New Mexico Tech's English 341

[Tullia]

Greetings to all my TWTM friends! It's great to see familiar names among lots of new ones. I've been away from here quite awhile, but it occurred to me that I never gave the promised update on my son's impressions of the course. Briefly, he tells me that this oft-dreaded requirement was no problem for him. The tech writing portion was similar to what he'd seen at community college. The most challenging aspect was presenting technical material to people unfamiliar with the content.  His opinion is that the combination of required presentations in our various co-ops and classical methods of writing instruction were good preparation for this course and for college.

[MarkT]

DS is looking at this college thanks for the input.

 

Any other impressions on New Mexico Tech?

Edited July 27, 2017 by MarkT

[Tullia]

DS is looking at this college thanks for the input.

 

Any other impressions on New Mexico Tech?

 

I've sent a pm but will share some general impressions here too.

 

It's a fairly small place, and the faculty and staff know the students. I made several trips to help ds move out of his apartment when he didn't stay over the summer, and was able to sit in on the end-of-semester colloquia several times. Sometimes because it was local or visiting faculty ds wanted to hear; more often to lend support to fellow students. I was impressed that the profs greet students by name in the halls--same with the adminstrators and support staff. The math presentations were mostly over my head--the CS sessions somewhat easier to grasp. The lines between undergrad/grad/faculty seem less defined than I remember from my college days--but there is a seriousness of purpose in spite of the informality.

 

Socorro does have some businesses worth supporting, but it's a small town. There are lots of activities on campus, but after a couple of years students are usually ready to get out of town on weekends when they have some free time. Albuquerque is a fairly easy drive-about an hour north on I-25. A lot of in-state students come from the Albuquerque area or Los Alamos, so getting a ride to and from the airport is usually pretty easy if you're traveling out of state.

 

Also, most of the students from New Mexico have friends at UNM which offers a partial solution to another feature of NMT: the male/female ratio among students. My son tells me that there are more women now-- so things are improving from his p.o.v. I've seen quite a few engagement parties combined with graduations so the situation isn't impossible. However, I haven't seen much of guys being inattentive jerks when walking around campus. Too much competition. :laugh:

 

My son transferred from community college; NMT does an outstanding job of easing the process but it's still difficult. IMO, the ideal would be to start at NMT from the first semester and get established in study groups--most people seem to belong to 2-3. The difficulty level of the coursework is pretty much what you'd expect given the STEM focus. What seems to cause problems is that the pace of work is more intense than some students expect --especially if they breezed through high school.

[G5052]

I'm a graduate of New Mexico Tech. When I was there, the ratio of men-to-women was 7:1.

 

It's a really, really good school if you don't mind the isolation and want plenty of outdoor activities. It a research university with small classes, which is rare.