New Mexico State University Provost Carol Parker has announced two NMSU professors will be the first Provost’s Faculty Fellows to lead efforts in globalization and border relations.
NMSU associate geography professor Christopher Brown has been selected as the Faculty Fellow for the Beyond Borders Community of Practice, while NMSU associate sociology professor David G. Ortiz has been named the Faculty Fellow for the Center for Latin American and Border Studies (CLABS). Both will begin their work as Faculty Fellows in August, Parker said.
“I am extremely pleased that Dr. Brown and Dr. Ortiz will be serving in these new roles,” Parker said. “As the inaugural Provost’s Faculty Fellows, they will be in a position to influence the direction of our international and border initiatives for some time to come. I am happy that we are able to take this next step toward implementing more of our LEADS 2025 Strategic Plan goals.”
“I am delighted and heartened by the interest Provost Parker has shown in ‘rebooting’ border studies, research and outreach activities at NMSU, and her bold initiative to establish and support the Beyond Borders Community of Practice (BBCoP),” Brown said. “Being selected as the Inaugural Fellow for the BBCoP is a great and humbling honor, and I look forward to working with Dr. Ortiz, the Provost and members of the NMSU and broader community to advance this exciting initiative.”
In February, Parker launched a search for a faculty fellow to serve as the founding leader and convener for Beyond Borders, a community of practice that focuses on international, hemispheric and border regions in alignment with the NMSU LEADS 2025 Global Challenge. The quarter-time faculty fellow will work closely with faculty and academic leaders from across NMSU and with members of the external community.
Parker also launched a search for a quarter-time faculty member to serve as the leader, convener and fellow for a newly reinvigorated Center for Latin American and Border Studies, which will focus on promoting excellence in scholarship, research and creative works on topics and issues concerning Latin America, the U.S.-Mexico border and general border studies across NMSU. The work of the center will be informed by input from a campus-wide faculty advisory group.
“I am honored by the opportunity to serve as the Inaugural Fellow for the Center for Latin American and Border Studies,” Ortiz said. “Latin American and Border Studies should be an essential part of a borderlands university such as NMSU, and I am committed to seeing the center grow and thrive to become a cornerstone of the University. I am excited to work with Dr. Brown, the Provost and the CLABS Executive Committee to strengthen NMSU’s existing community of scholars and to help shape the future of Latin American and Border scholarly pursuits at NMSU.”
Ortiz is founding editor-in-chief of “Mobilizing Ideas,” the leading scholarly blog on social movement research. His areas of substantive interest include social movements, political sociology, Latin American studies, sociology of disasters, digital media communication and research methods. He has explored the influence of time on protest-repression dynamics, the effects of disasters on social movements, the relationship between digital media and activism, and state repression and mobilization in Latin America.
Before arriving at NMSU in 2015, Ortiz had appointments at the Stone Center for Latin American Studies and the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research at Tulane University. Since arriving at NMSU, he has actively participated in previous CLABS initiatives.
He was appointed to the International and Border Program Recruitment Advisory Board as a representative of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and is part of the NMSU LEADS 2025 Healthy Borders Strategic Initiative Task Force.
Brown became interested in U.S.-Mexico border issues while doing his Ph.D. research in the early 1990s. He has been actively involved in studying binational water resource issues on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Brown’s specific areas of interest include binational water resource policy and water quality and supply in U.S.-Mexico border twin city regions. Of special interest to NMSU’s Beyond Borders Community of Practice effort, Brown has worked to develop metrics by which the quality of life of U.S.-Mexico border residents can be measured, specifically developing a human development index for Doña Ana County.
Brown has also provided leadership to the Good Neighbor Environment Board, the Association of Borderland Studies, the Western Social Science Association and the Ocotillo Institute for Social Justice.
Author: Adriana M. Chavez – NMSU
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