Accelerate New Mexico
UNM-Taos
Building the Future for Students, Faculty, and Communities
UNM-Taos is the only institution of higher education within 50 miles, making it a lifeline for students and families in northern New Mexico. As an open-access, affordable, and student-centered community college, we serve a diverse population: traditional high school graduates, dual-credit students, high school equivalency completers, and adults returning to education. Every student brings strengths and aspirations, and we provide the relevant, hands-on learning that turns those assets into achievement.
Through dual credit, transfer degrees, career/technical training, workforce programs, and lifelong learning, UNM-Taos creates clear pathways to opportunity. Our certificates and degrees lead directly to employment in business, industry, government, and health care—helping students achieve their goals while fueling the region’s workforce and economic growth.
At UNM-Taos students gain access to affordable, high-quality programs that prepare them for transfer, careers, and leadership in their home communities. By investing in UNM-Taos, donors help ensure that rural students share fully in the opportunities of Accelerate New Mexico.
UNM-Taos faces several challenges as well.
Removing Barriers, Unlocking Potential
UNM-Taos serves students from a region marked by high rural poverty, where even the most talented and hardworking students face life challenges that can derail their education. Scholarships, emergency aid, food pantry support, and computer loans are often the difference between a student completing a degree or dropping out. Philanthropic investment provides the stability and safety net that state funding alone cannot.
Fueling Innovation Where It’s Needed Most
Nearly all our state funding is tied directly to instruction and narrowly defined program outcomes. This leaves little to no support for the essential, flexible funds that allow colleges to innovate—supporting faculty pilot projects, covering emergency facility costs, paying student workers, or sustaining extracurricular learning opportunities. Private donations allow UNM-Taos to fill these gaps, pilot creative solutions, and respond quickly when students and faculty need us most.
Local Students, Local Needs, Local Impact
Many in the public believe UNM-Taos is fully supported by UNM’s main campus or shares in its endowment. In reality, our branch relies heavily on state appropriations that are vulnerable to shifting political priorities. Donor support ensures that local students are not subject to the uncertainties of state politics but instead have a stable foundation for learning and success.
Investing in Root Causes, Not Just Symptoms
Our community has one of the highest concentrations of nonprofits per capita in the country, and many donors understandably direct their gifts toward immediate symptoms of poverty—such as hunger, housing, or health. Yet without investment in education, these symptoms persist across generations. Supporting UNM-Taos addresses the root causes of poverty by creating long-term pathways to stable employment and strong local leadership.
Closing the Workforce Gap, Creating Futures
Northern New Mexico urgently needs a skilled workforce in health care, renewable energy, construction, and digital media. Yet UNM-Taos too often lacks the labs, modern equipment, and faculty capacity to meet this demand. Students are eager to enter these high-wage, high-demand fields, but without the necessary tools and training environments, their opportunities—and the region’s workforce pipeline—remain limited. Philanthropic investment can directly expand training capacity by funding labs, equipment, and faculty development, ensuring that local students gain the skills needed to fill critical jobs and strengthen the region’s economy.
The Accelerate New Mexico campaign presents us with a unique opportunity to meet these challenges.
Overview:
We offer holistic support services that ensure every student has the resources to succeed. With small classes and actively engaged faculty, UNM-Taos provides a student-centered campus where learning is hands-on, contextualized in real-world environments, and grounded in the culture of northern New Mexico. Students benefit from a robust tutoring program – recently recognized by Intelligence.com as the best tutoring program at a New Mexico community college – along with scholarships, emergency funds, computer loans, and a thriving food pantry. From application to completion, our learning communities and cohort-based programs provide connection, support, and the tools students need to achieve their goals.
Our curriculum features strong transfer pathways in programs such as Natural Resource Management, Studio Art, a wide array of health careers including Nursing, and more. The Nursing program, launched nearly a decade ago, has maintained a 100% pass rate on the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) for every graduating cohort. Our Film, Digital Arts, and Media program has produced an extensive portfolio, including projects for National Geographic, the Continental Divide Trail Association, and the Bureau of Land Management. Studio Arts students benefit from a fully funded residency at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In Construction, students gain real-world experience through projects with Veterans Off Grid, Habitat for Humanity, and Taos Pueblo, and many graduates go on to earn their contractor’s license.
List of Priorities:
-
Behind every student success story is a network of supports that extend beyond the classroom. Yet most of UNM-Taos’s public funding is tied narrowly to instruction, leaving little flexibility to meet students’ broader needs or to invest in faculty innovation.
The Operational Fund provides the discretionary resources that keep our campus thriving—supporting faculty pilot projects, new extracurricular opportunities, student employment, emergency repairs, and the tools students need to succeed. These dollars help us do what state funding cannot: remove barriers, respond quickly to urgent needs, and sustain excellence.
Your gift strengthens the core of UNM-Taos, ensuring that every student has the resources to transfer, complete a degree, or enter the workforce prepared to succeed.
$200,000 of philanthropic funding will augment the General Institutional Fund.
-
Northern New Mexico urgently needs more skilled workers in health care, renewable energy, construction, hospitality, and digital media. UNM-Taos has the programs—and the students eager to enroll—but we lack sufficient space, equipment, and instructors to meet this demand.
The CTE Development Fund will transform opportunity into reality. With the transfer of the nearby National Guard Armory to UNM-Taos, we have a once-in-a-generation chance to create a dedicated workforce training hub. Donor support will fund remodeling, curriculum development, faculty recruitment, and state-of-the-art equipment to launch and grow high-demand programs.
Your investment creates career pathways for students and supplies the region with the skilled workforce it desperately needs—improving lives while fueling economic growth.
$200,000 of philanthropic funding will support facility remodeling, new instructors, program equipment, and curriculum development.
-
New Mexico is quickly becoming a leader in the space frontier—yet the state continues to lag in math education. For students in rural northern New Mexico to compete for the STEM workforce of the future, they need learning that is not only rigorous, but also contextualized, hands-on, and inspiring.
In an age where fewer than 1% of Americans ever experience true dark skies, UNM-Taos has been gifted a rare opportunity: a 36-inch research-grade telescope, the largest in northern New Mexico. With donor support, this telescope will anchor the Cielo Centro Observatory, a one-of-a-kind STEM learning destination.
The Observatory will serve as a hub for astronomy courses, math and science curriculum, K-12 field trips, public programs, and research opportunities. Linked by a science walk and amphitheater, it will be both a campus landmark and a regional resource, connecting students of all ages to discovery.
Your gift will build a legacy project that addresses workforce development and rural equity—preparing students for careers in New Mexico’s growing STEM economy while inspiring them to imagine their place in the universe.
$1 million of philanthropic funding will allow UNM-Taos to design, develop, and construct the Cielo Centro Observatory Program.
Dr. Mary Gutierrez
Chancellor / UNM-Taos
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque faucibus ex sapien vitae pellentesque sem placerat. In id cursus mi pretium tellus duis convallis. Tempus leo eu aenean sed diam urna tempor. Pulvinar vivamus fringilla lacus nec metus bibendum egestas. Iaculis massa nisl malesuada lacinia integer nunc posuere. Ut hendrerit semper vel class aptent taciti sociosqu. Ad litora torquent per conubia nostra inceptos himenaeos.
2003
Founded in 2003
1,300+
1,300+ Students Enrolled
11
11 degrees and 20 certificates offered
With its variety of courses and programs ranging from dual credit, basic skills, CTE, and lifelong learning, UNM-Taos is a distinctive campus within the UNM system. Our goals for the future are ambitious, and the Accelerate New Mexico campaign represents a major opportunity for UNM-Taos to address its challenges and continue to build upon its reputation for educational excellence.