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F I S C A L I M P A C T R E P O R T

SPONSOR Williams

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

2/7/06

2/9/06 HB 517/aHEC

SHORT TITLE Community College Asteroid Studies Program

SB

ANALYST Earp

APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)

Appropriation

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

FY06

FY07

$100.0

Recurring

General Fund

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

Responses Received From

Higher Education Department (HED)

SUMMARY

Synopsis of HEC Amendments

The House Education Committee amendments strike the word “community” from the title and

the body of the bill. The impact of this change is to clarify that the proposed program could

benefit student recruitment for all colleges.

Synopsis of Original Bill

House Bill 517 appropriates $100,000 from the general fund to the Board of Regents of New

Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMTech) to improve recruitment of community

college students through participation in an asteroid and comet studies program at the Magdalena

Ridge Observatory.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

The appropriation of $100,000 contained in this bill is a recurring expense to the general fund.

Any unexpended or unencumbered balance remaining at the end of fiscal year 2007 shall revert

to the general fund.

House Bill 517/aHEC – Page

2

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

This proposal was not included among the special program funding requests submitted by the

NMTech to the Higher Education Department (HED) for review. Consequently, this proposal

has not been included in the HED fiscal year 2007 funding recommendations to the Legislature.

ADMINISTRATIVE IMPLICATIONS

NMTech would bear administrative responsibility for the proposed project. No significant ad-

ministrative impact is apparent.

OTHER SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES

The following background information has been provided through HED:

The Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO) is a multi-instrument observatory on top of Magda-

lena Ridge which houses a Target-of-Opportunity 2.4m telescope and a multi-element optical

interferometer array designed to produce model independent images.

Magdalena Ridge Observatory project is an international scientific collaboration between New

Mexico Tech (NMTech), the University of Cambridge (UK), and the New Mexico observatory

consortium which includes New Mexico State University (NMSU), New Mexico Highlands

University (NMHU), the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), and Los Alamos National Laboratory

(LANL). The Magdalena Ridge Observatory project is overseen by the Office of Naval Research

(ONR).

Currently there are three major areas of public outreach supported by MRO staff. The first is

public Star Parties at the Etscorn Campus Observatory. This allows New Mexico school and

youth groups to regularly attend star parties at the New Mexico Tech Astronomy Club. These

events provide timely information about current astronomical events such as meteor showers and

close approaches of the planets. The second public outreach is the astronomer mentoring for

middle school and high school teachers by MRO scientists with Socorro and Laguna Pueblo

school system. The third public outreach includes classroom demonstrations of astronomical

concepts including planetarium presentations for the Gallup-McKinley and the Dulce School

system.

House Bill 517 will support a fourth outreach program that targets community college students

who will participate in an asteroid and comet studies program that will expose students to hands-

on research at the MRO. The expectation is that this experience will increase the opportunities

of community college students interested in asteroid and comet studies to transfer to NM Tech or

other obervatory consortium member universitites such as NMSU and NMHU.

DKE/yr:mt