The UNM Department of Anthropology is expected to be in the top 20 anthropology programs in the nation, according to its chairman.
"Anthropology is one of the strongest programs at UNM," chairman Michael Graves said in an e-mail to the Daily Lobo. "I am hopeful it will continue as such."
However, the department's reputation could be in jeopardy, because four ethnology professors will retire in the next three years, Graves said.
"Our program's quality is based, in part, on our faculty," he said. "These four women are probably the core of the ethnology program."
Graves said two of the professors are retiring this year and two more will retire in the next two years.
The department has yet to receive administrative permission to replace them, he said.
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Professor Louise Lamphere, who is retiring this year, said she is worried for the department because tenured professors are retiring, and no one is scheduled to take their places.
"I think more attention needs to be given to the faculty here. You can't build a good Research 1 institution without having high-quality faculty," Lamphere said. "I know the dean feels that we need these replacements, but we don't have them yet."
Felipe Gonzales, senior associate dean for the College of Arts and Sciences, said hiring professors is a time-consuming process.
"The college can't really do anything until the vacancy has actually been created, so the planning for it actually is generated at the department level," he said.
The hiring process has to go through the "bureaucratic machinery," Gonzales said.
Each department develops a hiring plan and submits it to the College of Arts and Sciences, and hiring begins in the spring, he said.
"Hiring plans for departments . come to the college, upon which the college composes its hiring plans that go up to the provost," he said. "We compile all of the hiring plans, (and) we then look at our budget situation and the hiring plans and the priority.. That means the deans' office is placed in a position of needing to configure its budget allocations just prior to the end of the fiscal year."
Lawrence Strauss has taught at UNM for more than 30 years and has seen faculty leave in waves.
Strauss said one reason many professors leave is because they are offered more money by another university.
"In recent years, we have had a number of major losses to ASU," he said. "We have lost people because the administration has not provided the support that was needed."
Strauss said the recent turnover of the University's administration has made it difficult for the anthropology department to voice its requirements. It is difficult to develop relationships with administrators who are unfamiliar with the University's needs, he said.
Graduate student Ilse Biel said the University needs to spend its money on hiring professors, because they are more important than administrators.
"There is clearly enough money; it's just how it is distributed on campus," she said. "There is a lack of transparency and just general sense of security in how the process will proceed. I frankly don't trust the administration."
Anthropology graduate student Jara Carrington said the shrinking department has a negative effect on students and the impact will spread to the whole University.
"I'm concerned about the quality of the program," she said. "I'm concerned about the availability of faculty support for graduate students and dissertation research and how it is going to impact job placement after dissertation research."
Lamphere said graduate students contribute to the department's success and that if graduate students don't have faculty to support them, they might leave UNM.
"Our grad students are really worried, because they are losing people who are on their dissertation committees," she said. "I think if we were looking for two new people this year it wouldn't be a problem, but we're not."
