NMSU candidate Valerio Ferme hears from students

This story has been updated to add details of Valerio Ferme's academic history.

The fourth and final candidate for New Mexico State University’s presidency last week described being an Aggie as “punching above your weight, being committed to hard work,” rooting the spirit in the region’s agricultural history.

Valerio Ferme, University of Cincinnati’s chief academic officer, addressed the public through a series of forums on and off campus on Friday, Sept. 13.

Ferme, executive vice president for academic affairs and provost at Cincinnati, answered questions at separate sessions for NMSU faculty and staff; students; and the general public. All sessions were open to the public, conducted at the Corbett Center Student Union on campus as well as at the Las Cruces Convention Center, and were also available via video conference.

The format was uniform for Ferme and his rivals for the post: Arsenio Romero, Monica Lounsbery and Brian Haynes. A fifth candidate, Neil MacKinnon, recently withdrew.

At the students’ forum Friday, Ferme first emphasized his work history in the southwest, including two decades teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder, with leadership posts there and at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. He moved to the University of Cincinnati as dean of its College of Arts and Sciences in 2019. He holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from UC Berkeley, following his Bachelor’s in biology and religious studies from Brown University and a Master’s in comparative literature and Italian studies from Indiana University.

He then addressed supports for NMSU students and a pledge to boost graduation rates: “Every student that we get inside the university, we should be graduating. We are not doing that. So how do we get those ratios up? How do we get students to be successful?”

Ferme described efforts he had led at his current institution to foster dialogue and build an inclusive and considerate campus culture, even as “identity politics in this country, at this time, in this age, is becoming much more complex.”

While New Mexico’s Opportunity Scholarship covers tuition and fees for eligible state residents pursuing degrees or professional certificates at public institutions, Ferme outlined needs assessments, mentorship and other supports to assure students stay through graduation, as well as provisions for graduate students and research funding to support their work. He said he had been a staunch advocate for improving pay and covering health insurance for graduate workers at that institution.

Graduate workers at NMSU formed a collective bargaining unit that negotiated its first contract in December 2022, addressing pay, tuition and other conditions.

During the presentation, students provided Ferme with input on the high cost of student housing in Las Cruces and the university’s handling of campus protests over Israel’s war on Gaza at the end of spring semester, including the arrests of students holding a sit-in at the university’s top administration building.

Ferme said he has a practice of meeting with undergraduate and graduate student leaders, even attending sessions of student governments, but admitted that these were the students that were already highly engaged. “How do we get connected with students who are, for example, failing? How do we get connected with students who feel disempowered?” While inclusive practices in classrooms and labs were part of that, Ferme said additional long-term planning was needed to hear the needs of students less likely to be heard.

Participants in all of last week’s meetings were encouraged to complete online surveys about the candidates as the university’s board of regents makes its final decision, expected soon.