“Have You Considered UNM?”
At college fairs around the country, UNM alumni-volunteers encourage high school students to look at the Lobo experience.

For many high school students, the first live contact they have with UNM representative is at a National College Fair. And many times, that contact is a UNM alum. Last year, approximately 50 alumni represented UNM at a total of 65 college fairs around the country, according to Corine Gonzales, student recruiter, who coordinates the UNM presence.

Ed Zamora, ’73 BUS, an avid volunteer with the Houston chapter of the UNM Alumni Association, participates in 15 or so fairs a year.

“It’s such a hope-filled experience,” says Ed. “The students and parents are looking to the future with anticipation and trepidation, and I experience a lot of joy in helping make the fair experience more fun for them.”

Patrick Conroy, ’71 MA, of the Los Angeles chapter of the UNM Alumni Association, covers three fairs in southern California each year. “I received an excellent education at UNM and this is my way to pay back my alma mater ,” Patrick says. “There is always the hope that perhaps one of the students I meet will experience what I found at UNM.”

Havona Madama, ’92 BA, helps corral college-fair volunteers from the New York Area chapter. According to Havona, here’s what volunteers do: “Stand behind a table filled with literature, answer questions posed by teenagers, and try to catch the attentions of teenagers as they pass by hundreds of tables staffed by recruiters from colleges all over the country, loaded down with bags filled with materials that will forever change their young lives, and convince them to complete a request for info from UNM.”

Corine says the alumni volunteers do a great job, hugely expanding the capabilities of the recruitment office.

Ed looks at the job philosophically: “ I know that many of the students who stop to talk at my table are not going to choose UNM, so I spend some time encouraging them to make positive choices with the foremost choice that of going to some school for a college education…. If I can encourage one student, who was having doubts about going to college, to look more enthusiastically into going to college, then I have had a successful year.”

The rewards of volunteering? They don’t get much better than that!

If you’d like to volunteer at a college fair, please contact either a UNM alumni chapter near you or Charlene Chavez Tunney at the UNM Alumni Relations Office.

UNM Alumni Relations    MSC 01 - 1160    1 The University of New Mexico    Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001    800.ALUM.UNM (800.258.6866)