The annual ranking compiled by Forbes and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity rates 610 undergraduate programs out of 6,600 accredited U.S. colleges based on the quality of the education they provide, the experience of the students, and how much they achieve.

“Appearing on our list at all is an indication that a school meets a high standard,” the magazine released in a statement.

St. John’s College in Santa Fe ranks 217th, with a student population of 511 and a cost $50,513. New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro ranked 334th, with a student population of 1,767 and a cost of $22,424.

New Mexico State University (354th) and the University of New Mexico (422nd) were the other two New Mexico schools in the ranking. NMSU has a student population of 17,239 and a cost of $26,924. UNM’s student population is listed at 25,754 with a cost of $27,138.

Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., took the top spot, replacing last year’s top pick, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., which fell to No. 4.
Also in the top 10:

  * No. 2: Princeton University.
  * No. 3: Amherst College.
  * No. 4. United States Military Academy.
  * No. 5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  * No. 6. Stanford University.
  * No. 7. Swarthmore College.
  * No. 8. Harvard University.
  * No. 9. Claremont McKenna College.
  * No. 10. Yale University.

Twenty-five percent of the Forbes ranking is based on student evaluations of courses and instructors as recorded on the website RateMyProfessors.com. Another 25 percent is based on post-graduate success, based on listings in Who’s Who in America as well as average graduate salaries as reported by Payscale.com. And 20 percent is based on how low the average student debt is after four years, which is one reason why the nation’s tuition-free service academies tend to rank high.

In a separate ranking of America’s 100 “best college buys,” those on Forbes best-colleges list that have low tuition and fees, none of the four New Mexico schools made the list.

The North Central New Mexico Economic Development District received $10.6 million from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to help deploy a “middle-mile” project across three counties and five tribal areas.

The middle-mile is the sector of the network that connects last-mile facilities such as telecom company local interconnection points (central offices) with the commercial Internet and with national and global advanced research networks. These projects aim to expand the availability of broadband interconnections to companies and organizations that offer service to end-users.

This award will fund the deployment of high-speed Internet infrastructure across the counties of Rio Arriba, Los Alamos, and northern Santa Fe, and to five Native American tribal communities. The project plans to directly connect 123 community anchor institutions, 19,227 homes, and 1,332 businesses to broadband service in order to support distance learning, telemedicine, and improve public safety communications.

The project also intends to promote energy efficiency by enabling “smart grid” applications for regional rural electric cooperatives. In addition, local Internet service providers will be able to utilize the new infrastructure to deploy new or improved high-speed Internet service to consumers and businesses.

“High-speed Internet access is increasingly important for communities to thrive in the 21st century economy,” said NTIA Deputy Administrator Anna M. Gomez. “This Recovery Act investment will create jobs, support advances in education and healthcare, and help lay the groundwork for sustainable economic growth.”

The second grant awarded on Tuesday was for $63.8 million from the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative Fiber-to-the-Home Project.

This project will deliver affordable broadband service to 29 communities comprised of 20,500 households, 3,600 businesses, 183 critical community institutions, two Native American Pueblos, and rural underserved areas in Taos, Colfax and Rio Arriba counties. The network spans 2,400 miles. In all, $63.8 million in Recovery Act funds will be invested in the project. An additional $600,000 will come from private investment sources.

“This project will give rural New Mexico residents access to the broadband they need to attract new businesses, jobs, health care and educational opportunities,” said RUS Administrator Jonathan Adelstein. “It will enable Kit Carson to deploy cutting-edge, smart grid technology that will help cut electric bills and permit sustainable energy development.”

The ARRA appropriated $7.2 billion and directed RUS and the NTIA to expand broadband access to unserved and underserved communities across the U.S., increase jobs, spur investments in technology and infrastructure, and provide long-term economic benefits.  The result was funding of the RUS Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) and the NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP).

BIP makes loans and grants for broadband infrastructure projects in rural areas. BTOP provides grants to fund broadband infrastructure, public computer centers, and sustainable broadband adoption projects.  Of the $7.2 billion, $4.7 billion was allotted to the NTIA to award grants. The remaining $2.5 billion went to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make loans and grants to companies building out broadband infrastructure in rural areas.

Tuesday’s announcements are part of the second round of Broadband Recovery awards nationwide, which will continue on a rolling basis. The NTIA and RUS must make all awards by Sept. 30. Thus far, the NTIA has announced 114 BTOP grants in communities throughout the country, and RUS already has been able to provide loans and grants to construct 260 broadband projects in 45 states and one territory.

Roughly $2 million will go toward helping 33,400 teachers and school employees across the state pay their insurance premiums, according to a news release issued by the governor’s office.

The stimulus dollars will reduce insurance premiums by an average of 2 percent for the 2010-11 school year.

The remaining $500,000 will go toward professional development for roughly 2,000 educational assistants in Albuquerque Public Schools.

“New Mexico’s teachers and school employees are dedicated public servants and I am committed to helping them through the current recession,” Richardson said in the release. “Our teachers, educational assistants and support staff are on the front lines of school reform every day, and they’ve been subject to rising health care costs in recent years. I am pleased that these Recovery Act funds will help us offset some of those costs.”

The award comes from a discretionary fund made available to the governor as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The $2.5 million is separate from and in addition to the $65 million New Mexico is supposed to receive after Congress passed the Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act last week to help the state during the recession. President Barack Obama signed that $26 billion bill into law last Tuesday.

This is a good read…

Given the ways computer technology—from the iPhone and YouTube to uses in medical research and national security—is changing so many facets of life, you might imagine that schools have been stepping up students’ exposure to computer science to help drive the digital revolution.

But recent data suggest otherwise. One survey indicates a sizable drop in the availability of even introductory computer-science courses in public and private secondary schools since 2005. Participation rates for Advanced Placement courses in computer science have been relatively flat for years, while the rates have gone way up in traditional science and mathematics disciplines, such as calculus, chemistry, and biology.

“We’re an order of magnitude off from these other courses,” said Janice E. Cuny, a program officer at the National Science Foundation, who argues that high-quality computer-science instruction is all too rare in public schools.

Representation of female and minority students among those studying computer science in high school and college is seen as especially low.

National statistics indicate that computing will be one of the fastest-growing areas for employment in coming years, but experts say the U.S. educational pipeline is expected to fall far short in producing college graduates in the field.

Read more on additional topics covered in this piece such as Recent Initiatives, the ‘Big Confusion’, Promising Career Field, and Georgia Computes.

New Mexico was among 35 states and the District of Columbia who applied for the second round of Race to the Top after failing to win in Round 1 back in March. Including the 36 applications for the second round, a total of 46 states and the District of Columbia applied for either the first or second rounds – or both.

New Mexico had hoped to win $75 million.

The second-round finalists announced on Tuesday were: Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

Tennessee and Delaware were the only states that won money in the contest’s first round.

Scoring and feedback on New Mexico’s application won’t be available until after the winners of the second round are announced in late August or early September.

Race to the Top is a $4.35 billion federal education program that is the largest pool of discretionary education money in U.S. history. The grants reward school systems for finding ways to strengthen academic standards, recruit better teachers, collect data on student performance, and turn around failing schools that can be replicated across the country.

Innovate-Educate was a strong supporter of both applications.

The good news is that even though New Mexico didn’t win the money, the state is planning to continue pursuing the education reforms spelled out in its 200-page application, according to Gov. Bill Richardson’s new education secretary, Dr. Susanna Murphy.

Those reforms included “linking teacher and principal evaluations to student growth” and new “collaborations aimed at improving low-performing schools throughout the state.”

“While I am disappointed that we were not chosen as a finalist, we will not let up on our efforts to implement these education reforms,” said Murphy in a prepared statement. “Teacher unions and major stakeholders agreed when the application was submitted that we would continue with these reforms even if we did not receive the federal funds.”

Murphy also said the current administration has made education reform its number one priority, and as a result, New Mexico has seen consistent improvement over the past seven years. She added, “This process has only strengthened that commitment, and we will continue to build on those initiatives to benefit students and the state’s economy.”

The Race to the Top program, part of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus law, will funds to states that are implementing ambitious reforms aimed at improving struggling schools and closing the achievement gap. Many states also passed significant reform laws that allowed for the development of more charter schools and tightened teacher accountability and tenure requirements in order to increase their chances of winning a grant.

Nine of the states that submitted applications last time did not reapply in Round 2.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged that not all of the finalists would be awarded grants from the almost $3.4 billion remaining in Race to the Top. President Obama has requested 1.35 billion for the program in the administration’s fiscal 2011 budget.

The competition pits teams against one another in the defense of a notional computer network against attack by professional hackers.  Pilot tests with Cyber Patriot over the last two years have been highly successful in motivating high school students toward the study of STEM subjects related to the program and toward the pursuit of higher education in the STEM fields.

Recently t he program was recognized by the prestigious Naval Post Graduate School   as “the most significant among cyber-security programs with the greatest reach in securing our homelandfor the future.”

This year the Air force Association will select 1,000 teams to compete for the Commander-in Chief’s Trophy that will be presented this spring in Washington, D.C.  High Schools all around North Carolina are encouraged to field teams.

Interested parties can learn more about the competition by going to the AFA website or by contacting AFA State Vice President Louis Emond by email at .

The AFA is committed to the enhancement of STEM education and presents grants to primary, middle, and high school teachers who have innovative STEM projects that they are implementing.

Not all education can be performed online; sometimes it is important to turn off the computer and pick up a book, says author and IBMer John Miedema.

Today’s world moves at a much faster pace, but that doesn’t mean learning has to follow suit – especially when it involves complex ideas in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

Miedema is an IT architect at IBM (NYSE: IBM) in Ottawa, Ontario, whose 2009 book “Slow Reading” explores the movement.

In a phone interview, he explains that it’s not just about students reading as slowly as possible, but there comes a time when you deeply want to comprehend a subject, especially complex subjects such as STEM, that you really need to go offline and read more slowly.

“Print books are still the better technology for long-form reading,” he notes, but also saying the Web has its place in the mix. “A student or an employee trying to understand a complex idea will benefit on the whole by picking up a print book that allows them to read without distraction.”

Miedema recently finished his graduate work in the Library and Information Sciences program at the University of Western Ontario and is well aware of the difficulties of consuming large amounts of information in a short period of time.

He spoke at the Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) Forum at the Library Congress last year and said it is often useful and necessary to read quickly, but that reading slowly aids to comprehension when deciphering complex text and may even involve arguing with a text, so to speak, or seeking out additional materials to add context.

“In an age of information overload, an increasing number of people are choosing to slow down and enjoy reading again,” he said during his presentation in October 2009.

At a time when people spend much of their time skimming Web sites, text messages and e-mails, a recent article by The Associated Press points out students who say they’ve become so accustomed from flitting from page to page online that they have trouble concentrating while reading printed books. One student said when he was reading a regular book and would come to a word that would almost act like a hyperlink and trigger his mind to some other thing.

“E-books are metadata for print books,” Miedema reiterates. “Books are not being replaced by digital technology. Instead of reading online, Web sites are increasingly offering online services to enhance the experience of reading print books.”

Little formal research has been done on slow reading, other than studies on physical conditions such as dyslexia and eye disorders. But, the movement is gaining ground, and certainly has a valid connection to STEM education, which requires slowness, experimentation, memorization, and precision.

“Slow reading definitely can be a benefit in STEM,” Miedema adds.

More and more segments of our society – farmers, factory workers, doctors, professors – have been urged to speed things up in order to produce more and faster. This idea of slowing down certainly has impacts in education as well as daily workforce demands – especially in technical fields where complex ideas can’t simply be reduced to snippets.

A panel of small business experts selected these outstanding businesses, reflecting a variety of industries, from communities around the state, according to the publication. Companies that were selected have created a unique product or service; have demonstrated a strong track record in business; and have made important contributions to New Mexico and its economy.

The honorees will be featured in a special publication on July 23 and in an awards presentation July 22.

“Innovate-Educate’s Board of Directors represents unparalleled national and global leadership. These visionary leaders have excelled at fusing resources and at providing thought leadership surrounding the synergy needed between education and economic development in New Mexico,” said Jamai Blivin, executive director of Innovate-Educate. “We are honored to accept this award as we look to continue having a positive effect on our students and communities through the development of invigorating and inspiring STEM curriculums, internships, mentorships, and industry involvement.”

Read more about Small Business Heavyweights in New Mexico Business Weekly.

The 16 students from teacher Dennis Mitchell’s 7th-grade science class at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., found what looks to be a Martian skylight — a hole in the roof of a cave on Mars.

The intrepid students were participating in the Mars Student Imaging Program at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University. The program allows students to frame a research question and then commission a Mars-orbiting camera to take an image to answer their question.

The newfound hole on Mars resembled features seen on other parts of Mars in a 2007 study by Glen Cushing, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist.

Cushing suggested that these anomalous pit craters are like skylights — places where a small part of the roof of a cave or a lava tube had collapsed, opening the area below the surface to the sky.

The caves are thought to result from volcanic activity on the red planet. At some point lava channels likely carved out caverns in the rock, and then left behind tunnel, or “lava tubes,” when the eruptions were over. They would have been covered when a solid ceiling of cooled material settled on top, and then sections of the ceiling likely collapsed at some point to form the skylight entrances.

Scientists aren’t sure what type of materials or deposits could be stored inside.

“This pit is certainly new to us,” Cushing told the students. “And it is only the second one known to be associated with Pavonis Mons.”

He estimated the pit to be approximately 620 by 520 feet (190 by 160 meters) wide and 380 feet (115 meters) deep at least.

The young researchers had initially set out to hunt for lava tubes, a common volcanic feature on Earth and Mars.

“The students developed a research project focused on finding the most common locations of lava tubes on Mars,” Mitchell said. “Do they occur most often near the summit of a volcano, on its flanks, or the plains surrounding it?”

The class commissioned a main photo and a backup image of Mars’ Pavonis Monsvolcano, targeted on a region that hadn’t been imaged up close.

The pictures were taken by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter using its Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) instrument. Both images showed lava tubes, as the students had hoped.

But the backup photo provided another surprise: a small, round black spot. It was a hole on Mars leading into the buried cave, researchers said.

The students have submitted their site to be further imaged by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which could reveal enough detail to see inside the hole in the ground.

“The Mars Student Imaging Program is certainly one of the greatest educational programs ever developed,” Mitchell said.  “It gives the students a good understanding of the way research is conducted and how that research can be important for the scientific community. This has been a wonderful experience.”

This is why we need our kids helping solve the problems of the future, added IE Executive Director Jamai Blivin.

  * Gallery – Latest Mars Photos From Spirit and Opportunity
  * Top 10 Strangest Things in Space
  * Image Gallery: A Tour of Mars

The service lets users search the Web in a way that can’t be tracked by employers or internet service providers. Google launched a beta version of the service May 21 to give users more control over the searches they make; the company has come under fire from privacy groups in recent months for how it handles sensitive information.

But in accommodating privacy advocates, Google ironically has angered K-12 education technology officials, many of whom are now blocking access not only to Google’s encrypted search page but also Gmail and Google Docs.

That could be a problem for Google, which is competing with Microsoft in supplying free software for communicating and collaborating online to schools.

Google’s encrypted search feature uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections to encrypt information that travels between a user’s computer and the service, meaning that a user’s search terms and search results pages cannot be intercepted by a third party on the network. Searches also are not archived in the Web browser’s history or appear in the “auto-fill” during a subsequent search.

While some people believe this new encrypted capability will help advance users’ privacy, especially those living in China, K-12 schools – which use third-party filters to monitor student and faculty conduct online – are saying the service might cripple their use of Google and its products.

The reason is simple: Schools must comply with CIPA to receive federal e-Rate funding. Without the ability to monitor student and faculty searches, schools no longer can be considered CIPA compliant, many say.

The Children’s Internet Protection Act is a federal law that addresses concerns about access in schools and libraries to the Internet and other information. For any school or library that receives discounts for Internet access or for internal connections, CIPA imposes certain requirements.