April 27, 2023
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Donna Oracion, College Development Director, 575-624-7403
ENMU-Roswell Adult Education Program to Hold 31st Graduation Ceremony
The Adult Education Department at ENMU-Roswell will hold its Thirty-First Annual GED®/HiSET® Adult Education Graduation Ceremony on Thursday, May 11 at 7 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center on campus. A total of 86 students completed the High School Equivalency program in the 2022-23 fiscal year and 54 candidates for graduation will be participating in the ceremony. A reception will follow the ceremony in the Instructional Technology Center. The featured speaker will be Lieutenant Governor, Howie C. Morales. The student address will be given by Monica Hernandez.
Raised in Silver City, New Mexico, Lieutenant Governor Howie Morales has spent his whole life working to improve the lives of people in his community and across our state. He served in the New Mexico Legislature on the Legislative Finance Committee for 11 years. A classroom teacher and proven leader who stands up for seniors and public education, he said “No more cuts to New Mexico’s classrooms.” Morales has fought to protect our most vulnerable communities and local schools, to build a fair economy that works for all of us, and to move New Mexico forward.
Morales learned the value of a dollar at a young age. His father was a Vietnam Veteran who worked in the copper mine while his mother worked multiple hourly-wage jobs. He went to work as a teenager to help provide for the family and later worked as a shoe salesman and maintenance worker to put himself through Western New Mexico University. The first in his family to go to college, Morales went on to earn a PhD in education from NMSU.
Morales went home to teach students in special education in Silver City and Cobre School Districts, and became active in the community. He coached local high school baseball teams to state championships, and is the longest serving volunteer of Big Brothers/Big Sisters in New Mexico, while raising two children ages 6 and 9. He was elected Grant County Clerk, where he modernized voting systems to make sure every vote counted.
Since 2008, Morales has been an aggressive leader for children and classrooms in the State Senate, fighting for his district, and to make every corner of New Mexico a better place to live. He has pushed for progressive policies such as universal health care. He fought for rural and tribal economic development, and he fought to protect veterans’ and senior services across the state, and mental health programs.
As Lieutenant Governor, Morales fulfills his constitutional and statutory duties by serving as President of the New Mexico Senate; by serving as Acting Governor when Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is out of the state; by providing constituent services; and by serving as a member on several boards, commissions, and councils. He also serves as a statutory member of the Governor’s executive cabinet.
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