Some really good news happened at NMSU-Grants on Sept. 3; I received a phone call from New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman's office that our campus was awarded one of this year's U.S. Department of Education Title V Hispanic Serving Institution's grants.  This is the “Golden Egg” of federal grants because it is a substantial grant award of $2,872,518 over a five-year period which gives us sufficient time to implement our objectives and fully fund the grant objectives.  Year One award, which begins this Oct. 1, is in the amount of $574,578.  Given that our entire campus annual budget is in the $8,000,000 range, this is substantial support for our campus.  This grant is known as an “institutional capacity building grant” in that it helps improve campus infrastructure and services to students and our community.  While it is titled a Hispanic Serving Institutions grant, it does not limit resources be directed to only Hispanic students but to the institution, thus to all students.  

    The previous day, in the early afternoon, our management staff and I were in a staff meeting and my phone rang. It was from the consulting firm that helped us write this grant, Ramona Munsell and Associates.  Their staff grant writer assigned to us, Anne Farmer, told me that their 'west coast contacts' had called to tell them “the list of the new Title V grantees is out so you should be hearing from your congressional person if you received the grant in the next day or two.”

    The U.S. Department of Education's standard practice is to allow the respective senior congressional office to notify the grantee that they received a grant. I had experienced this in my previous job once before, so I knew the process.  The consulting firm assisted us to write this grant.  It is a firm based out of Bella Vista, Ark., specializing in these large federal higher education grants.  Our colleagues at both NMSU-Carlsbad and NMSU-Alamogordo had worked with them successfully in previous years to obtain this same grant. But in the end it was our campus that had to provide all the information to the grant writer and develop the framework for the grant initiatives and objectives.  So it was a great deal of work for many of our staff and faculty and for me too from April through the end of June.

    Since the grant funds are available Oct. 1 I knew that by early-to-mid September we would know if we were funded or not.  I try not to think about it after we've submitted a grant of this magnitude or I'd go nuts.  But after Anne Farmer's call on Wednesday, I had a very restless evening, I kept trying to focus on other things so I wouldn't either jinx our possibilities or be too disappointed if we weren't. 

    So on Thursday afternoon, our management team was meeting again in my office at 3 p.m.  All day I'd been like a school girl waiting by the phone for the call.  Harry Sheski, our vice-president of Academic Affairs was just sitting down in my office and I told him “Harry, it's 5 p.m. Washington D.C. time and I haven't had a phone call, I don't think we got the grant” and he sadly nodded his head.

    Then at 3:05 p.m. our front desk staff person Pat Dailey walked into my office and said “Felicia, there is a call from Senator Bingaman's office to you and I'm transferring it, ok.”  I turned to look at Harry and told him “We got it Harry - woo hoo - because they don't call if you don't get it.”  Senator Bingaman's office was indeed calling to notify and congratulate us.  All our hard work paid off.

Editor's Note: Part Two of this column will appear in the Beacon next week.

Felicia Casados is President of the New Mexico State University-Grants Campus.