Alumni Award Recipients
Orcilia Zuniga-Forbes
Bernard S. Rodey Award, 2009
Those of you who recall seeing Orcilia Zúñiga Forbes on the UNM campus when she served as vice president, first of student affairs and then of advancement, recall this:
Starting at her head and looking down: neatly coifed, perfectly made up, stylishly and professionally dressed, stockings, running shoes.
Yes, running shoes. Perhaps they are the secret to her administrative career in higher education. Always on the move -- literally -— she was pragmatic . . . and comfortable. Women, take note.
She was also married to a runner, whom she met while wearing another pair of comfortable shoes, suited to her first career, as a nurse. Dick Forbes was in the UNM herpetology lab with another student, John Córdova, when a rattlesnake fell on Dick's hand and injected its venom. John rushed Dick to the UNM hospital where a young nurse from Malaga, New Mexico, attended him. John would later be the best man at their wedding.
Orcilia had earned her BS in nursing at UNM, followed by an MS in nursing from the University of Oregon, and an MPH in health administration from Berkeley. She worked as a public school nurse, then became assistant director of health services at Portland State University.
There, in 1975, she must have been bitten by the higher ed bug because she became assistant dean of student services and remained in higher ed the rest of her career, advancing to dean of students, vice president for student affairs, and vice provost for student affairs at UO. She completed a PhD from the University of Oregon in 1992, while serving as Vice President of Student Affairs at UNM. She needed those running shoes to travel between Albuquerque and Eugene!
She also needed them in order to expend some calories while traveling around New Mexico with former UNM President Richard Peck.
Dr. Peck says he and Orcilia toured the state together a lot after he came on board at UNM. They went to alumni meetings, chamber of commerce meetings, Rotary meetings.
They followed a map that only a select few may have seen. It showed no towns, no highway names. There were only the lines of highways . . . and the location of all the Dairy Queens throughout the state!
Orcilia and Dick would follow the red line north to whatever Dairy Queen turnoff landed on their route. There the two would indulge their appetites for DQ Blasts—made with nonfat frozen yogurt, of course, to which Dick would add chocolate and cherries. (He couldn't recall Orcilia's preference.) "It was your basic 3,000 calorie breakfast," Dick says.
After a while, Dick says he found out they didn't need the map any more because Orcilia knew where all the Dqs were."
On the whole, Dick says, Orcilia was the ideal VP. Very solid, very quiet. She got the job done on her own without needing to bring situations to his attention.
Except once. Dick was in Silver City overnight to meet an alumni group. He got a call from a rather ruffled Orcilia, saying there was a group of a few men, women, and children camped out on University House lawn, demanding free tuition, and swearing not to leave until they got it. "What do we do?" Orcilia asked.
"Shoot them and burn the bodies," Dick replied.
Silence.
"What did you say?"
"Orcilia, I have no idea! You can solve it." And that's how it was. Orcilia could and did solve any issue that confronted her.
Now retired as Vice President for University Advancement at Oregon State University, Orcilia serves as chair of the board of trustees of the Meyer Memorial Trust and as board chairman of the Foundations for A Better Oregon/Chalkboard Project. She also is a member of the UNM Foundation board, the Spanish Colonial Arts Museum board, and the Jeld Wen Tradition board of directors.
She hasn't put away those running shoes!
Orcilia, for your many accomplishments and years of service in higher education, we're delighted to give you the Alumni Association's Bernard S. Rodey Award.
