New Mexico Highlands University (usually referred to as Highlands or NMHU) was established in 1893 by the New Mexico Territorial Legislature as New Mexico Normal School, admitting its first students in 1898. Bearing its current name since 1941, Highlands is a statesupported coeducational institution and a federally designated Hispanic-serving institution. 2 The university is located on a 175-acre campus in the small town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, some sixty-five miles east of the state capital, Santa Fe. Satellite learning centers are located in Rio Rancho, Santa Fe, Farmington, and Roswell.

Highlands offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in five departments in the College of Arts and Sciences and in schools of education, business administration, and social work. As of fall 2005, approximately 2,340 students were enrolled on the main campus, some 45 percent of them graduate students, served by a full-time faculty of approximately 115. Nearly 60 percent of the Highlands student body and nearly 30 percent of the