First candidate for NMSU Chancellor visits campus

The search is on for a new chancellor at New Mexico State University.

Monday, the NMSU Board of Regents held a meeting to begin the process of interviewing the five candidates up for the job.

Each of the five candidates will be hosting public forums in the coming days to allow the public to get to know them better.

The five candidates are John Floros, Robert Marley, Brian Stevenson, Dan Arvizu and Barbara Damron.

John Floros was the first to visit the campus on Monday.

After getting a tour of the campus, Floros took some questions from the public in the university’s auditorium.

Floros is currently at Kansas State where he serves as the dean of the College of Agriculture.

He’s credited with helping improve student enrollment and graduation rates at Kansas State.

Floros is hoping to do the same at NMSU if given the opportunity, but he admits that the goal is simply not to attract students.

“It’s really to get them here and to have them succeed and retain them because this is where a lot of the universities are losing most of their students,” Floros said. “We need to figure out ways to get those kids to succeed very early on.”

ABC-7 plans to have additional coverage of each of the candidates’ visit.