Phyllis Baca selected as 2013 NMNWSE IMPACT! Award winner  

Phyllis Baca's passion is to present STEM opportunities to low-income students, especially women and Hispanics. Around 2007, Phyllis began volunteering at Sante Fe Community College with a goal to double the number of women and Hispanics enrolled in the engineering department. Phyllis focused on revitalizing the Engineering and Engineering Technologies degree programs through clear career pathways tied to State and National career clusters and more than succeeded in her goal, quickly rising to department chair. "As a teacher, Phyllis has been an inspiration. She is a role model that I could understand. Her passion as an instructor has always shined through, from the first time I met her in my Introduction to Engineering course to her help and advice today." wrote Erika Arvizo, one of the first of the women to receive her Associates of Science in General Engineering at Santa Fe Community College. Through her teaching at Santa Fe Community College's engineering department and volunteering with numerous local, state, and regional agencies such as Project Lead the Way and Expanding Your Horizons, Phyllis has touched the lives of hundreds of NM educators and thousands of NM students, and has dramatically increased the number of women and Hispanics obtaining STEM degrees in New Mexico.
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Also nominated in 2013 were Jan Frigo, Antoinette Gant, Martha Mitchell, Michele Nishiguchi, and Katherine Prestridge - all outstanding women well worthy of recognition.
See the past winners page for a full list of past winners, as well as past nominees, who have made an IMPACT!

The 2014 IMPACT! Award call is anticpated spring 2014, with nominations due in the August 2014 timeframe, and will be posted at https://archive.nmnwse.org/ImpactAward when available.