Other NM universities announcements

For more than two decades, the J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium at New Mexico State University has been bringing together scholars and experts with community members and students to address critical social issues. During the 21st annual event April 7-8 at Corbett Center Student Union, the symposium will revisit a controversial and often emotional topic in the borderlands.

"The feminicides are one of the worst human rights calamities in contemporary history in this region," said Cynthia Bejarano, symposium co-chair and NMSU Regents professor of gender and sexuality studies. "Across Latin America, femicide or feminicide are recognized as legal terms. It's part of the legal discourse across much of Latin America, but it has not been recognized here in the United States."

The New Mexico State University Department of Military Science's Army ROTC program will host an Open House event for the NMSU community to engage with program and show support for the two NMSU Bataan Memorial Death March teams taking part in the 26.2-mile tribute event.

"We want to show the students, faculty and alumni that Army ROTC is an indelible part of the NMSU community and has been ever since our program's foundation in 1902," said Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Campbell, military science assistant professor. "We also want to give NMSU students who are interested in military service after college an opportunity to see what Army ROTC has to offer and how we can help them achieve their goals."

Since 2008, Briana Zamora, a New Mexico State University graduate, has dedicated her career to public service as a member of the judiciary. A New Mexico Supreme Court justice since 2022, Zamora will return to campus as the March speaker for the 1888 Leadership Series. The free event will be held from 4 to 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 24, in the Health and Social Services annex. 

This event is part of the 1888 Leadership Initiative, a leadership program for students at NMSU that began in summer 2025. NMSU President Valerio Ferme envisioned the program to help students build essential leadership skills. The program began with the 1888 Leadership Camp in August. The 1888 Leadership Series brings local, state, regional and national leaders to campus for workshops. 

When a once-eradicated parasitic fly reemerged in parts of Mexico and Panama three years ago and began infecting cattle and other animals with flesh-eating maggots, it set off alarm bells hundreds of miles away in the United States.

Caleb Hubbard, Ph.D., an assistant professor of urban entomology in New Mexico State University's Department of Entomology, Plant Pathology and Weed Science, was among the many concerned as New World screwworm infections began spreading across Mexico.

With a deep blue to blue-green metallic color, the New World screwworm is about the size of a housefly, but it poses an outsized threat to animals and humans. Females lay hundreds of eggs in open wounds, and 12 to 24 hours later, maggots will hatch and begin to eat and burrow deeper into their host's flesh, causing death if untreated. Livestock and wildlife are especially vulnerable.

The Las Cruces International Festival is back for its 11th year with 160 films ranging from short to feature-length and music videos to animation from the U.S. and around the world. The festival that drew 3,000 people to watch 60 films 11 years ago is now expected to attract an audience of more than 12,000 to the Allen Cineport 10 for a five-day event April 8-12.

"The festival embraces unique, independent filmmakers, filmmakers with important voices that we need to celebrate and put in front of an audience," said Ross Marks, New Mexico State University's Creative Media Institute professor and festival executive director.

Arrowhead Center at New Mexico State University has been awarded $450,000 through the New Mexico Entrepreneurship Programmatic Support Grant, administered by the New Mexico Economic Development Department's Technology and Innovation Office. The funding will support the continuation and expansion of NM FAST, Arrowhead's statewide assistance program helping startups compete for federal Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer awards. 

Protecting crops from challenges such as high salinity, drought and excessive heat are important to both large and small farm producers. New Mexico State University will host a free workshop to give participants new techniques to maximize irrigation efficiency. 

An Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems Project, or INFEWS, workshop: "Demonstrations and Hands-on Activities to Use AgTech for Salinity and Soil Moisture Management" will be held from 8 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Thursday, March 26, at the Leyendecker Plant Science Research Center, 7200 Plant Science Circle, La Mesa, New Mexico. Online registration is available. 

The voices of more than 30 activists, mothers and scholars bring light to maternal resistance to border violence in "Frontera Madre(hood): Brown Mothers Challenging Oppression and Transborder Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Border," an anthology edited by New Mexico State University professor Cynthia Bejarano and University of Texas at El Paso professor Maria Cristina Morales.

The book and its authors were recognized Feb. 28 at the Southwest Book Awards ceremony at Ardovino's Desert Crossing. This is the second award for their book. It earned a gold award last fall in the "Best Women's Issues Book" category at the International Latino Book Awards.