‘Our top priority is our students,’ Mesalands Community College appoints temporary president

TUCUMCARI, N.M. (KFDA) -Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari recently appointed a temporary acting president.

The faculty, staff, and student body voted no confidence in regards to the previous president.

For those who don’t know what a no confidence vote means, essentially the faculty, staff, and student body believed the ousted president wasn’t working in the best interest of Mesalands.

It came down to the college being put at financial risk.

“The college had reached a place where we were concerned if we’d be able to make payroll or not,” says Josh McVey, Chief Communications Officer of Mesalands Community College.

“It came down to decisions that were made with either bad information or inaccurate information or just a lack of information; not disclosing information appropriately to the executive staff to the faculty, the students, and the community about the college,” says Dr. Allen Moss, Temporary Acting President of Mesalands Community College.

With Dr. Moss as acting president, the school is able to move forward and make decisions that led them to solvency.

“The resolution of commitment that we put out as faculty and staff and executive staff was to say that we’re committed to our students fully,” says McVey.

While the reason the previous president of Mesalands Community College was ousted was due to decisions made that put the college at financial risk; however, there is new plan in place to save the school and the thousand of students it serves.

“Our top priority is our students. We want them to feel confident in us as an institution, and we want to provide them with the education that they came here to receive,” says Moss.

When asked what his main goal is as temporary acting president, Moss was too the point.

“Make it through the end of the semester. We have students, we have teachers, we have staff, doing their jobs and fulfilling their roles and we want to make sure that we’re providing a good educational experience for our students first,” says Moss.

Mesalands Community College board adopted a solvency plan along with the Higher Education Department of New Mexico.

The plan involves pay cuts, possibly eliminating low enrollment programs, implementing a hiring freeze, and shifting faculty and staff.

All of this would be to meet the needs of the college, while staying on budget.

“That will bring us to success and bring us to where we need to be so that we can continue to be successful and continue to educate as Mesalands Community College has been known to do in the past,” says McVey.

It has been estimated that Mesalands Community College will be back on budget by the end of June and continue to take necessary steps to be successful next semester as well.

McVey says the county, community, the city of Tucumcari, faculty, and staff have come together during this difficult time to ensure the success of Mesalands Community College.

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