name—Gabriel Alicto Chavez—professionally and he has credits on episodes of “Gotham,” “Madam Secretary,” “Elementary” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”—among other shows—and also on the films “Urge” with Pierce Brosnan and “Freeheld” with Ellen Page and Julianne Moore.

And last May, he had to make a hard choice: working as best boy (the No. 2 grip position) on the feature-length drama “Finding Her” being filmed in New York or flying to France to see his own 30-minute drama “More Than Words” screened at the Cannes Short Film Corner, an offshoot of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival where shorts made by early-career filmmakers are shown.

Chavez chose the job over a trip to Cannes but he is submitting his film to other festivals and so maybe a red-carpet moment is still in his future.

Chavez co-wrote “More Than Words” with Kyle Pavlin while he was in the MFA program at the New

Delores M. Etter (’79 PhD), Dallas, Texas, is the founding director of the Caruth Institute for Engineering Education in Southern Methodist University’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering.

She received the Insight Into Diversity’s “100 Inspiring Women In STEM” award.

Fred S. Sturm

Fred S. Sturm (’79 MMU), Los Ranchos, N.M., published his translation of “The Art of Tuning,” by the blind 19th Century French piano technician, inventor and piano manufacturer Claude Montal. Sturm has been the piano technician for the UNM Music Department since 1986.

1980s Cristina V. Beato (’80 BS, ’84 MD), Albuquerque, is executive director for Health Policy and International Medicine at the UNM Health Sciences Center.

Michael Foote (’80 BAR), Albuquerque, is a partner in the Albuquerque Baseball Academy, one of the elite baseball organizations in America.

Director Gabriel Chavez, a UNM film grad, consults with Mich Castro.

Photos: Paul Schendel

York Film Academy at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. The story follows a young couple, Rachel and Nick, as they deal with conflict over Nick’s denial of a lifethreatening brain disorder and whether he should undergo a risky but potentially life-saving surgery.

For Chavez, the topic is deeply personal. The film explores some of the emotions and conflicts he and his then-girlfriend Caitlin Baker experienced after Chavez had a seizure on his 23rd birthday.

“I was in a bar in Durango celebrating my birthday in 2010,” Chavez says.

Paramedics told him his heart rate and blood pressure were fluctuating and wanted to take him to a hospital to get checked out. But Chavez refused to go

and went back to the bar to continue his birthday celebration.

When he got home, Baker tried to convince him to go to a doctor and became distant when he refused. After weeks of silence they finally had it out and Baker gave him a choice— take care of yourself or forget this relationship.

“She told me if you want this to work out, you need to take your health seriously,” Chavez recalls.

“She told me, ‘I need you to be around for me.’”

Stephen A. Griego (’80 BBA), Albuquerque, is president and CEO of DMC Logistics.

Jay P. Jolly (’80 BA, ’83 MPA), Santa Fe, N.M., is CEO of La Familia Medical Center.

Claudia I. Mora (’80 BA), Los Alamos, N.M., is the president-elect of the Geological Society of America. She is a stableisotope geochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Jay P. Jolly

Carol L. Adkins (’81 BSCHE), Albuquerque, received a 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award from the UNM School of Engineering.

Andy L. Halasz (’81 BSME), Santa Fe, N.M., relocated VIZZIA Technologies from Atlanta to Santa Fe. VIZZIA provides technology solutions for health care organizations.

James M. Haynes (’81 BS), Albuquerque, is a shareholder and partner in Pulakos CPAs and chairman of the board-elect of Leadership New Mexico.

Melanie J. Palmer (’81 BS), Albuquerque, joined Presbyterian Medical Group.

Lawrence C. Todd, Jr. (’81 MA, ‘84 PhD), Meeteetse, Wyo., is a professor at Northwest College in Powell and chair of the Park County Historic Preservation Board. He was recognized with the Preserve Wyoming award from the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office.

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Gabriel Chavez works with actors on the set of his first feature film, “More Than Words.”

It turned out Chavez has aortic stenosis, a malformation of his heart’s aortic valve that he has probably had since birth. Over time, the valve can narrow and close, leading to heart failure. Chavez is now under the care of a cardiologist and will be monitored with an echocardiogram every two years.

He has had no more episodes and his relationship with Baker also survived the ordeal. The two, who had met at UNM, were married in October. A 2011 graduate with a BA in art education, she teaches ninth grade and the two live in the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Tripp Townsend, who Chavez met at UNM, produced “More Than Words,” which focuses on the emotional effect of the disease on the female protagonist.

“It’s about that struggle that I saw in Caitlin,” Chavez says.

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While working full time as a union grip or gaffer, Chavez still runs Frozen Frame Productions, the production company he formed with Townsend. And, like he did through elementary school and on into high school and college, Chavez still watches four to five new movies every week and rewatches one or two more.

He had a good grounding in early film history thanks to his parents, but he found the UNM program helped him to really understand the theory and history of film.

“What I really appreciated at UNM,” Chavez says, “is that it gave me the structure underneath all the movies I’d watched as a child and a teenager. It really taught me why film is how it is.”

His UNM degree helped him break into the business at home. His first jobs were in Albuquerque, working on the productions of “Breaking Bad” and “In Plain Sight.”

“I’m so thankful for those opportunities,” he says. “They really set me up for everything I’m doing today.” ❂

REEL FAVORITES

As a lifelong film buff, Chavez constantly samples new movies. His media diet today comes via accounts with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and HBO Now. But he also returns to a stable of favorites. These, in no particular order, are Chavez’s top 10 films on replay: 1. The Thin Red Line (1998) 2. Rear Window (1954) 3. Evil Dead II (1987) 4. Children of Men (2006) 5. Baraka (1992) 6. Revolutionary Road (2008) 7. Casino (1995) 8. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 9. The Lord of the Rings trilogy 10. The Back to the Future trilogy

Current Event: Using Brain Stimulation to Quell Hallucinations

By Claire Sykes

Joseph F. Arite (’82 BA), Cubero, N.M., is a member of the State Judicial Evaluation Commission.

John W. Driscoll (’82 BBA), Frisco, Texas, is president and CEO of AlixaRx. Orlando Leyba (’82 BAFA), Corrales, N.M., was chosen for inclusion in the the Albuquerque Museum’s “Public Selects: A Crowdsourced Exhibition.”

P

Glenabah M. Martinez (’82 BAED, ’85 MA), Albuquerque, discussed native issues in a “Surviving Columbus” panel celebrating Albuquerque Indigenous Peoples Day.

launch the Mind Research Network. eople with schizophrenia often Now, working with Robert Thoma, PhD, hear voices that aren’t there Orlando Lebya associate professor in the Department and have trouble distinguishing of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, these auditory hallucinations from Christopher M. Wilson (’82 MA), Albuquerque, Clark is comparing brain real conversations. is co-author of “Mammals of North America” and emeritas curator at the Smithsonian Institution. scans of schizophrenia UNM neuroscientist sufferers made while Vince Clark, PhD, is Sheena M. Ferguson (’83 BSN, ’88 MSN), they’re experiencing verbal Albuquerque, is a new member of the studying whether using International Nurses Association. auditory hallucinations, transcranial direct-current Douglas W. Larson (’83 BSEE), Livermore, Calif., while hearing real voices stimulation (tDCS) to is the facility manager for the National Ignition (recordings of people noninvasively apply an Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. talking and random electrical current to the Judith K. Nakamura (’83 BA, ’89 JD), computer-generated brains of people with Albuquerque, was appointed to the New Mexico Supreme Court. non-language) and while schizophrenia can quiet imagining conversations. those vexing voices in Mirabai P. Starr (’83 BA, ’85 MA), Ranchos de Vince Clark, PhD Taos, N.M., is the author of “Caravan of No In all three situations, their heads.

Despair: A Memoir of Loss and Transformation,” “the images of the brain’s “Neurons communicate published by Sounds True Books, Boulder, Colo. language centers look a lot alike,” says with each other chemically and carry Jimmy D. Trujillo (’83 BBA), Albuquerque, is Clark, whose research was featured last information electrically,” says Clark, principal of REDW LLC and was elected treasurer year in The New Yorker. “But over time, a professor in the Department of of Leadership New Mexico. we can see subtle differences to help Psychology, director of the Psychology Beatrice Hurtado (’84 BSN, ’98 MSN), Holman, tell when someone is having auditory Clinical Neuroscience Center and a N.M., received the 2013-2014 School Nurse of the Year award from the New Mexico School Nurses hallucinations. From there, tDCS can founder of the Mind Research Network. retrain the brain so the person no longer Association for her work with Mora public schools.

“Once we can see which areas of the She is currently a visiting instructor of nursing at hears them.” brain they activate, then we use tDCS New Mexico Highlands University.

Clark and his collaborators have also to help it reorganize itself to improve Rick L. Marquardt (’84 BSCE, ’91 MEMBA), studied whether tDCS, combined with behaviors and abilities.”

Albuquerque, is CEO of Jaynes Corporation and brain imaging, can boost a person’s ability past president of AGC New Mexico.

It’s a fascinating task. “There are more to spell difficult words. They found that possible ways to alter brain activity Matthew N. McDuffie (’84 MFA), Albuquerque, people could double the number of words a professor of practice in screenwriting at UNM, than the number of seconds since the wrote and directed the independent film they spelled correctly with stimulation. beginning of the universe,” Clark says.

“Burning Bodhi,” which was showcased at the Coming up, they will look at whether With tDCS, much depends on the Austin Film Festival. the technique can help stroke survivors placement of electrodes on the head, Torre D. Near (’84 MD), Albuquerque, joined the regain their ability to speak. how many are used and the type and Lovelace Medical Group.

“There are so many possibilities,” strength of current.

Donna M. Smith (’84 BBA), Albuquerque, is a he says. “We’ve barely started to see Clark arrived at UNM in 2002 with Santa Fe Incubator board member. what we can do.” ❂ 20 years of research experience to help (continued on page 19)

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THE PUBLIC POETS H

akim Bellamy was Albuquerque’s inaugural poet laureate, serving from 2012 to 2014. Jessica Helen Lopez is Albuquerque’s 2014-2016 poet laureate. Luci Tapahonso was the inaugural poet of the Navajo Nation, serving from 2013 to 2015.

And Laura Tohe is the 2015-2017 Navajo Nation poet laureate.

What do they all have in common? They are all graduates of UNM. To Mirage and Albuquerque poet V.B. Price (’62 BA), that sounded like an opportunity to sit down and talk about poetry.

Bellamy (’14 MA), Lopez (’11 BA), Tapahonso (’80 BA, ’83 MA) and Tohe (’75 BA) had lots to say about the role of the poet laureate and the health and wellbeing—and power—of this ever-renewing art form.

Clockwise from top: Luci Tapahonso, Photo by Chris Corrie; Hakim Bellamy, Photo by Roberto E. Rosales; Laura Tohe, Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU News; Jessica Helen Lopez, Photo by Roberto E. Rosales

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Tohe

what is the role of the poet laureate? What are the public goals if there are any?

Hakim Bellamy: Your job is to be the poet of record. Meaning, there’s a city event, you need your poet there to document it and capture that moment. But you’re also responsible in equal part for having a vision for the city, for imparting some sort of values for the city.

We are really clear that when we take this position it’s not an honorary position or a feather in the cap of someone who’s had a long and acclaimed career; it’s for a person who wants to do work in the community.

You have to have a service leader’s heart.

Luci Tapahonso: In a way the Navajo poet laureate is very much like a version of the traditional role of a Navajo person who is known for telling stories. They kind of are the public talkers or speakers. They are able to use the language so they can heal

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Lopez

or comfort people or entertain, teach.

I see the Navajo poet laureate as kind of a version of that traditional person.

Except for us, we write it down.

Jessica Helen Lopez: It’s definitely an ambassadorial role, bringing poetry to the public or bringing poetry to places that might not have had it before—poetry on the bus, poetry on the train, poetry on billboards. You can make it what you want to. A big part of the function of the poet laureate is to create occasional poems, poems for a special occasion, to bless whatever is happening at that time.

Laura Tohe: A poet laureate can accomplish the appreciation of poetry in various ways. Through publishing poetry in local, national and international venues a poet gives visibility to poetry and to a poet’s work. In this case, the Navajo poet laureate gives a presence and claims a space in the world for poetry written

by Navajo poets.

Tapahonso: And it encourages literacy and encourages writing and reminds people in native communities that poetry is a form of storytelling. Our entire history has always been situated in the spoken word. I think it serves to remind people that this is already a part of their history.

In Albuquerque, and on the Navajo reservation, what is the function of poetry in the public life?

Tohe: I’ve always thought the medicine people are the original Navajo poets because they recite long prayers and songs that are full of beautiful language and imagery. And they heal human illnesses with their sacred language. But this kind of poetry or sacred language is not for public use, since they are part of the ceremonies.

Writing poetry is relatively new for Navajo people in relation to other countries that have a much longer history with poetry in public life. Nevertheless, Navajo poets of today are tremendous voices in American

Tapahonso

and international poetry. Some have even won prestigious awards, locally and nationally. Unfortunately, due to lack of access or lack of knowledge of who the Navajo poets are, many Navajo people don’t know who many of the Navajo writers are. Even so, Navajo people have a tremendous appreciation and respect for the sharing of poetry and stories in oral performances.

Bellamy

always been a part of us and maybe what’s weakened because of different forms of education and government that has been imposed on us.

What is the difference in your minds between poetry as a form of personal expression and empowerment and poetry as a means of committed social behavior or cultural activism?

Bellamy: Our role is to be critical. It’s to inspire inquiry. It’s to inspire expression.

If a government is willing to execute a poet or exile him, that shows the power of poetry. We hold no weapons. The pen is unequivocally not a sword. But governments can fear a poem. Ideas are bulletproof and what’s scary about poets is they can capture the imagination of a people.

Lopez: I’m a political poet and a feminist and a survivor of domestic violence.

I write about things like immigration reform and institutionalized racism, misogyny. I write through trauma.

And I’ve always admired poetry that has a purpose and can be a subversive tool. I think it’s hard to separate those two things.

Tapahonso: We’ve had the stories of the communities, the land, the animals.

I think it’s really a return to what has

Tohe: Speaking for myself, they are generally the same. I lived in a government boarding school and

years later wrote about it in “No Parole Today.” I wrote this book partially to understand how the boarding school era was part of colonization and assimilation and my place in it, since I was there for four years. Not many native writers were writing about it, and when I finished I realized that poetry is political in that it gives visibility to the invisible.

Bellamy: It’s the poor man’s psychiatrist.

You can treat yourself by actually just listening to yourself and analyze what’s going on inside of you. So there is that piece—it is an intensely internal, personal thing. How it becomes social justice? If everybody made a practice of having an intense personal experience, wouldn’t that create some sort of social revolution and social change that we’re looking for? So there’s this idea that you write something personal.

You go in, in, in and get so personal, it becomes universal.

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Tapahonso: I think that it can be the same thing. In writing stories about our history or the role of women in Navajo society, it can be informational but it can also be a way of cultural restoration and one can call it activism. And then sometimes a poem can just be about celebration. I have a poem called “Hill’s Brothers Coffee” that really just celebrates coffee.

We all know that our art form has a terrible reputation as being boring, as being too hard. It seems that one of the charges of a poet laureate is to help subvert that particular reputation. How is that done?

Tohe: I’ve heard that reputation too.

Appreciating poetry can be challenging if it begins with difficulty in understanding a poem that relies on contexts, language and symbolism outside of a reader’s level for appreciating poetry. When introducing poetry one should be mindful of such challenges and select work that is more accessible, especially to a young audience. One of my favorite poems is “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll.

I love his playful language and non sequitur images.

Tapahonso: You know, I have to say I’ve never really had that kind of response.

Maybe because when I begin I introduce

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myself I talk about my family and my upbringing. And I look at it like poems are stories that are really succinct and contain everything within how ever many lines. I think everyone appreciates stories. I like to write in a Western form but many times I combine Navajo and English. So it brings that Navajo outlook into a form that before may have been really distant from us because we can’t relate to, say, poems Robert Frost wrote in New Hampshire. But if we read poems about Canyon de Chelly or Taos Pueblo or the Rio Grande or picking piñons or chile roasting—those kinds of experiences in poetry. It’s freeing for students to hear that. Then they’re really excited to learn that it can be theirs. They understand that it doesn’t have to be something by a nonIndian person that they’ve never met.

Lopez: People have been saying it’s a dying or a dead art for years. I don’t believe that. I think there is a certain niche, a certain fan base. Slam poetry has definitely made it resurge, especially for young people with lots to say. When people have this feeling that poetry is esoteric, it’s because it hasn’t been accessible. I’m 37 and when I went to school our poetry unit was always pretty short and it was dead white guys. So we change the perception of poetry. We bring in different kinds of poetry—spoken word poetry, renegade poetry. I hear it all the

time, “Wow, I didn’t know I could like poetry.” When they think of poetry and they groan, I ask, “What songs do you like?” That’s poetry.

Bellamy: I fight that stain that we have as poets by showing up how I show up, which is 37 years old and black. By showing up how we are in the world I think we begin to prove to people why poetry is the most accessible art form on the planet. Because it’s a laymen’s art. I’m very regular, so that’s part of the demystification. People think of the poet in some tower in some abbey. And it’s like, no, dude, I write at the bus stop, I write on the airplane, I write when I’m sitting next to you in class.

So when you deal with kids and they hear you and they watch you perform, do they come up and say to you, “That’s not what I thought poetry was?”

Bellamy: Oh, sure. I start with, “This is not your grandma’s poetry.” No disrespect to grandmas, especially the ones that are poets. It’s very much like music to me. We expect the music of a parent’s generation to not resonate with their children. Yet in poetry, you say you need to like what your parents liked and their parents liked.

We don’t allow for an evolution of the art form like we do in music.

Timothy D. Vertz (’84 BBA), Jacksonville Beach, Fla., is a member of the senior management team for Huntington Technology Finance, a technology financing company.

Kurt Wihl (’84 JD), Albuquerque, is president of the Keleher & McLeod law firm.

What’s it like being a visiting poet in a classroom full of kids who may or may not have a teacher who has managed to make poetry some sort of punishment?

Tohe: Well, I haven’t visited one of those schools. Recently, I worked with a group of sixth graders and they were great students. They knew about similes and we had good time writing a self-portrait poem using similes. They were a little shy, but I loved how they were so open to writing poetry.

Bellamy: I tend to open with a hip-hop song and then I work backward from that. I ask how many of you guys are poets? And usually one or two hands go up. How many of you guys write rhymes?

A couple more hands. How many of you are playwrights? Short stories? And I keep asking until I get everyone’s hand up. So, OK, you’re all writers. Everybody calls their writing a different thing, but I’ll submit to you that what you’re doing is poetry. Now they feel like they’re part of it. But sometimes you’re trying to undo years of programming and PTSD. Tapahonso: I talk to them about myself and my family and I mix English and Navajo. Kids all like stories. And I think that they’re really excited about the fact that a person can be from Shiprock,

like I am, and know all about the community and do the same things that they do and then be a professor and write books. They’re like, “Oh, that’s cool.” I think if my generation had had those kinds of examples it would have made such a difference.

So I think that the poet laureate program just came in at the right time. There are a number of really terrific Navajo writers coming up now.

Lopez: I take a lot of my performance experience with me when I enter a classroom. I try to immediately break bread with them with a poem. I perform.

I make a lot of jokes. I think poetry should be fun and accessible. I use “I come from” or identity poems.

Kids really like that. They start to write that poem. And before you know it, they’re working with alliteration and imagery and metaphor and all these other poetic inventions.

And I’m like, “Ah, I got you!” When you bring text that students can relate to, then they’re more likely to look into other works. Oh, Walt Whitman? Let me see what he’s about. ❂

Maria R. Bagby (’85 BSED, ’86 BA), Solana Beach, Calif., runs the Therapeutic Literacy Center, a treatment center for auditory processing disorder and attention deficit disorder in Solana Beach.

Daryl K. Hoffman (’85 MD), Atherton, Calif., has expanded his plastic surgery practice in Campbell, Calif.

Patricia M. Rocha (‘85BS, ’01 MD), Grants, N.M., joined the Western New Mexico Medical Group.

Edward M. Tafoya (’85 BA, ’92 MA), Las Vegas, N.M., is the author of “Finding the Buddha: A Dark Story of Genius, Friendship, and Stand-up Comedy,” published by Pen-L Publishing in 2015.

Steven W. Zack (’85 PhD), Portland, Ore., is senior conservation fellow at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Ruth E. Lambert (’86 MCRP, ’06 PhD), Durango, Colo., is the cultural program director for the San Juan Mountains Association.

James J. McNally (’86 PhD), Albuquerque, received a 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award from the UNM School of Engineering.

Wayne R. Monteith (’86 AASCP, ’89 BA), Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., is brigadier general and commander of the the base’s 45th Space Wing.

Suzette A. Shije (’86 BA), Española, N.M., is deputy cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department.

Jamie A. Silva-Steele (’86 BSN), Albuquerque, is the president and CEO of the UNM Sandoval Regional Medical Center.

Timothy D. Cass (’87 BBA) is leaving UNM Athletics to manage the day-to-day operations of the U.S. Tennis Association’s National Campus near Orlando, Fla. Kendal W. Giles (’87 BAA), Albuquerque, principal and vice president of Dekker/Perich/Sabatini, is a new director for Leadership New Mexico.

Priscilla M. Schulte (’87 PhD), Juneau, Alaska, is the interim provost for the University of Alaska Southeast.

Patricia A. Combs (’88 MD), Hobbs, N.M., has joined the Desert View Women’s Health Clinic in Lea County.

Kiel A. Hoffman (’88 BBA), Las Cruces, N.M., is president of Pioneer Bank in Las Cruces and was reappointed to the Military Base Planning Commission. (continued on page 25)

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Photos: Roberto E. Rosales (‘96 BFA, ‘14 MA) Science writer George Johnson writes for The New York Times with Santa Fe scenery as his backdrop.

‘How Do We Know What We Know?’

New York Times writer digs into science

By Leslie Linthicum

W

hen George Johnson went off to college in the early 1970s, he thought he might be a doctor like his father, so he enrolled in science courses.

But his 11th grade creative writing teacher had turned him on to the pleasures of Malamud, Updike, Sartre and Camus, so he also signed up for literature classes.

Advanced Introduction to Physics or Literature of the Beat Generation? Cell Biology or Modern European Poetry?

“I was torn between getting into science and getting into writing,” Johnson recalls. And then one day after his freshman year at UNM he pulled a book off the shelf at the Living Batch bookstore—a slim volume by Life magazine journalist Lincoln Barnett titled “The Universe and Dr. Einstein.” The price was

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right—95 cents—and Johnson found in the pages Einstein’s theories explained in clear, even lovely, prose.

It tipped Johnson’s seesaw toward writing about science rather than practicing science. And that opened up to him a nearly inexhaustible world of ideas that he has spent a professional lifetime exploring in print.

Johnson graduated from UNM in 1975 with a B.A. in journalism and after stints at the Albuquerque Journal and the Minneapolis Star and a year of graduate study he landed a job as an editor handling science stories for The New York Times’ Week in Review (now the Sunday Review). Johnson spent eight years working in Manhattan before he decided to return to New Mexico. Since 1995, he has been a freelance science writer with a New York Times

contract and occasional contributions to National Geographic, Scientific American, Wired and other publications.

Over the years, Johnson has taken readers wherever his curiosity has led: to black holes, the language of chimpanzees, cancer clusters, lightning chasers, human fallibility, the Chaco Meridian, artificial intelligence, intelligent design.

Johnson’s column, Raw Data, appears monthly in the Times and it is most often a synthesis of what has recently been on his mind. One week last winter, that was neutrinos, the subatomic particles produced by the decay of radioactive elements. As is his style, Johnson brushed over the news of a Nobel Prize granted to scientists for discovering neutrino oscillations and he left the minutiae of that discovery to the physics insiders. Instead, he turned philosophical, exploring the question of how we can believe in things we cannot see.

Sitting in the light-filled second-floor office in his home on Santa Fe’s historic east side, with windows that look out to the mountains and the steeple of the adobe Cristo Rey Church, Johnson boils down the thought process that leads to many of his stories.

How do you know what’s out in the world versus what you project onto the world with your mind? How much is

discovered and how much is invented?

“Those ideas behind science is really what I do,” Johnson says. “How do things work? How do we know what we know?”

He trusts that his audience is a lot like him.

“I think it’s human nature to wonder how the world works,” Johnson says. “In writing about science we’re showing people what the best minds using the best methods think about how the world works.”

Johnson’s job is, in effect, translation.

“I write for smart, sophisticated people, but not for specialists,” he says. “General readers, but general readers who are motivated to learn new things and are fascinated by ideas. ” Writing about precise and complicated things for a general audience is where Johnson’s considerable translation skills come in.

“You always feel that you have the scientist reading over one shoulder and the public over the other and you’re trying to navigate between those two shoals,” he says. “You can do really good writing about the science—physics and abstruse things like relativity—without doing it quantitatively. You can understand it in words and metaphors.”

In order to steer his boat effectively, Johnson first has to understand the science or math in order to use words and metaphors to explain it.

It helps that he has decades of practice sorting out this stuff and a great enthusiasm for the task.

“I was always kind of the little boy scientist. I was obsessed with that stuff,” Johnson recalls. “I’d look at Life magazine and Saturday Evening Post, seeing the astronauts or pictures of people working in labs with all of the test tubes and I thought that was cool stuff.”

After he’s thought through the science and exchanged numerous emails with experts to make sure he’s getting it right, he turns to the computer in either of his two offices. His workspace downstairs is a dark cubby with a desk made of plywood and saw horses; his second-floor office is larger and furnished with bookcases, heavy wooden desks and an array of computer screens. It’s accessed by a climb to the roof, an engaging commute except in the snowiest weather.

Even though he is a well-regarded journalist and has published nine books, Johnson concedes, “The writing never gets easier.”

“You’re just staring at the blank page, the virtual page. And you write something and then you write something else that usually is not very good. And you’re thinking, ‘Oh, God, I’ve completely lost it.’ But at some point things kind of loosen up. And it just comes together.”

Johnson, a journalist since his days at the Daily Lobo, collects his press badges.

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On one side of his living room Johnson displays his hobby – a collection of old tube radios from the 1920s. On the other side is a long bookshelf with every edition of his books, including translations into Chinese, Greek, Thai, Italian, Czech and nearly a dozen other languages.

He has written in the past about the scientific method (“The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments”), artificial intelligence (“Machinery of the Mind”) and physicist Murray Gell-Mann (“Strange Beauty.”)

Johnson just turned 64 and his latest book, “The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine’s Deepest Mystery,” is his first that involves medical science and it is his most personal.

Johnson says he got into journalism because he always liked the idea of being a detached observer. But when his wife, Nancy, noticed a lump and was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, he began to explore what it is we know and what still remains a mystery about the complex and perplexing process of cell mutation into cancer.

While navigating through his wife’s diagnosis and treatment, Johnson was also captivated by the intellectual challenge of understanding and explaining this horrifying subject. “I really wanted to give people a sense of the big picture of this natural process gone awry,” Johnson says.

While the book unwinds the couple’s agonizing and eventually successful medical odyssey, Johnson drills down to the evolutionary history of the breakdown of a natural, even necessary, cellular process into one of our most dreaded fears. Or as Johnson puts it, “how a single cell minding its own business can transmogrify into a science fiction alien, a monster growing within.”

He travelled to Utah to see the first dinosaur recorded with cancer, to London to look at a tumor in the jaw of an early Homo sapien, to Orlando for a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. He sifted through study after often-contradicting study about nutrition and lifestyle as it relates to contributing to the risk of developing cancer or being protected from it.

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Tube radios from the 1920s are another of Johnson’s passions.

As Nancy was celebrating being cancer-free for five years and Johnson was finishing his book manuscript, Johnson’s youngest brother, Joe, was diagnosed with a squamous cell carcinoma in his jaw and died within a year. How Nancy could survive Stage 4 uterine papillary serous carcinoma, a cancer with a terrible prognosis, while Joe could be so quickly felled by one of the more survivable cancers became the book’s epilogue, along with news to the reader that he and Nancy had divorced.

Why does one of us get the diagnosis while another doesn’t? Why does one cancer bow to treatment while another refuses to die?

“That is how it is with cancer,” Johnson concludes. “Given a large enough group of people, we can predict what percentage of

them will be stricken but we cannot know who they will be.”

“The Cancer Chronicles,” like two of Johnson’s earlier books, was shortlisted for the Royal Society Book Prize.

Turning in a completely different direction, Johnson has just finished his first children’s science book, about the randomness of this thing we call life. He’s hoping it might reach some little kid like he was, a junior scientist lying in bed at night and wondering at the amazing fact that inside him was an actual skeleton.

And Johnson is looking for the next idea for another book for grownups who are also filled with wonderment about how some facet of the world works. How will he know it when it begins to brew?

“It has to be something that obsesses you,” he says. ❂

Thirty Years Old and Still Turning Pages

By Claire Sykes

I

t only looks like a cracked-open egg. Look again, and a swipe of yolk-colored paint on a splotch of white spills from a real, broken shell.

The digital photo by Madelyn Lesnewich, who will graduate in 2017 with a BA in international studies and political science, joins other images, poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction in the latest printed issue of Scribendi. And there’s more online from this annual UNM Honors College journal – music, sound art, film and even a radio drama.

Scribendi (the name is the Latin participle of “to write”) was founded in 1985 as UNM Honors Review.

With content by undergraduate honors students from more than 200 colleges and universities in the Western Regional Honors Council, Scribendi received the Associated Collegiate Press Magazine Pacemaker award in 2006 and 2013 and was named a finalist in 2015.

“Consistently, the publication’s creative works are strong and the design is really clean,” said Amaris Ketcham, an assistant professor and Scribendi’s faculty advisor.

She teaches the hands-on two-semester educational internship for about 15 select students from all disciplines. They study things like art and literature assessment, copyright issues, copy editing, graphic design, marketing and small-press management.

Each student produces a mock design for the magazine, and then they collaborate on the final result. “As a team,” Ketcham said, “they help each other succeed in the new and challenging situations that working on Scribendi provides.”

Caitlin Carcerano, editor in chief of the 120-page 2015 edition, will graduate in 2017 with a BFA. “While leading the staff and being a resource in graphic design for them,” Carcerano said, “I’ve gained valuable skills in time management, coordinating a large fundraising event and as liaison between the magazine and others.”

Many Scribendi students go on to pursue careers in publishing or website design. But even if they never read another poem, they’ve been part of something special. “Art and literature are still really undervalued in our culture,” Ketcham said. “When we experience art, we have the potential to be changed.” ❂

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Secret Texts Control of the written word at one Indian pueblo

By Leslie Linthicum

Erin Debenport was looking at a career in Mayan languages when she was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Chicago. But, as the academic joke goes, every village in the Yucatan has an anthropologist and a linguist. What could she really add to the body of research?

On visits home to see her parents in Albuquerque Debenport saw increased interest among New Mexico pueblos in preserving their indigenous languages and, with the introduction by UNM Department of Linguistics Professor Melissa Axelrod, was soon working with one of the pueblos to develop a written dictionary of its previously only oral language.

Theirs was a casino-operating pueblo that had seen an influx of capital and a renewed interest in cultural preservation. Only about 30 of the pueblo’s members were fluent in their native language and all those speakers were over 65.

Debenport moved to New Mexico in 2002 and over eight years helped the pueblo Photos: Roberto E. Rosales (‘96 BFA, ‘14 MA)

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develop its first written alphabet and dictionary and began building a library of teaching texts. She joined UNM’s anthropology faculty in 2010 as an assistant professor and teaches both cultural anthropology and linguistics.

UNM has long had an interest in native languages. Its American Indian Language Policy Research and Teacher Training Center is nationally known for its examination of policy issues that affect the survival of American Indian languages and develops native language teacher training programs for tribes.

But while some tribes, the Navajo, for example, have extensive written language curricula and openly teach and share Diné, other tribes guard their language.

As Debenport began her pueblo project, she found conflicting views—even among tribal members— about how much to share the language in order to preserve it.

“You want to write your language as a way of preserving and teaching it, but you also want to control access to it,” Debenport says.

While people at the pueblo were deeply invested in their language as the core of their identity, the pueblo was also invested in the importance of controlling certain cultural or religious information that could be conveyed only through the language.

So along with enthusiasm and cultural pride in finally having their language codified, there was also fear that if the language leaked outside the pueblo, so would cultural knowledge. And there was an even more nuanced but practical concern.

“Their political structure is predicated on the division of knowledge,” Debenport says of the pueblo she calls San Ramón.

“Certain groups appropriately know things and certain groups are kept from knowing things and that’s seen as creating an appropriate balance.”

In “Fixing the Books: Secrecy, Literacy, and Perfectibility in Indigenous New Mexico,” released by UNM Press last year, Debenport examines grammatical

constructions and lexicography, but she also tells the story of how those competing interests and political concerns played out.

Abel P. Montez (’88 BA), New York, N.Y., is Debenport calls the language Keiwa director of Student Affairs at Fordham University (kay-wah). That and San Ramón are School of Law. both pseudonyms. (It’s no coincidence Jerry F. Pacheco (’88 BBA, ’91 MA, ’91 MBA), that Saint Raymond is the patron saint Española, N.M., an industrial business recruiter, is of keeping silent.) She uses only English the executive director of the International Business translations in the book, never any Keiwa Accelerator. He also founded the Border Industrial Association. words, and also assigns pseudonyms to Elizabeth A. Shipley (’88 BSED), Albuquerque, the tribal members she writes about. public affairs manager of Intel Corp, is on the While not disclosing the true identity board of Leadership New Mexico. of the pueblo and not sharing the deep Darcy S. Bushnell (’89 JD), Albuquerque, is the knowledge of the language that she director of the Joe M. Stell Water Ombudsman gained while working with the pueblo is Program at the Utton Center of the UNM School of Law. controversial among some academics, Debenport said she had been brought Mary A. Johnson (’89 MA, ’94 PhD), Albuquerque, into the pueblo in a spirit of trust that she opened a counseling office specializing in grief and loss issues. wouldn’t have considered breaking.

And, she says, “Part of the reason that I Eric W. McBride (’89 BA), Aurora, Colo., operates The Celtic Caterer in Denver and was invited to the chose to not only pseudonym the people Ohio Celtic Festival to demonstrate Celtic recipes. that I worked with but also the name of Max E. Perez (’89 BUS, ’92 MA) is superintendent the pueblo and the name of the language of the Belen Consolidated Schools. was to try to perform the very argument that I’m trying to make in the book, which 1990s John R. Bartlit (’90 BM), Albuquerque, is a is that there is a different attitude toward percussionist who recently played in the Southwest knowledge circulation there, especially Symphony Cultural Arts Series in Santa Fe. He has knowledge of native language.” a platinum album with Robbie Robertson.

As she details in the book, stepping on Jean-Marc D. Grindatto (’90 BSCPE), Corrales, the gas while putting on the brakes can N.M., is the president and CEO of the Sandoval Economic Alliance and co-chair for Workforce, make for a bumpy ride.

Bi-National Intelligent Manufacturing Institute In 2009, the pueblo’s government for the Mexico-U.S. Entrepreneurship and decided to end the written part of the Innovation Council.

Keiwa language program. Debenport Lisa B. Jenkins (’90 JD) is the new in-house returned all the material she had and attorney for Otero County. work stopped on any preservation S. Kent Jones (’90 BBA, ’91 MBA), Albuquerque, and education work that could not be a former Lobo golfer, was inducted into the UNM Alumni Lettermens Association Hall of Honor. done orally.

Marie T. Mora (’90 BA), Edinburg, Texas, is a It meant an end to Debenport’s professor of economics at the University of Texasinvolvement with the pueblo program, Pan American and a member of the U.S. Bureau of a development she calls “heartbreaking” Labor Statistics Data Users Advisory Committee. for her and some tribal members.

Robert M. Oberdorfer (’90 MRCP), Albuquerque, But Debenport hopes that has joined Sites Southwest LLC as a landscape architect and environmental planner. collaborations like hers at San Ramón may provide an example of ways Lisa J. Adkins (’91 BBA), Albuquerque, is the director of Fatpipe, a business incubator. academics and communities can work L. Wayne Brasure (’91 PhD), Albuquerque, collaboratively, a contrast to the earlier received a 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award from anthropology model that denied the UNM School of Engineering. communities being studied agency Lenan Rust (’91 MA), Albuquerque, joined Life in the process. ❂ Change Psychotherapy Institute as a licensed professional counselor and therapist.

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By Any Name, Daniel Abraham Writes Success

By Rebecca Roybal Jones

A

uthor Daniel Abraham writes award-winning epic fantasies and cerebral short stories.

Author M.L.N. Hanover creates urban fantasies.

And James S.A. Correy is known for “The Expanse” novels, which are being adapted into a television series that premiered on the SyFy channel in December.

What do these writers all have in common? They’re really all the same guy.

And that guy’s name really is Daniel Abraham.

He has adopted the nom de plume Hanover and, with co-author Ty Franck, writes under the pen name Correy.

While many writers struggle to get anything published, Abraham’s recent successes under three writing names and over multiple media platforms is pretty remarkable.

“I’ve come into this thing that’s completely unstable and had this amazing run,” Abraham says of his writing career.

“This isn’t the kind of thing I deserve. It’s not about strictly merit, it is about being at the right place at the right time and what I’ve tried to do is be in a lot of places at the same time.”

All that perseverance and creativity and being in all those places at the same time seem to have finally paid off. Recently, he’s also worked on a “Game of Thrones” comic book series, and a Star Wars novel. In total, he’s published 22 books.

Abraham, 46, attended UNM from 1987 to 1995, earning a bachelor’s degree in biology. “I was unfocused,” he says with a laugh, reflecting on his eight years at the university.

It gave him time to explore a few different majors. He says he spent four

Photos: Roberto E. Rosales (‘96 BFA, ‘14 MA)

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years working on his degree, and four years getting his education.

V.B. Price, an author and journalist, is one of Abraham’s longtime mentors and friends.

“When I knew Daniel as a student in the UNM Honors Program, he was one of those rare young people with an omnivorous curiosity,” Price says. “He wanted to know everything about the world and what it means to be a human being. His wonderful fiction makes it clear that his curiosity will never stop expanding. He is as brilliant a writer as anyone working today, whatever the genre.”

Born and raised in Albuquerque, Abraham attended Albuquerque High, Jefferson Middle School, Montezuma Elementary and Old Town Elementary (which is now Reginald Chavez Elementary).

Suzanne E. Sbarge (’91 MA), Albuquerque, a multimedia surrealist, was featured in the Albuquerque Museum’s “Public Selects: A Crowdsourced Exhibition.”

Harry D. Sheski (’91 MA, ’99 EDD), Grants, N.M., is interim president at New Mexico State University Grants.

Jeff P. Van Dyke (’91 BSCA, ’93 MSE), Albuquerque, received a 2015 Distinguished Alumni Award from the UNM School of Engineering.

Amy M. Ditto (’92 BA, ’06 PhD), Tijeras, N.M., was chosen to be the poster artist for the Rio Grande Arts & Crafts Festival Balloon Fiesta show.

Kimberly A. Fredenburgh (’92 BUS), Albuquerque, was the featured soloist for the Santa Fe Symphony’s fall performance at the Lensic Theater.

Tema Milstein (’92 BA), Albuquerque, an associate professor in UNM’s Department of Communications and Journalism, was awarded the UNM 2015-2017 Presidential Teaching Fellowship.

Bart R. Reynolds (’92 BBA, ’92 BA), New Orleans, is president of Seaspan Marine, a marine transportation company.

A. Alejandra Veltmann (’92 BBA), Houston, is the vice president—chief accounting officer for Paragon Offshore, a global provider of offshore drilling rigs.

Carla S. Wilhite (’92 BAFA, ’96 BS), Albuquerque, is a founding member of the American Occupational Therapy Foundation Leaders and Legacies Society.

Christopher H. Woodul (’92 BSPH), Ruidoso, N.M., received the “Ernie Welch” award from the New Mexico Pharmacists Association for his outstanding service to pharmacy and the welfare of the citizens of New Mexico.

Michelle A. Hernandez (’93 BA), Albuquerque, was appointed regional president of the Hispanic National Bar Association.

She practices with the Modrall, Sperling, Roehl, Harris & Sisk law firm.

Eliot A. Jardines (‘93 BA), Purcellville, Va., has completed a doctorate Michelle A. Hernandez in education with a concentration in Human and Organizational Learning from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. James R. Horn (’94 BAA), Santa Fe, N.M., is a partner in the Spears Horn Architects firm.

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Here is a primer to the world of Daniel Abraham, M.L.N. Hanover and James S.A. Correy—and where those pen names came from.

Abraham: writes epic fantasy and cerebral short stories, some of which have won awards. Abraham has finished the fifth and final installment of “The Dagger and the Coin” series under his real name.

Hanover: writes urban fantasy.

Urban fantasy stories have huge female readership, Abraham says.

So he thought that pairing that genre with a pen name using initials (which usually is code for a female writer) should have been a slamdunk for sales. He also made sure to use initials that would fit on the same bookshelf as popular author Charlaine Harris. “It didn’t pay off at all,” he says.

Correy: is the author of the fivebook “The Expanse” series. The name, Abraham says, was meant to conjure a crusty old sci-fi writer from the genre’s earliest days.

Correy was born when Abraham and Franck set out to write a book together based on work Franck had done creating the solar system that became “The Expanse.” Correy has also written a Star Wars novel, “Honor Among Thieves.”

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He’s been married to Kat Abraham for 13 years, but theirs started as a teen romance that never ended, even when they were apart. She’s an occupational therapist who’s pursuing an executive MBA. They have a 9-year-old daughter.

He’s always been an avid reader, cracking open his first science fiction book when he was 10 or 11. It was a collection of short stories by Arthur C. Clarke called “The Other Side of the Sky.” “That was kind of formative,” Abraham says.

Around the same time, Abraham was “writing crappy, awful short stories” that had to do with knives and tales of horror.

“But they were fun,” he says.

While in high school, he was part of a mentorship program in which students could learn how real professionals do their jobs. He opted to be mentored

by Fred Saberhagen, a science fiction writer. Abraham visited Saberhagen each Saturday in the far Northeast Heights for a year, bringing his stories along for critique.

“He was very generous with his time and attention and very encouraging,” Abraham recalls, but he was also exacting.

Through all the words Abraham put on paper, only the occasional string of words produced an, “Ooh, that wasn’t a bad sentence.”

In 1998, Abraham signed up for and completed the Clarion West Writers

‘‘

Workshop in Seattle, which gives authors six weeks of critiques with six different instructors.

“It was like boot camp,” he says.

The result? He sold two stories for anthologies. “That,” he says, “was the beginning of my short story career.”

Abraham got an agent and four books followed. They were received well “but not as well as the publisher hoped.”

He moved on to try his hand at urban fantasy, which was wildly popular for a stretch. He figured any success with that would at least pay the bills. But he was too late, and found that that genre’s ship had sailed.

“As kind of a giggle,” Abraham says, he started working on “The Expanse” space opera with his friend Franck under the name James S.A. Correy.

Abraham’s thinking was, “‘Maybe I’d make some pizza money’… and that’s the one that took off,” he says.

“The Expanse” is plotted through Book 9, and the fifth installment, “Nemesis Games,” was released last spring.

Abraham adds with a flair of drama in his voice: “Correy is on his way to controlling the world!”

“Leviathan Wakes,” the first book in “The Expanse” series, acquired quite a fan following, so Abraham and Franck began to look for a Hollywood agent. Not knowing exactly how to do that, Abraham says they

’’

If I wasn’t getting paid, I’d being doing it for fun.

Mario L. Moccia (’94 MS), Las Cruces, N.M., is the director of athletics for New Mexico State University.

Lorii K. Rabinowitz (’94 BS), Denver, Colo., is chief relationship officer for Rebound Solutions in Denver.

were relieved to find out that their book agent was already on it.

Offers started coming in for options, one of which involved the creators of the “Iron Man” movie.

Last summer, Abraham and Franck found themselves in Los Angeles writing rooms collaborating with a team of pros who ripped apart the book to adapt it to television.

The 10-episode series, filmed in Toronto, is being produced by the screenwriting team of Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, best known for “Cowboys & Aliens” and “Children of Men” in addition to “Iron Man.” “The Expanse” explores the universe on the brink of interplanetary war in a future where the UN controls the Earth and mankind has colonized Mars and the Asteroid Belt.

With a spot on The New York Times best-seller list and its Syfy debut getting a lot of attention, Abraham is trying to keep his own feet here on planet Earth.

“It’s a little too big to think about,” Abraham says of the success. “To the degree that I’m not in denial, but I am in denial. It’s hard to take personally when it’s that big. And it’d be kind of dangerous to say, ‘Look what I’ve achieved.’”

He says he writes because he’s always enjoyed it.

“If I wasn’t getting paid, I’d be doing it for fun,” Abraham says. “That makes it easy to keep showing up. It makes it possible to be lucky.”

What’s next for him? For one thing, he says, he’s excited to explore his new screenwriting “toolbox” that he’s been learning about since “The Expanse” adaptation.

And stay tuned for some crime novels, maybe some horror—and most likely some new pen names. ❂

Jeremy P. Wagener (‘94 BFA), Los Angeles, pictured with Ian Ziering, completed his fifth season working on the CBS reality show Jeremy Wagener and Ian Ziering “Big Brother.”

He also directed the feature film “Sharknado: Heart of Sharkness,” which debuted on Video On Demand.

Stoney Case (’95 BS), Gendale, Ariz., a former member of the football team, was inducted into the UNM Alumni Lettermens Association Hall of Honor.

Forrest Steve McCleery (’95 EdD), Hobbs, N.M., received a 2015 Governor’s New Mexico Distinguished Public Service award and was inducted into the Western Heritage Museum and the Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Henry A. Alaniz (’96 JD, ’96 MBA), Albuquerque, is chief judge in Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court.

Dorothy M. Grandbois (’96 BAFA), Corrales, N.M., is a photographer and instructor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Clay C. Hayner (’96 BAFA), Dallas, is a major advertising photographer, shooting for clients including Haggar, JC Penney, Target, Greyhound, Rug Doctor, NCA, AT&T, Club Corp and Nike.

Clay C. Hayner Diana L. Luce (’96 JD), Lovington, N.M., is District Attorney for New Mexico’s Fifth Judicial District.

Thomas L. Mertz (’96 BSCE), Swansea, Ill., is the federal sector business development leader for Korte Company, a green design and build company.

Beverly R. Singer (’96 PhD), Albuquerque, showed her film “The Answers Lie Within” at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center’s Pueblo Film Festival. She is an anthropology professor at UNM.

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Photo: Roberto E. Rosales (‘96 BFA, ‘14 MA)

Building Connections

New alumni director hopes to spread the ‘airport effect’

By Leslie Linthicum

D

ana Allen, UNM’s new vice president of alumni relations, arrived in Albuquerque in February with her rescue cat Gizmo in tow (or was it the other way around?) and a truckload of enthusiasm for building an even more vibrant alumni community.

Allen has worked in college and university alumni relations for 17 years and her passion for linking alumni with their alma maters has never flagged.

“I have never regretted going this route,” says Allen. “It allowed me to work with people who I believe in their core want to do great things for their alma mater.”

Allen’s role, as she sees it, is, “How can I help them—and work with others who can help them—figure out what those great things may be? Either working on an individual level, or pulling together the talents of a group of folks, that has always been what has kept me excited about this.”

Allen replaces Karen Abraham, who held the position for 28 years. Like Abraham, Allen will wear two hats:

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heading both the university’s Office of Alumni Relations and directing the private nonprofit UNM Alumni Association.

Most recently, Allen held a similar position at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. Before that, she worked with alumni volunteers at Penn State, which boasts the largest dues-paying alumni association in the country, and at Mary Baldwin College in Virginia, a women’s school with an enrollment of 2,600.

Although her career has been spent entirely in the East, the move to UNM will actually be a homecoming to the West for Allen. She is originally from Las Vegas, Nev. (“the other Las Vegas,” Allen says with a nod to New Mexico geography).

She moved to Virginia and, after graduating from high school there, enrolled at James Madison University, a state university in Harrisonburg, Va. Allen started as a pre-law political science major, but her experience on the university’s speech team and in the coed service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega

persuaded her to change her major to communications and conflict resolution and look to a career with volunteer or nonprofit management at its core.

Allen, 43, launched her her professional life in alumni relations offices on a fateful day when she was a young college graduate working part time for the American Red Cross. She opened up the newspaper classified section and spotted a small ad seeking a director of volunteers for the Alumnae Association at Mary Baldwin College.

It was 1998, a Tuesday afternoon, and Allen remembers it so clearly today because it set her on a path to a long career that has shaped her life. “It was sheer fortuitousness,” Allen says.

At its core, Allen sees her work in alumni relations as building links of commonality. At Penn State, with more than half a million alumni—or UNM with 176,000—what binds people who may range in age from 22 to 82, and from artist to investment banker?

“I think a lot of it is really based on the history and the culture of a university,” Allen says. “Your experiences can be different or maybe even vastly different, but it’s that willingness to want to have the conversation and that moment where you get overlap, that’s what starts to tie people together.”

Despite differences, fellow graduates of a college or university tend to feel connections. Allen says she sees it most vividly in a phenomenon she calls the “airport effect.”

“I travel a lot and I spend a lot of time in airports,” Allen says. When someone sees another traveler wearing a sweatshirt or ball cap from his or her alma mater, the connection is obvious. “People will walk across terminals. They will cut across a gate if they see that shirt or that hat and they’ll say, ‘Hey? Did you go to… ?’”

Harnessing that spirit benefits both alumni and the alma mater.

“As an alumnus, you always want to know that your diploma really has value and merit and continues to stand for something,” Allen says. “So if I can stay connected to my university I can learn about the great things that it’s doing, how it’s evolving. And for the university it’s wonderful when people who have benefited tremendously from the university turn around and donate their time and their talent and their treasure.”

To reach across diversity of ages and careers, Allen prefers an alumni association that offers a buffet model of events and opportunities.

“You’re going to have some people who have a lot in common, but like with snowflakes, no two alumni are alike. So for me it’s how much can we put on a buffet of opportunities so that everybody can look at that and find something on there where they connect, something that resonates with them. It’s about trying to work within the realities of the human and financial

resources but do the best you can to offer as much variety as you can.”

Allen has spoken at conferences of alumni relations professionals on the importance of developing volunteer alumni boards that are informed, collaborative and focused on the importance of assessing alumni association programs to make sure they are giving alums the value they want.

“You can no longer assume that the alumni association is accomplishing its vision simply if everybody has had a good time at the event,” Allen says.

Outside of the demands of the job, Allen is a big reader (John Irving is her favorite author) and a big baseball fan.

After a quick look at Isotopes Park, where she will soon be able to cheer on the AAA farm team of the Colorado Rockies, she pronounced herself “the happiest person on the planet.”

Allen is also a fan of Garrett’s popcorn, especially the half-caramel, half-Cheddar Chicago Mix. “I can eat a bag of that in one sitting. I’m not going to lie,” Allen says.

“It sounds like it would be not so great, but then you have it and it changes you.”

And she is a devoted roommate to Gizmo, a tortoise shell rescue cat. “She’s my girl. She runs the house,” Allen says.

“I think she is most excited about this move because it’s given her a great chance to play in so many different boxes.”

About a week after Allen accepted the job at UNM, she experienced the “airport effect”—except this time at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Norfolk. She had dropped in with a friend to eat some wings and watch Monday night football when a young man wearing a Lobo shirt came in.

“It’s the absolute truth,” Allen says.

“My jaw dropped and I bopped my friend on the arm and said, ‘Look!’”

On her way out, she introduced herself and they shared a “Woof, Woof, Woof.”

“I was, like, ‘OK, that’s a sign,’” Allen says. “This was meant to be.” ❂

Patrick C. Conlon (’98 MS), Mesa, Ariz., presented a group project entitled Linking Concept & Theory to Develop a Theory of Resilience at the Poster Session at the Western Institute of Nursing Annual Communicating Nursing Research conference.

Abby Garchek-Jaramillo (’98 BA), Racine, Wis., a former member of the women’s basketball team, was inducted into the UNM Alumni Lettermens Association Hall of Honor.

Wafaa Bilal (’99 BAFA), New York, N.Y., is an associate arts professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is known internationally for his online performance-based and interactive works provoking dialogue about international politics and internal dynamics.

Patricia E. Connelly (’99 BA), Alexandria, Va., is a playwright whose new play, “Princess Margaret,” was performed at the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival in Washington D.C. Leslie E. Hoffman (’99 BA, ’09 MEMBA), Albuquerque, is founder and president of LEH Consulting Group.

Rosendo F. Jimenez (’99 BBA), Rio Rancho, N.M., is director of Century Link Innovation Labs.

Bianca Ortiz-Wertheim (’99 MBA), Albuquerque, is chief of staff for U.S. Senator Tom Udall.

John L. Ross, Jr. (’99 BA), is the managing editor at the Times-Tribune in Corbin, Ky. Anita M. Sanchez (’99 BA, ’03 JD), Rio Rancho, N.M., was appointed to the New Mexico Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission.

Dov F. Sax (’99 PhD), Barrington, R.I., deputy director for education at the Institute for Environment and Society at Brown University, is president-elect of the International Biogeography Society.

Jimmie V. Wolf (’99 BSEE, ’00 MS), Albuquerque, a network engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, was nominated as employee of the year for the national magazine Careers & the disABLED.

2000s Abigail L. Eaves (’00 BSN, ’02 MSN), Corrales, N.M., is founder and executive director of Dar a Luz Birth & Health Center.

Jennifer E. Houha-Pennington (’00 BS), Fairfax, Va., a professional animal trainer accomplished with canine and exotic animals, was a 2015-2016 inductee into the VIP Woman of the Year Circle by the National Association of Professional Women.

She is the founder and owner of Lead with Fun and Pawsitive Critter Academy LLC.

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University Awards Each year the Alumni Association honors 11 alumni and a faculty member who have made outstanding contributions to their professions, their communities and to the University of New Mexico.

Henry Rivera

In October, the Lobo, Zia and Inspirational Young Alumnus awards were presented at the Alumni Association’s annual All University Breakfast. The winners of the James F. Zimmerman,

Judy Zanotti

Fred Hart

Bernard S. Rodey and Erna S. Ferguson awards, along with the Faculty Teaching Award, were honored at the “Call to Honor” dinner in February.

Ursula Shepherd

James F. Zimmerman Award Henry Rivera (’68 BA, ’73 JD) Rivera served on the Federal Communications Commission under President Ronald Reagan, headed an Agency Review Team for the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team and served as a member of a Federal Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy for the U.S. State Department. A retired attorney, Rivera has also been named one of the nation’s top 500 lawyers.

Bernard S. Rodey Award Fred Hart Hart is best known in the legal community for his role in shaping the UNM School of Law during his 50 years on the faculty, including eight years as dean. Under his leadership, he increased the number of women law students and started the Pre-law Summer Institute for Native American students.

Erna S. Ferguson Award Judy Zanotti (‘61BSED, ’73 MA) In her 32 years of professional leadership and management, Zanotti has been the founding executive director of the Albuquerque Association for Children with Learning Disabilities, executive director of the State Bar of New Mexico, a senior vice president at Public Service Company of New Mexico and president/executive director of New Mexico First.

Faculty Teaching Award Ursula Shepherd Shepherd is a professor and associate dean in UNM’s Honors College and also a researcher specializing in biological diversity, contributing to the knowledge of marine ecosystems and the understanding of marine invertebrates, such as corals. Her work has important applications for marine conservation and for maintaining coral reefs worldwide.

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From left, Jeffrey Anderson, Rene Matison, Coleman Travelstead, Bette Jo SisnerosCiesielski, Frank McCulloch, Cynthia Arndell, Kirk Gittings and Gilbert V. Herrera.

Lobo Award

Gilbert V. Herrera (’81 BSCPE) Herrera is the director of the Laboratory for Physical Sciences, a National Security Agency research institute on the University of Maryland campus. At his former position at Sandia National Laboratories, he was responsible for a 600-person, $250 million research and development center. He also managed the MESA complex, the largest capital investment in the history of Sandia.

Zia Awards

Cynthia Arndell (’80 BSN, ’94 MD) Arndell has spent her career working with the elderly, developmentally disabled and homeless. After 12 years as a nurse, she became a doctor and served as medical director at Healthcare for the Homeless before joining the faculty of the UNM School of Medicine, where her focus is on developing curriculum that addresses health inequities.

Bette Jo Sisneros-Ciesielski (’90 BA) Sisneros-Ciesielski is founder and CEO of the New Mexico Community Health Worker Association, which trains community health workers.

She also created Passion for Fashion, a thrift boutique that raises funds for the organization. She has managed community health worker programs under UNM Hospital and the Gila Regional Medical Center.

Kirk Gittings (’72 BUS) Gittings, known for his architectural and cultural landscape photography, has been widely published and exhibited across the country. His work has been the subject of a retrospective exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History and a book, “Shelter from the Storm: The Photographs of Kirk Gittings.”

Rene Matison (’69 BS) Matison, one of UNM’s fastest sprinters, was a four-year letterman in track and field and a two-time All American. He was also a 13th round NFL draft pick.

Matison retired from a career in human resources and now volunteers mentoring African-American students in athletics through the Zest for Excellence in Athletics & Learning program.

Frank McCulloch (’53 BS) A painter of New Mexico landscapes for more than 50 years, McCulloch is recipient of the New Mexico Governor’s Award in the Arts, the Albuquerque Arts Alliance Bravos Award and has been named an Albuquerque “Local Treasure” and a UNM distinguished alumnus.

Coleman Travelstead (’69 BAED) Travelstead worked in finance and publishing in the U.S. and abroad before returning to New Mexico in 2000 as director of project management at Technology Ventures Corporation, where he founded Innovation Magazine. He has served on numerous boards, including the Alumni Association, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History Foundation and the New Mexico Symphony.

Inspirational Young Alumnus

Jeffrey Andersen (’07 BAFA) After graduating from UNM with a degree in theater and dance, Anderson became the founding artistic director of Blackout Theatre. Anderson also works as development director and enrichment coordinator for Children’s Choice, which provides no-cost after school programming to nearly 2,000 students every year.

Antonio E. Jaramillo (’00 BSCE), Albuquerque, received the 2015 School of Engineering distinguished Young Alumni Award.

Bryan J. Kaehr (’00 BS, ’02 BS), Albuquerque, is a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories working to improve the catalyst molybdenum disulfide to make hydrogen power more affordable.

Bryan P. Chambers (’01 BSME), Valley Village, Calif., is manager of business development and customer relations at Veolia, a district thermal energy plant.

Brenda Maloney (’01 JD), Earlysville, Va., is vice chair of the Military and Veterans Law Task Force of the American Bar Association. She is a member of the Quarles & Brady LLP law firm.

Adrian A. Pedroza (’01 BA, ’04 MBA), Albuquerque, is executive director of Partnership for Community Action.

Nicole E. Rhodes (’01 BA), Albuquerque, is a Retail Advisor at NAI Maestas & Ward.

Kimberly L. Siegel (’01 MD), Fort Collins, Colo., joined the University of Colorado health team in Northern Colorado.

Jacob M. Vigil (’01 BS), Corrales, N.M., co-authored “Curse of Curves,” a study that found that curvy women are more sensitive to pain than other women. It was published in the journal Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective.

Amanda R. Armenta (’02 BBA, ’03 MBA) is a senior human resources business partner for T-Mobile US. She was a 2015 Albuquerque Business First “40 Under 40” honoree.

Patricia Gingras (’02 BME, ’04 MMU), Fillmore, N.Y., is Amanda R. Armenta professor of Music Education at Houghton College. She received the 2012 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Council for Research in Music Education.

Lindsay A. Mondick (’02 BA), St. Paul, Minn., is senior manager of aquatics for YMCA of the USA. Vannetta R. Perry (’02 EdD), San Antonio, N.M., is superintendent of Magdalena Municipal Schools.

Lindsay A. Mondick

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Shelf Life

Books by UNM Alumni

After the Parade

New Mexico 2050

Lori Ostlund (’91 MA) Scribner, 2015

Fred Harris, editor University of New Mexico Press, 2015

Aaron Englund chooses the days before Christmas to pack his belongings into a moving van and leave Albuquerque, and his life partner, Walter, for a new start in San Francisco.

Harris opens this compendium of essays on the issues facing New Mexico’s future this way: “We’ve got our problems. Everybody knows that.” But if problems are made by people, they can be solved by people, he figures. “New Mexico 2050” is a blueprint for doing that. The book covers all the usual suspects—education, health, the economy, environment and water and more. It asks policy experts to review where we are and where we might be headed 35 years down the road. Included among the writers are a number of UNM alumni, including Hakim Bellamy (’14 MA) (who provides an opening poem), Adrian Oglesby (’00 JD), V.B. Price (’62 BA), Aaron Sussman (’08 MA) and Veronica Tiller (’70 BA, ’74 MA, ’76 PhD).

“After the Parade” follows Aaron through his childhood and into adulthood, and it is mostly about leaving and loss. On departing the small Minnesota town he grew up in: “Once people thought they knew you, it was almost impossible to change their minds, which meant that it was almost impossible to change yourself.”

This is Ostlund’s second book and her first novel. Her collection of short stories, “The Bigness of the World,” received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction.

About the author: Ostlund moved to San Francisco in 2005, but before that she lived in Albuquerque for 17 years, where she taught writing and was a co-owner of Two Serious Ladies, a furniture store in Nob Hill.

About the author: Harris, a former U.S. senator, is a professor emeritus of political science at UNM.

A Call for Reform

Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea: Indian Women as Cultural Intermediaries and National Symbols

Valerie Sherer Mathes (’63 BA, ’65 MA) and Phil Brigandi, editors University of Oklahoma Press, 2015

Rebecca K. Jager (’95 BA, ’00 MA, ’07 PhD) University of Oklahoma Press, 2015

Mathes is an expert on Helen Hunt Jackson, a journalist, novelist and scholar of the mid-19th century on the struggles of American Indians. This is her third book on Jackson and it collects Jackson’s writings from a trip she took to Southern California in the 1880s to see firsthand how natives lived. Her dispatches are mostly concerned with upheaval, as tribe after tribe is pushed off ancestral lands. Writing of the eviction of the Temecula in San Diego County, she says, “The story of the final ejectment of these Indian families from their homes would have made an ‘Iliad,’ had the Indians had their Homer to sing it.”

In Jager’s history of these three legends she examines how Malinche, an Aztec from Central Mexico, Pocahontas, a Powatan from the mid-Atlantic, and Shoshone Sacagawea applied diplomatic skills learned in their own cultures in the period of first contact with Europeans. The women were translators, intermediaries and, through eventual storytelling, became myths and icons. “Scholars and commentators have relentlessly manipulated their legends to support contemporary social agendas,” Jager argues. “To legitimize or condemn conquest, to evaluate social categories of race or gender, and to redefine national identity.” Using historical records, oral histories and ethnographies, Jager shows the women as astute diplomats working to benefit their communities.

Her travels inspired Jackson to become a powerful political voice for American Indian rights.

About the authors: Mathes teaches in the Social Science Department at City College in San Francisco. Brigandi is an independent scholar who specializes in the history of Southern California.

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About the author: Jager is an independent scholar whose work focuses on gender and race in U.S. history.

Wilderburbs: Communities on Nature’s Edge

Jacobo D. Baca (’03 BA, ’06 MA, ’15 PhD), Albuquerque, is New Mexico state director of National History Day.

Lincoln Bramwell (’07 PhD) University of Washington Press, 2014 Who could argue with living tucked right up against the mountains, with unobstructed views of the Western wilderness but still close enough to the city for a quick commute? Wildland firefighters for one. And water managers. And probably the animals that lived there before houses marched up the hillsides.

The issue of conflicts in the so-called urban-wildland interface takes center stage in Bramwell’s accessible treatment. Bramwell calls these housing clusters the “wilderburbs” and, focusing on Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, details the unintended consequences of subdivisions snuggling up to nature.

About the author: Bramwell serves as the chief historian for the U.S. Forest Service. He spent summers as a Forest Service firefighter.

Wade L. Jackson (’03 JD), Albuquerque, general counsel of the New Mexico Economic Development Department, is a Sandoval Economic Alliance board member.

Shad S. James (’03 MEMBA), Sandia Park, N.M., is president and COO of Jaynes Corporation.

Sophie S. Martin (’03 MBA, ’13 JD), Albuquerque, is the executive director of the New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners.

John B. Strong (’03 BA), Albuquerque, is chairman of the board and CEO of Adaptive Medias, Inc., a video technology company.

Ian J. Alexander (’04 MD) is owner of the New Mexico Sinus Institute in Albuquerque.

The Art of Tuning: A Self-Guided Manual for Piano Tuning, Design, Action Regulation, and Repair from mid-19th-Century France Fred Sturm (’79 MMU) Piano Technicians Guild Foundation, 2015 As the title might imply, this hefty paperback is probably not destined for The New York Times bestseller list. But for its narrow audience—piano tuners and devotees of the instrument—it is a delight. Sturm, a pianist and registered piano technician, has translated Claude Montal’s 1865 manual from French to English.

Montal’s intent was straightforward. He thought it indispensable for any pianist to understand his instrument and know how to care for and tune it and sought to offer a guide. While other tuning guides were available in the mid 1800s, Sturm finds the Frenchman’s oeuvre unique in terms of its breadth and exhaustive detail. Montal’s original work contained exacting details of wire diameters, tuning wrenches and Petzold escapements, all the more interesting because Montal was blind.

John M. Butrick (’04 MBA, ’15 JD), Albuquerque, joined the George “Dave” Giddens, P.C. law office.

Emilio J. Chavez (’04 JD), Ranchos de Taos, N.M., is the Eighth Judicial District Court judge.

Claire T. Coté (’04 BA), Questa, N. M. is the founder of LEAP—Land, Experience and Art of Place—a nonprofit working to move people from being passive consumers to active producers of culture through education, art and social and environmental justice.

About the author: Sturm, who received a master of music degree in piano performance from UNM, is active as a performing pianist.

Jonas Hines

Jonas Hines (’04 BS, ’10 MD), Portland, Ore., has completed the highly competitive Center for Disease Control’s Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer training and has joined the Oregon Public Health Department.

Samara Knight (‘04 BS, ‘11 MD), Albuquerque, joined Women’s Specialists of New Mexico as an OB/GYN provider.

ATTENTION PUBLISHED ALUMNI AUTHORS: We would like to add your book to the alumni library in Hodgin Hall and consider it for a review in Shelf Life. Please send an autographed copy to:

Kim Feldman UNM Alumni Relations 1 UNM, MSC01-1160 Albuquerque, NM 87131

Andy Lim (’04 BBA), Albuquerque, is founder and CEO of Lavu Inc., and was keynote speaker at the Albuquerque Chamber’s 98th annual meeting.

Ashlynne L. Padilla (’04 BBA), Albuquerque, is a special effects makeup artist who has worked on “Terminator Salvation,” “Thor,” “In Plain Sight,” “Easy Money,” “The Avengers” and many other productions filmed in New Mexico.

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T

Lobo Baseball Team Steps Up To The Plate New clubhouse on deck - By Terence Kelly -

Carl Stajduhar (30) and Jack Zoellner (28) celebrate a run during the 2015 season. (Photo: UNM)

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he University of New Mexico baseball team came agonizingly close to the NCAA Tournament last season. The Lobos won three blowouts at the Mountain West Tournament in Reno, Nev., to earn a spot in the conference championship game with a postseason berth on the line.

However, needing just one win to grab the title, the Lobos lost back-to-back games to end their season.

After four straight trips to the NCAAs from 2010-13 (their first trips since 1962), the Lobos have missed the tournament in each of the last two seasons. They began their journey to return to the postseason this February with a series at Hawaii and are now in the thick of the season. One added bonus for the Lobos should they need a strong late-season push to reach the NCAA postseason? This year the Mountain West tournament will be held at Lobo Field May 25-28.

Ever since head coach Ray Birmingham arrived prior to the 2008 season, the Lobos have been one of the top hitting teams in the nation. They have finished in the top 10 in the NCAA in batting in six of the last seven years. After finishing sixth in the nation last year with a .310 batting average, they have placed in the top 10 in four straight seasons.

Nearly all of that hitting talent returns this season, and, unlike the last two years, most of the sluggers are upperclassmen.

Junior first baseman Jack Zoellner was second on the team last year with a .352 average, and his 18 doubles were also second on the team. Danny Collier, a 2014 Freshman All-American, is back as well and has hit .349 in his two years at UNM. Chris DeVito has some of the biggest raw power in the country and will split time at three different positions this year to keep his bat in the lineup.

Despite the presence of numerous veterans, though, the Lobos are counting on young stars to continue to produce.

Carl Stajduhar and Tyler Stevens, who were high school teammates in Colorado before coming to UNM, were both named Freshmen All-Americans last year. Stajduhar set a program record for

Mike Shively (’04 MARCH), Chicago, founded Mike Shively Architecture to bring his appreciation of the natural and cultural environment to an urban practice in Chicago.

Jason A. Stravinski Mike Shively (’04 MEMBA), Midland, Ga., is vice president of operations for Lehigh Technologies, a leading specialty chemicals company.

Coach Ray Birmingham is in his ninth year at UNM (Photo: UNM)

freshmen RBIs with 53 while also leading the team with nine home runs and 21 doubles. Stevens, meanwhile, was the first Lobo pitcher ever to be named Freshman All-America. He led the squad with a 3.44 ERA and held opponents to a .244 batting average while going 5-4.

One of Stevens’ wins came against Air Force on April 12 when he tossed a one-hit shutout. It was the first one-hitter by a Lobo pitcher since 1976, and it came in just his sixth career start. A fellow sophomore, supremely talented two-way star Luis Gonzalez, will join him in the rotation and likely pitch on weekdays. The rest of the rotation looks strong as well.

Redshirt senior Colton Thomson is back this year after earning a medical redshirt last year after appearing in only five games. In 2014, his only full season with the Lobos, he went 6-6 with a team-best 3.68 ERA and 65 strikeouts in 88 innings. UNM will lean on the fully healthy lefty to carry a heavy workload this season. Another southpaw, junior Carson Schneider, rounds out the rotation. The Albuquerque native set a UNM freshmen record for appearances in 2014 with 24, and appeared in 23 games last year. He was moved to starter late in the season and thrived. He tossed 7.1

innings of four-hit ball in the Mountain West Tournament to help the Lobos reach the championship game. Lanky and projectable, he might be UNM’s top MLB prospect this year.

It’s only fair that this talented team and program has a home worthy of its status as a leader in the Mountain West.

It is finally getting that home in the form of the R.D. and Joan Dale Hubbard Clubhouse, which began construction in mid-December.

The $2.3 million facility will give the Lobos their first permanent locker room they can call their own. After years of using an available room in WisePies Arena and trekking back and forth to Isotopes Park, the Lobos will finally have a place of their own at beautiful Lobo Field.

The building, which should be completed in time for next season, will house a locker room, coaches’ offices, a players’ lounge, showers and a training room.

It is the latest in ongoing renovations at Lobo Field as Birmingham continues to build the program into a regional and national power. ❂

Terence Kelly is an assistant director of communications for UNM athletics. Follow the Lobo baseball season at www.golobos.com.

Carlee E. Ashley (’05 BS, ’10 PhD), Albuquerque, is a Sandia National Laboratories researcher on a project to develop protocells to carry disease-fighting chemicals to targeted areas of the body.

Joshua N. Kavanagh (’05 MBA), Seattle, is the University of Washington transportation director.

Ryan M. Lacen (’05 BUS), Albuquerque, wrote and co-directed the independent film “The Dust Storm.

Andrew Anders (’06 MBA, ’15 JD), Albuquerque, is an associate in the Keleher & McLeod PA law firm.

Beau T. Carey (’06 BAFA, ’10 MFA), Albuquerque, showed his work titled “Rise” at the 516 Arts Gallery.

Billy J. Jimenez (’06 BA, ’12 JD), Albuquerque, is an associate in the Miller Stratvert law firm.

Idalia M. Lechuga-Tena (’06 BA), Albuquerque, was appointed to fill the vacant District 21 seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives.

Carl Smith (’06 AAHS), Yatahey, N.M., is executive director of Battered Family Services in Gallup.

Casey A. Warr (’06 BAFA), Buda, Texas, is a metal sculptor who has participated in public arts projects in New Mexico and Texas. His work is on exhibit at the International Sculpture Garden in San Antonio, Texas, and in numerous private collections.

Amaris F. Ketcham (’07 BA), Albuquerque, was recognized as the UNM 2014-2015 New Teacher of the Year for her work in the Honors College.

Christopher S. Ortiz y Prentice (’07 BA), Albuquerque, completed his PhD in English at University of Texas at Austin.

Ambrosia Ortiz y Prentis (’07 BA), Albuquerque, is an attorney with the Reinhardt Law Firm, PC. Eddie C. Padilla (’07 BBA), Rio Rancho, N.M., is the executive vice president of Heads Up Landscaping.

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The Beerys pose for a family portrait in their backyard in Southern California.

Pictured left to right are: Zach, Alexis, Retta, Joe and Noah holding Eve.

UNM People Changing Worlds Leading with Love

Joe and Retta Beery advocate for the technology that changed their children’s lives

J

By Michelle G. McRuiz

oe (’87 BBA) and Retta Beery are in many ways typical parents—they will do anything to help their kids. But when two of their three children started showing signs of a disturbing, mysterious illness, the Beerys had to seek solutions on their own. With the help of individual genome sequencing, their kids are now healthy and active.

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The Beerys didn’t stop there. Compelled to help others find answers too, the couple developed a large network that connects patients and families with scientists and doctors who use genome sequencing to diagnose and treat patients.

Fraternal twins Alexis and Noah were born in 1996. They cried constantly and fell short of normal developmental

milestones. At 20 months, they were diagnosed with cerebral palsy. However, they never improved with treatment. At age 5, Alexis still had trouble sitting up, walking and swallowing. Noah shared some of her symptoms and also vomited daily. The twins’ doctors had no answers.

Frustrated but determined, Retta began doing intense research. In 2002 she learned about dopa-responsive dystonia (DRD) or Segawa’s dystonia, an obscure genetic condition that causes dopamine deficiency. DRD resembles cerebral palsy.

Retta took the twins to a specialist who gave them a drug called L-dopa. Their symptoms receded dramatically and they made remarkable progress. Doctors decided the twins didn’t have cerebral palsy after all, but rather DRD. Retta looked for ways to share this treatment with others. “From the time I found that article on DRD, I’ve connected with a lot of media outlets,” she said. “I started a website in 2003.

I shared information and connected people with doctors.”

Meanwhile, Joe, chief information officer for U.S. Airways in Phoenix, received a recruitment call from Life Technologies, a California biotech company that makes DNA sequencing machines. The offer was aligned perfectly with Joe’s skills and Retta’s advocacy, so he accepted it. The move also gave the Beerys the answer they had been seeking.

In 2009, the 13-year-old twins started having other alarming medical problems.

It became apparent that something else was wrong. Joe and Retta decided to have genome sequencing done on themselves,

Jenifer L. Warda (’07 BSED), Parker, Colo., received the 2015 Apple Award for Douglas County School Districts. She teaches kindergarten at American Academy in Parker.

their three children and their parents, through a project at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Three months later, Baylor called the Beerys and said, “We found something.”

Alexis and Noah had inherited one mutation from Retta and one mutation from Joe, getting two “hits” in one gene.

Those two hits created a dopamine deficiency, which was already being treated with L-dopa, and also caused a serotonin deficiency, which was not being treated. In response, the twins’ neurologist prescribed an amino acid that converts to serotonin in the brain.

The twins once again made huge improvements. The Beerys had found the final piece of the puzzle.

Armed with new knowledge, Joe and Retta increased their outreach to educate doctors and patients. And because Alexis and Noah were two of this technology’s early successes, the Beerys had ample opportunity to speak at medical conferences, at the National Institutes of Health and even in Congress.

“If you model what we went through,” said Joe, “the expectation is to help people duplicate that capability through the understanding of newer technology, but also to help people understand it and be advocates for it. That’s how we’re trying to change the world.”

The Beerys also started a foundation, Hope Knows No Boundaries (www. hopeknowsnoboundaries.org), to build upon Retta’s advocacy work. “I’ve gone to appointments with patients so I can explain to their neurologists why [genome sequencing] is a good thing,”

she said. “This tool is not going to solve all problems, but it is solving a high percentage of these undiagnosed cases.”

With Alexis and Noah preparing to attend out-of-state colleges this fall, Retta and Joe are focusing on linking patients to laboratories that do genome sequencing and helping those patients find funding for the testing, if necessary.

The results then go to the patient’s physician to review with the patient.

“Our nonprofit connects the dots between the patient, the medical team and the insurance,” said Retta.

Genome sequencing is a complex technology, and skeptics have challenged the Beerys. “I understand there are a lot of ethical questions,” said Retta.

“But what this technology can be used for—I think it’s criminal to not use it.”

“It has to be well-managed,” added Joe. “The question is, ‘How can we do this?’ not ‘Why can’t we?’ It’s hard to debate the results in our case.”

Throughout their ordeal, the Beerys were sustained and even brought closer by their strong faith. “It was never really bad because we knew there was a purpose,” said Retta. “We do whatever we can to solve problems; we’ve always been that way.” ❂ A version of this story appeared in the UNM Foundation’s Spring 2015 Developments newsletter.

Katharine W. Winograd (’07 EdD), Albuquerque, received the Alice King Public Service Award. She is the president of Central New Mexico College.

Jenifer L. Warda

Carlos E. Alvarez (’08 BBA) and his brother Lorenzo J. Alvarez (’10 BSCM), both of Albuquerque, are co-owners of the Pop Fizz popsicle company specializing in Southwesternflavored paletas.

Tranquilino “Kino” Hurtado (’08 BA), Mora, N.M., was elected to the Mora Independent Schools board of education. Hurtada, the board’s vice chairman, owns and operates a sawmill in Mora.

Haily C. Lee-Wallace (’08 BA, ’12 MD), Tucumcari, N.M., joined Presbyterian Medical Group Family Medicine at Dr. Dan C. Trigg Memorial Hospital in Tucumcari.

Apollonia Trujillo Gallegos (’08 BA), Phoenix, is managing director of recruitment for the Four Corners and Pacific Northwest regions of Teach for America.

Mary J. Bunker (’09 BAEPD), Los Lunas, N.M., joined CHI St. Joseph’s Children as the public policy advocate for early childhood development in New Mexico.

Tiffany E. Dowell Lashmet (’09 JD), White Deer, Texas, is an assistant professor and extension specialist in agricultural law for the Texas A&M University AgriLife Extension Service. She writes an award-winning Texas agriculture law blog.

Dionne L. McDonald (’09 BA), Albuquerque, a former member of the women’s basketball team, was inducted into the UNM Alumni Lettermens Association Hall of Honor.

Gregory M. Trujillo (’09 MEMBA), El Prado, N.M., is a member of the Taos Health Systems board of directors and deputy director of the Public Employees Retirement Association.

Dylan J. Watson (’09, MD), Greenville, S.C., has joined the Bon Secours Medical Group.

2010s Marian Berg (’10 MA), Albuquerque, received a “Local Treasures” award from the Albuquerque Art League in recognition of her work as a multi-media artist and her commitment to the community.

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Alumni Outlook UNM Alumni Association 2016 Travel Program

Events Calendar MARCH

Portraits of the Past May 9-20, 2016 Italy, France, Monaco, Spain

Scottish Highlands and English Lakes

March 7-12

2016 Mountain West Conference Basketball Tournament, Las Vegas, Nev.

March 7

Austin Chapter, Annual Lobo Day Celebrations

March 14

Chicago Chapter, Annual Lobo Day Celebrations

March 22

Washington, D.C., Chapter, Annual Lobo Day Celebrations

May 23-June 3, 2016

APRIL

Scotland and England

April 15

Denver Area Alumni Event at Coors Field

April 16

Denver Area Alumni Brewery Tour

April 16

Greater Los Angeles Chapter, Lobo Day New Mexican Dinner

April 28

Alumni Association Lobo Living Room, Robots & Drones,

UNM College of Engineering, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Coastal Maine and New Brunswick June 22-29, 2016 Maine and Canada

Country and Blues October 23-31, 2016 Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri

MAY May 12

Young Alumni Wine & Cheese Reception,

Paris Immersion

Hodgin Hall, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 pm

October 24-November 4, 2016

May 13

Heritage Club Reception and Dinner, Hodgin Hall

May 13

Graduate Commencement, WisePies Arena, 6:00 p.m.

May 14

Undergraduate Commencement, WisePies Arena, 9:00 a.m.

France

Holiday Markets December 6-17, 2016 France, Luxembourg and Germany

JUNE June 9

AA Chapter Council Leadership Meeting & Workshop,

Hodgin Hall, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

June 10

AA Board of Directors and Chapter Leadership Council Meeting,

Hodgin Hall, 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

June 19

Greater Albuquerque Area Chapter, Zoo Music,

Tommy Castro and the Painkillers

JULY

This is a preliminary schedule. Trips, dates and pricing are subject to change. For additional information, contact Kathie Scott at the Alumni Relations Office at 505-277-5808 or 800-258-6866.

View details, itineraries and pricing online: UNMAlumni.com/Travel

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July 11

Greater Los Angeles Chapter, Hollywood Bowl and Picnic

July 17

Greater Albuquerque Area Chapter, Explora Adult Night

AUGUST August 8

Austin Chapter, Green Chile Roast, Pease Park

Events, dates and times are subject to change. Please contact the Alumni Relations Office at 505-277-5808 or 800-258-6866 for additional information. Get up-to-the-minute information on activities and events and at UNMAlumni.com

A Message from Our Alumni Association President Watch Your Words

W

e all communicate—by speaking and writing—in business and in our personal lives. But we often underestimate how important our choice of words is in relationship to how others see us. Products have brands that are either well-known and trusted or little-known and underwhelming. While many of us don’t always recognize it, people have brands too. And our words identify our brand.

For example, there are people we enjoy speaking with because they are continually positive in their thoughts and thus in their spoken and written words. These are the people most of us enjoy being around. They are typically storytellers who have the ability to keep us mesmerized and engaged in what they have to say. When they call, we always pick up the phone with a smile on our face because we anticipate that we’ll enjoy the interaction.

Ann Rhoades

Then there are those who are continually dissatisfied or critical in their communication—the downers! Those are the people we hesitate to spend time with and delay returning the phone call. If we do spend time with them we come home exhausted!

This issue of Mirage is all about words—the artful words that poets use, the exacting language of science, the creative words of the screenwriter. Our words say a great deal about us and they tend to build our personal brand faster than anything else we do. They are the best expression of who we are and they communicate to everyone what we believe, how we feel and what our views are on any given subject. They tell the world who we are as a human being!

Pay attention to your words and think about what they’re saying about you. Be thoughtful about the language you use to express your thoughts, feelings and opinions. Whether you’re speaking or writing, choose your words carefully and make certain they describe how you would want to be thought of by those you are communicating with. Remember your word choice also communicates a great deal about your character and will determine to a large extent how people view your personal brand.

Ann Rhoades (’85 MBA)

UNM Alumni Association President

Elizabeth D. Olton (’10 PhD), Albuquerque, has co-authored “Understanding Graffiti: Multidisciplinary Studies from Prehistory to the Present,” which was published by Left Coast Press in 2015.

Christopher N. Pendleton (’10 BFA), Las Cruces, N.M., is an artist in reverse paintings on glass.

His work is on display in Oklahoma City’s Kasum Contemporary Fine Art Gallery.

Greg D. Pisotti (’10 BS), Albuquerque, has joined the staff of Heflin Family Dentistry as a doctor of dental surgery.

Su Zhang (’10 PhD, MCM), Albuquerque, is the winner of Hexagon Geospatial’s U.S. Education Challenge for work focused on remote sensing and civil engineering.

Kansas K. Begaye (’11 BA), Rio Rancho, N.M., is an award-winning Native American recording artist and former Miss Indian World.

Erika M. Castillo (’11 BBA), Los Lunas, N.M., joined Burt & Company CPAs as staff accountant.

Marian K. Chavez (’11 BA), Albuquerque, has joined the staff of the State Bar of New Mexico as a program coordinator.

Dina M. Gilio-Whitaker (’11 MA), San Clemente, Calif., is a freelance writer and research associate at the Center for World Indigenous Studies.

Camilla A. Jones (’11 BS), Albuquerque, opened Radish, a restaurant offering local, healthy and affordable food. She is also internationally ranked as a power lifter.

Isaac N. Neal (’11 BSEE, ’13 MS), Tijeras, N.M., works in Boeing’s Laser & Electro-Optical Systems as a guidance, navigation and control engineer for the compact laser weapon system.

Gabriella C. Herczeg (’12 BM, ’15 MMU), Los Alamos, N.M., performed a piano recital at the Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos.

Joe A. Lovato (’12 BBA) and his wife Ratchanida have opened Thailand Thai Cuisine in Los Alamos, N.M. Jessica I. Martinez (’12 BA), Las Cruces, N.M., is the New Mexico League of United Latin American Citizens state director. She is the youngest state director in LULAC’s history.

John D. Peralta (’12 BA), Cambridge, Mass., is pursuing a master’s in higher education at the Harvard School of Education.

Tanaya J. Winder (’12 MFA), Ignacio, Colo., has published her first book, “Words Like Love.”

Melissa N. Begay (’13 MD), Albuquerque, is a partner developing the new Bow & Arrow Brewing Co.

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Alumni Network Snapshots from Alumni events

Homecoming with Henry and Bernadette Rivera.

Lobo Living Room—Mariachis—Roberta Ricci and Peter Sanchez.

Homecoming law school reunion.

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Young alumni celebrate December grads— DeAnna Salazar and Udell Calzadillas Chavez.

Homecoming selfie fun with Lobo Lucy.

Lobo Living Room—Baseball the National Pastime— Georgiana Kennedy, Harold and Judith Lavender.

Make 2016 the year you connect

UNMAlumni.

com

Log on to the new UNM Alumni Connect to join your fellow Lobo alums in this exclusive online community just for you!

UNMAlumni.com

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In Memoriam We remember alumni who recently passed away.

1930 - 1939

Barbara (Von Drelle) Schornick, ‘60

Barbara Jean (Voss) Logan, ‘70, ‘75

Eupha (Buck) Morris, ‘36, ‘41

Russell B. Wheeler, ‘60

William Roger Moore, ‘70

Carol Lansing Bloom, ‘39

Cherrill (Meyer) Whitlow ‘60

John W. Safford, ‘70

Orcilia Zuniga-Forbes, ‘60

Reita (Meyerowitz) Troum Trick, ‘70

1940 - 1949

David M. Bloom, ‘61

Miriam (Rivera) Vellek ‘70

Herbert A. Bailey, ‘41

Lloyd L. Cockrell, ‘61

Robert Patrick Barker, ‘71

Evangeline (C. de Baca) Hernandez, ‘41

Roland L. Finley, ‘61

Beverly Green Cotton, ‘71

Betty Kessler Robinson, ‘41

Joe Alessandrelli, ‘62

Diane Dal Santo, ‘71

Martha (Morris) Dick, ‘42

Robert L. Alvis ‘62

John Haight Maxson, ‘71

Carole (Hendricks) Mahuron, ‘42

David W. Bonem, ‘62

Eugene C. Mortimer, ‘71

Carl Arvid Olson, ‘43

John W. Fink, ‘62, ‘65

Frank Edward Seusy, ‘71

Kathleen (Argall) Mitchell, ‘44

Hedwig Mauren (Tatai) Reed, ‘62

Dennis Martan Styrsky, ‘71

Everett E. Zwicky, ‘45

A. Lloyd Von Wolff, ‘62

Allen Vigil, ‘71, ‘02

James H. Abbott, ‘47

John K. Smith, ‘63

Terry (Lee) Caballero, ‘72

ValGene Black, ‘47

John E. Elder, ‘64

Richard A. Davies, ‘72

Marilyn Terry Haskell, ‘47

Hallie May (Wegel) Felsman ’64, ‘67

Robert Edward Locke, ‘72

William V. Hereford, ‘47, ‘55

John Hayslip, ‘64

Barry Robbins Maxwell, ‘72

Edmund B. Kasner, ‘47

Claude Darwin McDonald, ‘64

Bette (Pianin) Sasmor, ‘72

Robert B. Bunker, ‘48, ‘70

Richard Dean McVey, ‘64

William Tyson, ‘72

Billie (Lowance) Gibbs, ‘48

Lloyd Bryon Randel, ‘64

Mimi Barbour Attleson, ‘73, ‘89

Charles S. Marshall, ‘48

Robert C. Wieck, ‘64

Michael H. Clayton, ‘73, ‘82

Pierre E. Berry, ‘49

Thomas G. Wright, ‘64

Susan Cook, ‘73

Jerald J. Friedman, ‘49

Robert Gardner, ‘65

John Marcon, ‘73

Elizabeth J. (Williams) Kaspar, ‘49

William D. Harwood, ‘65

Stephen James Neumon, ‘73

Grady D. Lobley, ‘49

Earl G. Huffman, ‘65

Joseph W. Black, ‘74, ‘76

John Paul Stark, ‘49, ‘61

Janet (Dorsey) Lashbrooke ’66, ‘95

Eleanor G. (Love) Cotton, ‘74

Elaine (Worthington) Thomas, ‘49

Carole J. Tafoya, ‘66

Rudy Robert Gomez, ‘74

Bev W. Washburn, ‘49

Adolph C. Plummer, ‘67

Tommy Dennis Hughes, ‘74

Charles W. Williams, ‘49

Donald D. Becker, ‘68, ‘74, ‘11

Helen Dmitri Jackson, ‘74

Shelton J. Bourgeois, ‘68

Jon Thomas Kwako, ‘74

1950 - 1959

Albert H. Clark ‘68

George Michael Lavalle, ‘74

Francis E. Cassidy, ‘50

Olympia J. (Nunziato) Dorwin, ‘68

Lee T. Nordan ‘74

Marguerite (Olsen) Giannettino, ‘50

Nadynne A. (Bennitt) Myers, ‘68, ‘70

Shirley J. Abbot, ’75, ’88

J. W. Neal, ‘50

Martin F. Barker, ‘69, ‘71

Nicholas R. Beller, ‘75

Harry E. Stowers, ‘50

Sally (Woodworth) Noe, ‘69, ‘85

Jean Ellen Canavan, ‘75, ‘80

John D. Thomson, ‘50

Marcus D. Stevens, ‘69

Phyllis L. (Boyd) Gladden, ‘75

Burton R. Corbus ‘53

Margaret L. (Collins) Ward, ‘69

Michael James Kerwin, ‘75

Howard K. Martin, ‘53 Carolyn (Nielsen) Sedberry ‘57 William D. Adler ‘58

1970 - 1979

Dianne Marie Murphy, ‘75 Joyce A. Tamura Perry, ‘75

Glen Michael Baird, ‘70

Arlin J. Andersen, ‘76

Stanley P. Balsley, ‘70

Jerry-Ann Lloyd, ‘76

1960 - 1969

Gerald R. Chiaramonte, ‘70

Elizabeth Morris, ‘76

Jack D. Key ‘60

Deborah J. (Bergquist) Hudgins, ‘70

William John Nicol, ‘76

Charles Irvin Potter, ‘60

Elmer Albert Kiekhaefer, ‘70

Robert Mike Nilchee, ‘76

Thompson H. Lang ‘70

44

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

Ralph A. Rowley, ‘76

Lisa Susan (Hiss) Willow, ‘85, ‘11

Philip J. Ulanowicz, ‘76

Monica Collier, ‘86, ‘92

Michael Alan Stark, ‘77, ‘97

Anna Arlene Allender Downs, ‘86

Stuart Graham Walker, ‘77

Elisabeth Lou (Cudney) Keen, ‘86

Rick B. Balzano, ‘78

George Harrison Keyes, ‘87, ‘12

Joyce T. (Kasuga) Iriye, ‘78

Tommy Edward Laughlin, ‘87, ‘90

Jeffrey W. Potter, ‘78

Kristin Elisabeth Atencio, ‘89

Kenneth C. Williams, ‘78

Eberhard M.W. Lubitz, ‘89

Richard B. McNamara, ‘79 Joann (Cooper) Murphy, ‘79

1990 - 1999

Paul Douglas Noland, ‘79

BBrad Jay Chertoff, ‘90, 92

Ricky Alan Pirkle, ‘79

Lorna Rochelle Duche Ducheneaux, ‘90

Suely Renno Porter, ‘79

Jean Holmberg Casey, ‘91

1980 - 1989

Kathryn V. Perez, ‘91 Frederico Maurice Silva, ‘91

Louise R. Begley, ‘80

Craig Scott Cuthbert, ‘92

Helen I. (Keylon) Galloway, ‘80

James Allen Dunn, ‘92, ‘94

Faith L. Mayfarth, ‘80

Robert C. McCoy, ‘92, ‘15

Tony Joe Pino, ‘80

Delores A. Worley-McCabe, ‘92

Robert Oliver Ware, ‘80, ‘89, ‘97

Dixie Lee Bentley, ‘93

Maxine E. (Roberts) Klineline, ‘81

Eloise Conrad Dabney, ‘93

Holly D. Mueller-Lowrey, ‘81, ‘87

Phyllis Joy Berlin-Pelky, ‘95

Don C. Rumley, ‘81

Minita Twins Runningwater, ‘95

Mary Denise Russell, ‘82

Thomas Arthur Peterson, ‘97

Harriet Celeste Toole, ‘82

Lydia Camacho-Romisher, ‘99

Bonnie Ann Boswell, ‘83

Marlena M. Torres, ‘99

Margaret A. (Baerst) McClure, ‘84 Mark Lowell Soderstrom, ‘84

2000 - 2009

Joanna Conrardy, ‘85

Boyd W. Barnes, ‘01

Catherine Ann Silco, ‘85

Whitney S. Grogan, ‘01

Myles F. Copeland (‘13), Albuquerque, is the secretary of the New Mexico Aging and Longterm Services Department.

Kyle Duran (’13 BUS) married Devon Rosenkoetter on August 15, 2015. They met through UNM ROTC in 2011.

Bailey N. Griffith (’13 BA), Albuquerque, has joined the staff of the New Mexico Association of Commerce and Industry.

Lorie M. Maciver (’13 BSN), Albuquerque, is the president of District 1199 NM of the National Union of Nurses and Hospital Employees.

Michael A. Marcelli (’13 MEMBA), Albuquerque, is the associate athletic director for finance and chief financial officer for UNM. Cami B. Belcher (’14 BS), Stanley, N.M., was crowned the New Mexico State Fair Queen for 2016. She works at Sandia National Laboratories and is pursuing her PhD in chemical engineering at UNM. Alex R. Kirk (’14 BBA), Albuquerque, held skills camps for young basketball players in Northern New Mexico.

Akshay Patel (’14 BS) is playing the role of an army pilot alongside Ethan Hawke in the action thriller “Good Kill.”

Chantale L. Riddle (’14 BLA), Albuquerque, was named a 2014-2015 UNM Athlete of the Year by the UNM Alumni Letterman Association.

Jennifer L. Sallee (’14 EDD), Santa Fe, N.M., is director of the new Early Childhood Center of Excellence at Santa Fe Community College.

Valerie R. Strong (’14 BBA), Albuquerque, has joined Stride Inc. as a marketing intern.

Jessica E. Thompson (’14 BA), Vancouver, Wash., was accepted into the Teach for America program.

Kendall W. Thrasher (’14 BBA), Albuquerque, is the manager of National Roofing’s accounting department.

Israel Chavez (’15 BA), Albuquerque, is the development director for Equality New Mexico.

Have a Good Howl Our monthly email newsletter, The Howler, keeps Lobos up-to-date with Alumni Association news and events, as well as additional alumni profiles not published in Mirage. You can read it online at unmalumni.com/the-howler.html or subscribe to the email version by emailing a request to alumni@unm.edu.

James T. Foty (’15 MCRP), Albuquerque, has joined Sites Southwest LLC as a planner.

Alexandra N. Stewart (’15 BA), Edmond, Okla., won the 2015 Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity Prize in Ethics Essay Contest for her essay, “The Ethics of Transcendence.”

Abigail M. Yates (’15 JD), Albuquerque, is an associate with Rodey, Dickason, Sloan, Akin & Robb PA.

FALL 2015

45

In Memoriam Christina M. Smith, ‘02

Holly C. King, ‘13

Amelia (Yamate) Torrez

Marcia E. Landau, ’03 *

Sergio A. Mendez, ‘15

Ledwellyn V. Turman

Roberto Uriel Gutierrez, ‘04 Frank Patrick Fingado, ‘05

OTHER ALUMNI

Alice Yvonne Watson-Aikens Russell B. Wheeler

Kristin Mary Hoff, ‘05

Martin Aronovitz

Leon J. Holecheck

Mary E. Bourne, ‘06

David B. Baddour

Delbert Pate

Stephanie A. Guertin, ‘06

Nancy Jean (Scott) Barker

Ford Ruthling

Michael T. Legah, ‘06

Jean J. (McArthur) Bowman

Bob G. Sharp

April L. Neidigk ’06, ‘10

Melvin J. Daniels

Laura Jean Fischer Reed, ‘06

Clarice (Richardson) Danley

* A CORRECTION

Clarence A. Groten, ‘08

Gustave A. Durand

Michelle L. Stapp was incorrectly

Candance R. Hacker, ‘08

Susan C. (Fietsch) Erbe

listed in In Memoriam in a previous

Virginia Elizabeth Roberts, ‘08

Cynthia Jane (Bigbee) Hammond

issue of Mirage. It was her mother,

Christopher C. Watson, ‘08

Gerald O. Holl

Marcia E. Landau (’03), who passed

Patterson Y. Begay, ‘09

M. Berniece B. (Byrd) Holmen

away on May 23, 2014. Landau was a

Robert E. Lofgren

psychologist who taught in the UNM

Paul L. Mattoon

Psychology Department.

2010 - 2015 Scott D. Laine, ‘11

Herbert T. Shillingburg

Breanna Hastings, ‘13

Bob V. Stover

46

MIRAGE MAGAZINE

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