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UNM agreed to contribute to an initiative that will further push it to increase graduation rates.
The University has agreed to participate in “Mission: Graduate,” which aims to add 60,000 graduates with college degrees and certificates to central New Mexico by 2020, according to a news release.
President Robert Frank said UNM set its own goal for increasing the number of graduates in order to participate in the recently launched “Mission: Graduate” program.
“For UNM, it’s 11,000 new degrees by 2015, which basically is 500 new degrees for us each year,” he said.
Despite UNM’s formal agreement to achieve higher graduation rates, Frank said UNM has already shown commitment to student success. He said there won’t be changes specifically for the initiative, because UNM has already been working on increasing graduation rates.
“To be honest, we’re not doing anything different than we were already doing,” he said. “We already have all of these pieces in place, and what we’re doing on this is just trying even harder to do all of the things we already started doing.”
Angelo Gonzales, executive director for Mission: Graduate, said United Way and other organizations began to organize the initiative back in 2010. He said UNM’s participation in the project dates back to July 2012, when UNM’s Center for Education Policy Research started to provide data support.
“CEPR has really provided a lot of the data support, the data that we need to highlight the urgency of the work,” he said. “We’re going to be using it to really measure the progress we’re making on this initiative.”
“Mission: Graduate” also involves Central New Mexico Community College, Albuquerque Public Schools and Rio Rancho Public Schools, Gonzales said. He said the initiative aims to change education in the community.
Gonzales said “Mission: Graduate” wants to recruit more schools to participate in the initiative. He said the project also seeks to discover what exactly will help students of all socioeconomic backgrounds advance in the educational system.
“We’re going to be doing a pretty systemic assessment to try to understand what those effective practices are,” he said. “I think we can already point to a lot of things that seem to be promising, but we really want to have data behind them to be able to say which of those practices seem to be making the biggest difference.”
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Even though each organization has its own internal goals, Gonzales said that, overall, the project is a cooperative effort.
“Ultimately everyone, collectively, is contributing to the 60,000 goal,” he said.
Gonzales said Frank sits on the project’s Vision Council, which CNM President Kathie Winograd and Jim Hinton, president and CEO of Presbyterian Healthcare Services, began to develop back in June 2012.
“We’re really trying to create a world class, coordinated and seamless educational system, so that every individual can excel and succeed from early childhood all the way through high school,” he said. “Everyone, if they so choose, can go to college and earn a certificate or degree and ultimately enter into a career of their choosing that’s rewarding and fulfilling right here in central New Mexico.”
Jeanette Miller, executive director of communications and marketing for the United Way of Central New Mexico, said the idea to create a “creative to career initiative” came out of community conversations in the city.
“Because we were talking about strengthening our community, education is one of those areas that we work hard to help foster,” she said.
Though the goals will be difficult to achieve, Frank said he is confident UNM will be able to use the programs it has already established to contribute to “Mission: Graduate.”
“Even though these are very audacious, we know we can hit these goals with the things we’ve been talking about over the last year,” he said.
