The third candidate, for Western New Mexico University president, Sharon Jones, visited the campus on Tuesday, March 3, 2026.
The session opened with: "My name is Dean Reed. I'm one of the regents. I'd like to introduce John Wertheim, a fellow regent of mine. We are the chair and co-chair of this search committee, and we are on candidate number three today, and we'll finish up tomorrow with candidate number four.
"At this time, a couple of instructions. We do have a QR code that I can't stress enough." He pointed to a poster with the QR code. "If you cannot access the QR code, wave your hand. We have paper forms you can fill out. Now you might say, where does that paper form go? We don't see it. Jean takes them in and sends them to Anthem [the search firm]. We never see them. All of the results are coming back from Anthem this Thursday morning. They scrub and compile all the comments. We never see that. This is what we pay a search for to keep it anonymous. The survey will close this Wednesday (March 5) at midnight, the regents are meeting this Thursday at three o'clock, in executive session to discuss those results and start to formulate our number one candidate and number two candidate.
"We do have a meeting scheduled for March 17. Tuesday. We will announce our new president on March 17, assuming our negotiations go well, but we've spoken with all the candidates about the compensatory pieces of our agreement, so we're all in alignment with some tweaking here and there."
Reed than introduced Dr. Sharon Jones from University of Washington, Bothell. "She will have her 15 minutes to introduce herself, tell you about her vision, why she's interested in this position, and like the previous candidates, at that time, we'll open it up you guys can have a nice conversation. So thank you for your attendance. Thank you for your time and without further ado. Dr Sharon Jones, please welcome her."
Jones began: "Good afternoon, and thank you so much for being here. It's a really good sign to see so many community members come and be engaged in this particular process.
"For those who have interacted with me already, they know I tend to be a little bit long-winded in my answers, and so when they asked me to put together a 15 minute sort of talk about who I am and what shaped me, I decided it would be better if I have a script, because otherwise I might deviate too much from the 15 minutes. So that's why I am behind the podium. It's truly a pleasure to share a bit about, who I am, what has shaped me, and the reasons why this position.
"As I mentioned in the earlier session is I have never talked about my trajectory in a public forum ever. And now we're doing it several times with a whole bunch of people online as well. But it does tell me a little bit about what you value in terms of picking your next president. And so I think it's really a really good sign to have this ask. I hope that after hearing my story, you understand why I firmly believe that universities can provide the types of opportunities that literally transform a student's life and the life of their communities. And as I talk about my trajectory, I think you'll see some connections to that.
"I was born in South America, and when I was two years old, because of political reasons, my parents moved us to Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad and Tobago is a jewel island nation just off the coast of Venezuela. It is the birthplace for steel pan and limbo.bIt's also home to really special music for us, Calypso, and it's also home to, in my opinion, the absolute best carnival or Mardi Gras in the entire world. Depends on your perspective, but just trust me on that one.
"Trinidad and Tobago is also a very diverse society that has been shaped by a complex history of colonization, slavery and indentured labor. I grew up in a small fishing village, and I commuted every day to go to school because the schools were better in the city center. My mother had to leave school when she was 12 years old. My father was one of 11 children and had the opportunity to go to high school. Many of his siblings did not, but there was no way that he could even dream of going to college.He completed an apprenticeship program, and he became a harbor pilot, and that changed our lives compared to many of his siblings and my mother's siblings. So he firmly believed in education, and he firmly believed that his three children and I, the eldest would attend college. Without really knowing what college meant, because he believed that, we believed that. And so I took a leap. A whole bunch of reasons why, but I ended up at Columbia University in New York City. It was a big leap. At the time, student body was all male, except for the engineering school. The engineering school had always been co-ed, so I somewhat accidentally became an engineering major. My best subject in high school was math, but I quickly realized that I wasn't as strong in math as well as some of the other subjects as some of my classmates, or at least that's what I believed. And I think for a lot of first generation students in college, there's that belief that I'm not good as the one next to me.
"There was a student club at Columbia and also a program that was run by one of the associate deans that really provided me with the encouragement and the support that I am confident was why I graduated from that university and I persisted in that major. Another aspect of Columbia University is that all of the engineering students have to complete the same liberal arts or curriculum as the liberal arts majors. So as an engineering student, I was taking courses in the liberal arts that became absolutely some of my most favorite courses, and I tried to take as many of them as I could.
I was really confused about what I was going to do after college, because on one hand I had these courses that I really enjoyed, and on the other hand were courses that I had to take. And so I knew I had to finish my degree, because that was really important to my parents, but I had no idea what I was going to do after college, and so in my senior year, I took a course that introduced me to what at the time was a new field. It's a much more robust field now, called Environmental Engineering. That course reminded me of the challenges that we faced as a family growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, things like open garbage dumps, frequent power outages, weekly water shortages, and sometimes we would go days without clean water. And so I realized at that moment that engineering provided me with an opportunity to work on those types of challenges that communities similar to the one that I grew up in were experiencing. I was convinced I had found my path. I was going to work for the World Bank, and I was going to tackle these problems. And so I applied in my senior year to the World Bank, and what I remember from the rejection letter was that they said they only hired entry level economists. So so much for that engineering degree.
"It was a real bullet point for me, and I remember walking in the hallway and an associate dean reached out and started having just sort of a random conversation, because that's what happened. And when she heard the story, because it was top of mind, she said, 'Why don't you consider going to graduate school so that you cab do what you really want to do? And so her encouragement made me think of something that had never crossed my mind before. So skip forward, and I completed a master's degree, still in engineering, but focusing on environmental issues, and I was recruited to work in Los Angeles, and so I went there and was quickly immersed in projects, designing waste incinerators and cleaning up hazardous waste sites. And I could see the impacts that these projects were having on the communities that we were working for within Los Angeles, and some of the dynamics that affected who benefited,
where these projects actually had positive impacts versus negative impacts, and also for reasons I don't really understand why it happened this way, but I ended up becoming the liaison between our engineering teams And the city's Public Works Board. And at the time, the city's Public Works Board included a couple of fairly influential leaders, Murphy Evers and Kathleen Brown, and they and the rest of the board kept reminding us, you have to think about the communities that you're working with.
"I was always reminded by these interactions that once again, the people who are making the decisions about which projects move forward and which communities benefited often weren't the engineers. There were other folks. And so I took the opportunity to go to school part time. The city had a tuition reimbursement program, and I got a Master's in Public Administration, and I specialized in public works policy, and so this was about the time where I really understood my journey.
"So far, I had had the opportunity to attend college because my parents encouraged me without really knowing what college would mean. But once I got to college, it was faculty and staff who encouraged me and introduced me to a world of possibilities that I had never imagined. College was never easy for me, but there were always people around who encouraged me to persist. And then with that education, I was able to have a career doing the things that mattered to me because of my life experiences. So I was pretty much in heaven. This was so amazing what had happened, and I absolutely loved my job,
and I also loved my family.
"The reason I said that is because what happened is because of the work that I had chosen, the career that I had chosen, I ended up traveling a lot, and I had a young son and another child on the way, and I came to a decision point where I had to determine, well, what was I going to do moving forward? Because what we were doing wasn't working for our family,
so I remember that during my master's program, a professor had encouraged me to consider getting a PhD, and at the time, it didn't seem realistic. I was going out, I was working. I sort of had a path forward, but as I thought about sort of balancing career and family, I realized that I could become one of those faculty members, who was providing opportunities for students, and for some students, they might persist , because of me and my little journey.
"So my family basically dropped everything we were doing, and we moved across the country, and I want to credit 100% my husband who was also a first generation college graduate, and he never wavered in his support. And this was a time where for me, by his doing this, and me giving up my job, we were significantly decreasing our income. while our family was growing. And it turned out to be one of many moves around the country, and he was supportive throughout, and has been supportive throughout.
"The opportunity to live in so many different regions, almost every region of the United States, has been an absolute highlight of our career, my career, and I think he would agree with his career as well.
"So at Carnegie Mellon, where I got my PhD, I literally found the program that I wish I had found much earlier. It was an interdisciplinary program where we were able to look at combined engineering policy and we looked at complex technical issues from multiple dimensions. And when I was there, a mentor helped me to find funding through a foundation. Another mentor, not only was he talking about the art of teaching, but talking to all of the art of teaching.
"Another mentor connected me to a project where we were examining the impacts of climate change information on decisions that fishery managers had to make, which was a full circle moment for me, from where I came from, and as we were having our third child, this mentor encouraged me to persist and took me across the finish line.
"And with the help of many other people, because it was an interesting time in our lives. So many other people, peers, faculty, advisors, bosses, in my husband's case, they really supported us throughout, and that's why we were able to continue.
"Over the years, my academic work has centered on the way I would describe as sustainable infrastructure and production. And so what I try to do is I try to look at technical issues in terms of environmental, social, economic and ethical aspects, and how these are affecting communities. And these projects have allowed me to work with those good old economists, again, psychologists, philosophers and educators, and it's also allowed me to work with students, because students have been involved in almost all of my projects. And I firmly believe that it's these types of opportunities that help students to really think about their own impact that they're going to have on the world after college.
"My current work, academic work, focuses on how the smoke from wildfires affects early childhood settings. It's a very understudied issue that is crucially important. In the past, I have worked with farmers as we looked at how to reduce environmental impacts at turkey processing plants, dairy farms and confined swine facilities and are probably what drove me to become a vegetarian.
"I've worked alongside the Tohono O'odham utility tribal members as we developed their first geographical information system, or GIS, for their utility infrastructure on their nation/ I have partnered with the several NGOs, including one of the people on sustainable water and wastewater projects in Honduras, Malawi, Nicaragua and Guatemala, and those have been primarily in rural and peri-urban communities. I even trail tended on a backpacking trip in guess where. That's what introduced me to the region. I believe I visited Silver City. It was a long time ago, but it certainly introduced me to the region and the amazing assets that you have here in terms of the natural landscapes. And so I've learned a lot from the institutions where I worked.
"I started at Rose-Hulman, where I learned how to center students in just about every decision. When I was at Lafayette College, I learned how transformative education can be when you can connect what a student is learning in the classroom how to address a real world issue. It's transformative. When I was at the University of Portland, I learned how to fundraise so that we could create and sustain those opportunities. And at my current institution, UW Bothell, I learned what access could look like at a regional public university that is co-located with a community college that accepts 90 percent of its applicants. It's not open access, but it accepts 90% of the students who apply. Is a first gen forward and minority-serving institution, and has the most ethnically diverse student population that I've ever seen in the United States.
"So I've spent 20 years now in higher education leadership. I've been a program chair and division director for six years. I've been a dean for eight years. I've been a vice chancellor for six years, and at every institution, in all of those roles, I have learned a lot about how to create opportunities for students, how to encourage these types of students and opportunities, and how to build community along the way.
"And once again, the opportunity to lead only came because someone encouraged me to believe that I was prepared. That's the key encouraging people to believe that they can do more than they ever imagined they could do.
"I joined UW Bothell in late 2019 and the pandemic happened in 2020, and honestly, the higher education landscape has changed significantly since about that time. It's probably changing already, but it has changed significantly. And so we spent most of that time really strengthening our campus for this new era of higher education. And so we have strengthened our student support programs. We have launched faculty support systems. We increased enrollment, the highest enrollment ever at the institution as of last fall. We improved our physical facilities, we improve budget transparency, and we also returned to balanced budgets for academic units, which I did not inherit—balanced budgets. So all of these efforts have really prepared the campus to really start the next cycle of strategic planning. And that's what's happening this year. Is that next level or that next cycle?
"This is a time where I reflected, and after much thought and encouragement, I decided that I could do more. There's still more in me. I could do more as a leader. I've been fortunate to work with some very successful presidents or chancellors, and I've seen what a successful president can do. They can mobilize the community around a clear and persistent vision. They're able to secure the resources that faculty and staff need so they can do their best work, and they're able to secure those resources so that students can get the most out of their education. That's what I want to do, only at a campus that aligns with the values that I value.
"So that's what brought me to this position, and why I'm here today. What excites me, what I've learned about Western New Mexico University, is that I believe there is a deep alignment with what what you're doing and want to do, and with what I care about and my vision for higher education. I think higher education can be a place where every student has the opportunity to get the most out of their education and position themselves for what they want to do after college. I think that higher education can be a place where every member of the campus community is critical to that goal and feels as if their efforts matter.
"I feel that higher education, especially in an area like this, can be a place where the collective work is integral to the success of the region, and the region's success is integral to the campus's success. And so here, the Western New Mexico University's open access mission, and close ties to Silver City and the region, I believe, aligned with this vision as I hit open access, Hispanic-serving institution with thriving athletics, expressive and performing arts and events, lectures, speakers and programs that span the skilled trades to associate degrees, bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and in areas that are critical to the state's economy, this campus is providing opportunities for students every day and opportunities for the community every day.
"When I look at the strategic plan for the campus, I also feel there's alignment with the aspirations that the campus has, strengthening pathways for the diverse student body, deepening your regional impact and leaning into sustainability for the campus, and as a state leader, there is so much potential to do all of those things.
On a personal note, I am someone who loves the outdoors. I love the Southwest, and I spent quite a bit of time in the Southwest, and I love being part of a vibrant community, and so this opportunity is very special to me.
"So to close, I want to end with something that I heard at a leadership development program. At that program, one of the speakers said that 'finding the right place to be a president is like catching lightning in a bottle.' And so what I mentioned to the group earlier today is that I assume that's what they're thinking about as well in terms of finding their next president. So thanks for listening to my very long trajectory, and I'm looking forward to mingling and maybe answering, having some engagement and dialogue with you on some of your questions. Thank you."
Priscilla Lucero (Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments executive director) commented and asked: "I've been doing this for a long time, and we don't have enough water operators, so that's a skilled trade Those are things I think about that are vocational. I also think about the things that our kids here haven't had the opportunity, like they weren't exposed to it. And I think our students sometimes here, and when you grow up in low income areas, they don't even know what's available in the city. What we did at junior high school. We ask them, 'What do you want to be when you grow up? And the response is, 'I want to be a teacher. I want to be a miner and I want to be an educator. All good professions, all great professions, but they don't see the other side of the world. So for me to be involved now in water and infrastructure, I do it at a state level, where I'm a water ambassador, representing all kinds of things. So I can see that there's so many opportunities for our area.
Lucero explained councils of governments as regional organizations, seven in the state. " I represent the southwest corner. I'm very possessive of my local governments and all that. But those are the things that really intrigued me, and how I've been able to bring approximately, if I were to take a guess, about $30 million a year in funding to this region, just based on coming from what I would say, like you said, from nowhere. That's fantastic. It's also important to have someone like you involved, because you know what so many students are facing I think that's what's been valuable for me. There are lots of excellent educators. People actually want to teach way better than I can to be better administrators. But there's something about being connected, that passion that you're connected to because and I think for me too, I always tell people, if I can teach you one thing, I need you to know your community. And you don't need to just know what's above ground, you need to know what's underground. I need to know what goes across the I-10. I need you to know what's in the air. And because those are the things that are the key principles, right to selling your community. But when I talk about those things, people think I'm nuts, because I'm like, How do you know how many pipeline, how much pipeline, and 42 inches natural gas. And so that's infrastructure, right? Foundation. Andhousing is one of our challenges here as well. But I think we have so much of a gap that we can fill as an institution from the needs of what we need in the state that I could see that just blooming from here. So those are just kind of my perspectives, and you can add to that."
"Thank you," Jones replied. "It's great to hear about some of those opportunities.There's a curriculum for operators thtat wouldn't be that hard to actually put in."
Lucero said: " Let me just tell you kind of happens at the state level, because I want you to think about that. So they're all trying to figure this out, right? And so then you've got other institutions, plus state agencies, plus you have other, water and wastewater groups or water groups, but nobody can come collectively to develop the mechanism to say, hey, we're going to have a one-week or two-week short school. We're going to get to certified in water level one, and off you go, and then come back and we're going to take you out to the next step, water level two, three and four. And so that doesn't happen, because it's those mentors that can help push these institutions that where you when you have somebody that believes in you, and a lot of people didn't believe in me, if I tell you my story, when I started working the COG, and I became director, many people said I would never make it, but I think it's just the drive, and it's when you live, where you live, municipalities, counties, everything. I'm Mama Bear."
Jones said she would love to hear Lucero's story.
The Beat asked a personal question: "Is your husband still working? Is he going to be able to find a job here? "
Jones said others were not allowed to ask personal questions, but
"you're not hiring me. My husband's actually planning to retire.
We just had a plan for our family, and he's planning to retire. He knows the area. He would have been here on the visit, because I understand that others brought spouses, but he got a pinched nerve in his neck January when we were in Arizonafor four weeks, and he couldn't get a doctor's appointment until next week. He made the flight home and he decided another flight and the drive would just aggravated it. He was very disappointed not to be here. He probably wouldn't retire until next year. If things worked out and I am the successful presidential candidate, I would start before he got here. But his plan is he's definitely retiring. Good question, because spouses make a huge difference."
An unidentified woman asked: "Why do you see this as a vibrant community? Everybody's over 70."
Jones replied: "We have a lot of experience as we get older, and a lot of wisdom and the connections. There are a whole bunch of big universities that are actually creating locations for retirees to come so they can interact with students. What about the mentoring that happens?"
She was happy to hear that WNMU hosts the Western Institute of lifelong Learning. "I say this is a vibrant community because of what I've seen and read. Coming to campus is different from actually reading but but the types of literacies and programs cultural that are from the community are amazing."
When she was addressed as a young woman, Jones replied: "I'm not young; I have three adult children and two grandchildren."
To another question, she expressed her support of athletics and the students participating in them, including that her youngest son was a Division 3 wrestler. "I love sports."
Guadalupe Cano said: "We've been asking the same questions for everyone. I'm going to start with, how do you plan to make this a university town, instead of a town with a university?"
Jones replied: "There shouldn't be anything else other than a university town. What I said in my talk, I truly believe that if the university is strengthening the community, it has to be synergistic at a place like this. That's why I'm applying to this place, as opposed to other institutions, because there is the opportunity to have that kind of impact. So where I'm at and it's not the same situation at all, for a variety of reasons, but we work with 400 cross partners every year on community projects, and what we try to do is embed those projects into classes with faculty support and support the students as they're working in the partnerships. So you can imagine a partnership between
development at the business school and to challenge the members who want to work on that type of activity. Nursing has been doing this. Education has been doing this, but some of the other majors could be doing it as well. So we've honestly if someone asked me: ' What's the one thing that I'm most passionate about in terms of education, it is about those connections. So I think it's those meaningful connections, because students need to understand the community. I know many of the students come from the area, so they understand the region, but they don't necessarily understand what's happening. There are other students who come from outside the region, they need to know the community that they are in, so that there's respect, there's value, and you get that from working with community networks. That's how you get them. So that's not the only way you could go about it, but I do think that's a thing.
Cano also asked: "The next question is you've been walking on campus probably, and you may have noticed that this is a very inaccessible campus, so I'm interested in if you have any any experience making your campus more accessible, or if that's something that you'd be interested in?"
Jose replied: "We talked about it a bit on the campus tour, in terms of mobility in the dorms, which his reasonable. "Otherwise, you're limited to how far many students can actually go, and it's so far away from the main buildings, the libraries, etc. So I do think that accessibility is one of those things that you can do, if you if it's part of your master plan. There's lots of guidelines available. I mean, there's a professional association for campus planners.It would have to be a multi year project the highest priority is but there are other aspects of accessibility and so what? So I didn't quite answer your question. So in terms of physical accessibility, we actually were forced to. So we had a state law where they did various audits of campuses and they found s a lot of these brick and buildings ere fairly old, and we didn't get any special funding to help. But there's also digital accessibility, I know a lot of faculty are involved in that right now. How it especially largely online programs, how accessible for all students. So yes, ccessibilty is a huge issue, and it needs dedicated support. "
Cano's last question started: "Tere's a large group of the community who would really would like to to have baseball
here eventually. So I'm hoping that you can put that in the back of your brain for because you'll be hearing from a bunch of us.
Iones replied: "I should have brought my cap. Baseball is my favorite sport. I'm a suffering New York Mets fan. My sister is
unfortunately a Dodgers fan, and we have interesting interactions. Seriously, there's no way I would possibly commit to that. There are so many advantages to athletics, but it has to be strategic in terms of the decision, because you have a limited amount of money that you can devote from the operating budget, right? And that's a shared governance issue, and that's with the regions from what percent, because it's an opportunity cost, but with that budget and with private donations, that increases the pie. The pie isn't always the same size, right? You can increase the pie, but you have to think about the best use for that within the very complicated situation of collegiate athletics right now, which continues to change with Title Nine, with all of these issues, with gender balance in terms of Title Nine."
Cano said: "We had a baseball team in the past, and our schools are big into baseball. Our community is big into baseball, and so it's been something that people have been pushing for for a while.
Patricia Cano said: "I was very happy that you talked about being in engineering and getting a liberal arts education. Here, we don't require Spanish, and that's troubling. Once I retired, the program went away as well as Chicano Studies.
Jones replied: t"That is something that I would certainly be interested in. For all the majors in thisworld, we need to have more than just English. Yeah. I mean, when you think about languages, this is such a challenge, because, for whatever reason, students don't want to major in languages. And then, as a resource constrained institution, you have to constantly look at the academic portfolio and you have a mission as a regional public institution. So those are really tough decisions in terms of that."
She noted that at her school, they never had foreign languages as a major, just some introductory language courses in Japanese and Spanish. only through the first segment of the sophomore year. "I had to cancel them because of the state. The reason we had those is because students were accepted without graduating high school. We were able to accept a certain percentage who don't graduate high school. They had to still complete the foreign language requirement from the high school, but they had to do it there. The State changed that goal because it was an access issue, and so they changed that rule, and then we didn't have any resources, so we waited until people retire, and we did the same thing. All that said Spanish doesn't have any major but you have a local thriving healthcare system. Many of those nurses and others have to work in rural areas. It's uime to increase the percentage of students who could study abroad, and we had to do it in a variety of creative ways, because not everyone could go on a semester abroad program. But we decided that no matter if the program was just over spring break, you had to take someone who's coming in for a one-hour, two-hour, three-hour session with some basic phrases. Basic phrases in that language of the country you were visiting, so that you could, you know, not be the American, right. So, so I firmly, I mean my three kids, one double majored in Spanish, one kind of minor in Arabic, right? And, well, one didn't, but he did go, he studied abroad in Austria, and he had to do two years of German in order to go to Austria. So I absolutely, firmly believe in it just, it's gotta be strategic, because at the end of the day, we have state dollars."
[Author's note: This was longer, because this author had more time stay and talk to the candidate.]
