$55 million gift, university’s largest ever, is a promise to students like Autiaunna Aragon
Autiaunna Aragon grew up on the Navajo Nation, about 15 miles east of Naschitti, in a home without running water or electricity.
She spent her childhood tending her family’s livestock.
Today she works in the Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit at University of New Mexico Hospital, caring for families during what she calls “probably the worst days of their lives.”
Her grandmother wanted to be a nurse but never had the chance to go to school.
“It’s like living out your grandmother’s prayers,” Aragon said.
“My family wanted to do this, but I finally have the opportunity to.”
Recently, the University of New Mexico and the UNM Foundation announced a gift meant to give more young New Mexicans that kind of opportunity.
Anonymous donors have committed an estimated $55 million through their estate.
It is the largest philanthropic commitment in the university’s history, and the second time this year UNM has set that record.
The gift reaches into seven parts of the university.
It will fund scholarships, research, clinical training, student residencies, and travel in arts and sciences, nursing, medicine, dental medicine, and graduate studies.
It will also support the Student Emergency Relief Fund, which helps students facing sudden financial setbacks.
Beyond the Albuquerque campus, it will create endowments for the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos and for the museum’s planned expansion to Santa Fe.
“This is just a remarkable commitment to seven areas across the university,” said Jeff Todd, president and CEO of the UNM Foundation.
“I think the donors have shown great vision and insightfulness in their estate planning, and it is going to be of tremendous benefit to the state and the university.”
Because this is a planned gift, its final size isn’t known yet.
The donors have committed a percentage of their estate, so the $55 million is an estimate.
The actual amount will depend on what the estate is worth when the gift is received, and nobody can say when that will be.
What the donors want it to do is already clear.
Todd said what stands out is how they approached it: they understood that real progress needs investment across many fields at once.
Aragon’s path shows what that investment can do.
She didn’t start out in nursing.
She first worked at a veterinary clinic and loved it, but she felt there wasn’t enough room to grow.
She comes from a long line of traditional Navajo healers, and she wanted to combine that heritage with her love of science.
She enrolled in UNM’s College of Nursing and finished the pre-licensure BSN program on the Health Sciences campus in Albuquerque.
This summer she graduated and became a registered nurse.
“The biggest challenge of nursing school would be having self-confidence and knowing that you can do it,” she said.
“I learned how to be very driven and to believe in myself.”
Her clinical training changed how she saw home.
During a rotation on the Navajo Nation, split between Chinle, Pinon, and nearby communities, she studied the social conditions that shape health.
She had always thought the reservation was the best place to grow up.
The rotation also showed her, more clearly than before, how few resources her own community has.
She also saw a deep connection among people there.
Neighbors looked out for each other.
Nurses went door to door to build trust, sometimes looking for patients who had no fixed address or phone.
“That’s where I’m from,” she said.
“I believe that no matter what background you have, you can always make the best of it, and you just got to ask questions. You’ve got to be curious.”
Clinical training, residencies, and scholarships turn that curiosity into a career, and they sit at the center of this gift.
UNM President Steve Goldstein described it as an investment in the state’s health care workforce.
“It will open doors for more students and support their well-being during times of financial challenge,” he said.
“It will expand the health care workforce to improve access to care across New Mexico.”
In a largely rural state, every new nurse, physician, or dentist trained at UNM is a good chance of better care close to home.
Goldstein said the gift will also speed up research in UNM’s leading programs in biomedicine, quantum computing, and energy.
It will also support the arts and cultures he called central to what makes New Mexico extraordinary.
The Harwood Museum, the second-oldest art museum in the state, became part of UNM in 1935 through a gift from Lucy Harwood.
This summer, it acquired the historic Spiegelberg House on East Palace Avenue in Santa Fe, thanks to donors who gave for that purpose.
The museum expects to open there within a few years.
The new endowments mean that both the Taos museum and the future Santa Fe site will have long-term support.
That support will also help students and young museum professionals find a path into the field.
The Student Emergency Relief Fund is one of the gift’s smaller pieces, but it may be the one students feel most directly.
The Dean of Students Office runs the fund.
It helps students pay for medical bills and car repairs, and it helps prevent evictions and utility shut-offs.
Without that help, a student might have to leave school.
With it, the university says, a student can make a different choice, one that ends with walking across the stage at graduation.
The commitment comes early in Accelerate New Mexico, UNM’s $1.2 billion comprehensive campaign, which went public in September.
The campaign focuses on student success and access, research and innovation, and faculty excellence.
The previous record came earlier this year, when Jim and Gail Ellis pledged $30 million to the business school, which now bears their name.
That a second, larger commitment arrived only months later suggests UNM’s donors are thinking long-term.
“This spectacular gift is a powerful declaration of the value of the University of New Mexico to the people we serve,” Goldstein said.
“The impact of this gift will be felt in classrooms, clinics, laboratories, and galleries for generations to come.”
For Aragon, that impact is personal.
When asked what she would tell other Native students considering nursing, she didn’t hesitate.
“We, as a people, were made to help others to heal,” she said.
“When I go into a room, I know that I did the work to be there, that I deserve to be there. Take up the space.”
Because of these donors, more students from places like Naschitti will get to make that same choice.