Senate legislation targets students

Seven bills regarding UNM will be brought to the upcoming New Mexico legislative session, including one to establish scholarship programs for national merit scholars.

If passed, Senate Bill 11 would amend the Legislative Lottery Tuition to grant national merit scholarships to cover students’ tuitions and fees so long as recipients have been “designated a national merit finalist by the national merit scholarship corporation,” the proposed amendment states.

The proposed legislation, introduced by state Sen. Jacob Candelaria, D-Albuquerque, and published on the Legislature’s website, stipulates recipients be enrolled in a higher education institution or branch campu s within one year of high school graduation or receive a graduate-equivalent diploma. No more than 75 percent of the scholar ships will go to out-of-state residents, the legislation states.

Also, the scholarships may be renewed each semester as long as full-time students have a 2.5 grade-point average or above, the legislation states.

Another legislator, state Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, has introduced a bill that would give the UNM Board of Regents the administrative authority over the Adolescent Treatment Hospital and Adolescen t Residential Treatment Facility Hospital, not the state Department of Health.

The board of regents would then appoint the five-member Adolescent Treatment Hospital Governing Board, SB 43 states.

The five other bills involved propose appropriations to UNM. According to the state legislature’s website, those bills are:

SB 31, introduced by state Sen. Michael Padilla, which would give $250,000 from the general fund for a civic leadership and legislative processes training program for Hispanic high school students;

SB 24, also introduced by Padilla, which would grant $1.1 million to UNM’s pain management center;

SB 64, introduced by state Sen. Cisco McSorley, which would appropriate $250,000 to the UNM’s Global Education Office and another $250,000 to NMSU’s Office of Education Abroad;

SB 80, introduced by state Sen. Howie Morales, would give $400,000 to fund planning for a bachelor’s of arts and doctor of dental science in the Health Sciences Center;

and SB 89, also introduced by Morales, which would appropriate $3 million to UNM’s Brain Safe Athletes program.

All five appropriations bills state any remaining money not used for said programs will return to the state’s general fund by fiscal year 2016’s end.

J.R. Oppenheim is the managing editor at the Daily Lobo. Contact him at jroppenheim@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.