Greetings PandA Alumni!

The first thing I want to highlight is that we are working hard to get a new Campus Observatory!

We started with a UNM crowdfunding effort this fall, hoping to raise $5000 toward the initial phase. You blew through that goal and raised over $11,000! We’re excited that you want a new observatory as much as we do, and we can’t thank you enough for your generosity.

With other funds we’ve pulled together, we can start planning, which is estimated to cost between $50-100k.

We’re still welcoming donations via a new permanent fund at unmfund.org/fund/campus-observatory.

New Faculty

We welcomed Jose Sanchez as our new Lecturer this fall. Jose was one of our own undergraduates, so he can relate to the students he is teaching. We are glad to have him back with us.

We also welcomed Sheng Liu as a Research Assistant Professor working with Keith Lidke and Tonmoy Chakraborty. She received her PhD here with Keith, so again, it’s great to have one of our alumni back. You can read more about her in our Alumni Highlight feature.

APS Four Corners Meets at PAÍS

The annual meeting of the APS Four Corners division occurred here in PAÍS in October. We had 275 people registered, much more than we were anticipating. But the meeting ran very smoothly and visitors told us how jealous they were of our beautiful new building. It worked really well as a venue for a meeting this size with a few parallel sessions. Six of our faculty gave plenary or invited talks, and Mallory Harris won the Harry Lustig Award for the best graduate student presentation. You can read more about the meeting below.

Award-Winning Faculty and Students

Other honors this semester included two for Diana Dragomir: a Women in STEM award and an Ovation award, both from UNM. Also Adjunct Professor Andrew Landahl won the prestigious Ernest Orlando Lawrence award from the Department of Energy. Graduate student Elizabeth Tilly won a highly competitive Graduate Instrumental Research Award through an APS program, and Sally Seidel lectured in Malta as a winner of a Fulbright Scholarship.

The 2021-2022 academic year turned out to be a particularly successful one in terms of research funding. We were awarded $9.1M in research funds, the largest we’ve had for at least ten years!

New Undergraduate Mentorship program

Retention of our majors is a big challenge for us, and we’re trying to tackle the problem on a few fronts. So I’m excited about PUMP (Peer Undergraduate Mentorship Program) that started this fall. The goal is to have graduate students and upper division undergrads mentor beginning majors, to provide advice on how to succeed, and impart a sense of belonging to the department. We had a lot of interest from students wanting to be mentors, and I want to thank them for getting this program off to a good start. Regener Hall under new management

On the staff side, we are in the final process of hiring OSE graduate student Hatem Babaa to be our new lecture demonstration coordinator and Regener Hall manager. He’ll continue with his studies as he takes on this new role. Hatem had been doing this job excellently on an interim basis since the beginning of the summer, and we are all really enjoying working with him.

Thank you for continuing to engage with your old home here. Please make a gift to support our students and our goal of a new campus observatory. Join the excitement and donate today. I hope you enjoy reading about the highlights of this semester in PandA!