Lounsbery outlines leadership style for NMSU post

On Sept. 12, it was Monica Lounsbery’s turn to present herself to New Mexico State University staff, students and the public as a candidate for the university’s next president.

Four finalists for the job were in town this week to meet with regents and participate in a series of public forums to introduce themselves and take questions. In a uniform format, the candidates appeared at the Corbett Center Student Union on the Las Cruces campus taking questions first from faculty and staff as well as online viewers, and then from students at an afternoon session. In the evening, the candidates appeared at the Las Cruces Convention Center for a reception followed by a question-and-answer session. Participants were encouraged to complete online surveys about the candidates, to provide input to the university’s board of regents.

Monica Lounsbery greets a community member at the Las Cruces Convention Center on Sept. 12, 2024, after a presentation on her candidacy for New Mexico State University’s presidency.

Lounsbery greeted approximately 20 people who came to the Thursday evening reception, a mix of NMSU alumni, current and retired employees and other members of the community. Jerry Nevarez, an elected trustee of the town of Mesilla, was also in attendance.

Lounsbery, dean of the College of Health and Human Services at California State University, Long Beach, opened her presentation with pictures of her family and the Wyoming landscape where she was raised. She related her upbringing in an agricultural community and her roots in the southwest, as a segue to her desire to serve at a land grant university in that region – namely, NMSU.

She soon turned to specifics, demonstrating how she might take on the next president’s challenges as early as tomorrow.

Those challenges are considerable: NMSU has been without a permanent president since 2023, when chancellor Dan Arvizu stepped down before the end of his contract after regents voted to seek new leadership. Since then, NMSU has had two interim presidents while faculty organized a collective bargaining unit, following the unionization of graduate workers. Meanwhile, the university is seeking designation as an R1 research institution, the highest rank among research universities based on research expenditures and doctorates as rated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Higher Education. Yet it is also confronting a projected decline in college enrollment in New Mexico, and seeking to turn a page on athletic scandals including alleged sexual assaults within the men’s basketball program that led to criminal charges against former players and lawsuits, and a fatal 2022 shootout in Albuquerque in which Aggie athlete Mike Peake was wounded.

Lounsbery outlined her approach to leadership to demonstrate how she would begin repairing trust at the top of an institution that has seen high turnover and frayed relations with faculty and other employees. She promised to foster an atmosphere where shared goals were clear and employees felt comfortable disagreeing about how to realize them and hold the organization accountable to a strategic plan.

“We have to learn how to disagree better with one another,” she said. “We spend time thinking more about whatever the level of disagreement, but there's usually far more that we agree on than we disagree on.”

Among the top priorities she said needed to be addressed was solutions to staff attrition and subsequent higher workloads, accepting that part of the problem was salary rates that did not compete with peer institutions, including University of New Mexico.

She also emphasized the importance of outreach to future students as early as middle school and the importance of translating NMSU’s broad spectrum of research into economic development and career fields.

Lounsbery holds a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in sport pedagogy and educational research methods. She is the co-author of a children’s book on physical activity, “I Can Move,” which was published during her 15 years at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has been at Cal State Long Beach since 2016, and served a term on the board of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce.

She also addressed NMSU’s status as a minority-serving institution and Hispanic-serving institution: “I’m passionate about social mobility for people, and I’m passionate about (diversity, equity and inclusion) and student success.”

She returned to social mobility and development at the conclusion of her presentation, telling the room, “You’re changing the stars for the people of New Mexico, and they desperately need you to be their university.”