When the founders of the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine first contemplated positioning a medical school in Southern New Mexico, they hired nationally recognized consulting firm Tripp Umbach to conduct a feasibility study.

The study found that this region not only has a critical shortage in health-care providers, but that the current physician workforce “does not represent the regional population ethnicity and is less able to deliver culturally competent care.”

Plans to change that were immediately put into BCOM’s mission.

According to Founding Dean and Chief Academic Officer George Mychaskiw II, DO, part of the solution is tailoring the curriculum with language courses...

There’s a lot to be said for being out of the ordinary. There may as well be, since those of us who fall into that category generally have a hard time passing for typical.

But ordinary is not an all-or-nothing matter. Every so-called ordinary person, when you get to know them well enough, will have some pretty unusual qualities, for better or for worse.

And most people who seem really, really different still have more in common with their fellow humans than not.

Take the case of the folks serving the Gallup-McKinley County Schools Board of Education and the superintendent. There appear to be lines drawn in the sand when it comes to resolving issues, and that’s not a good...

TUCUMCARI - The city of Tucumcari generates $110,000 each year for economic development projects from a local tax on gross receipts, and the community gets lots of mileage from it.

In 2015, the city collaborated with the Greater Tucumcari Economic Development Corporation to invest locally generated tax revenue in four private projects through a process allowed by the Local Economic Development Act.

Tucumcari Mountain Cheese Factory received $141,830 in local LEDA funds to improve wastewater treatment for its expanded facility in return for a pledge to create 15 new jobs.

Buena Vista Labs secured $70,000 to enlarge its eyeglass lens manufacturing facility and retail outlet.

Rugged...

Most complex systems—like airplanes, for example—have built-in redundancies. So in order for a catastrophic failure to occur—such as falling from the sky—there generally have to be several things going wrong. Usually all at once. The state budget is a complex system, too. Sadly, it’s plunging toward disaster. In order to fix it we need to look at all the things that are going wrong.

Most news outlets and the pundits they quote have only been focusing on one problem: low oil and gas prices.

If we’re going to be successful in fixing this thing before it crashes and burns, we need to look at the other failing pieces. Namely, that the state hasn’t been collecting enough...