The Week Ahead: El Paso’s Star on the Mountains to shine again starting Wednesday
by El Paso Matters Staff, El Paso Matters
December 13, 2023
This is your weekly update, which takes a quick look at the week ahead and some developments that El Paso Matters is following.
El Paso’s Star to Shine Again: The Star on the Mountain, which was turned off in September, will be turned back on Wednesday night, the El Paso Chamber announced. The star was turned off for energy-efficient and technology improvements by the chamber, which manages the star. One of the new features allows residents who pay to light the star in honor of a loved one or special occasion to ask for a change in its color. Also, anyone wanting to buy any of the original light bulbs can do so for $1,000, which will go toward the continued maintenance of the star. More information is available at the chamber’s website.
El Paso Deputy City Manager Bypassed: A Northern New Mexico county has bypassed a top El Paso official in selecting its new top administrator. Tracey Jerome, El Paso’s senior deputy city manager, was one of two county manager finalists who met last week with the public in Los Alamos County, a community of about 19,000 people about an hour west of Santa Fe. The Los Alamos County Council will have a special meeting on Friday to approve the hiring of the other finalist in the search – Anne Laurent, the current deputy county manager in Los Alamos.
Los Alamos is home to Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nation’s pre-eminent nuclear weapons facilities.
EPCC to Celebrate Milestone: El Paso Community College will celebrate the awarding of its 100,000th degree during its fall commencement ceremonies at 2 and 6 p.m. Friday at the University of Texas at El Paso’s Don Haskins Center, 151 Glory Road. Graduation candidates at the ceremonies, which have a theme of “100,000 Dreams Achieved,” will receive a commemorative teal cord to wear. The college expects to award 2,101 degrees and certificates to graduates.
Participants in the day’s first ceremony will earn degrees for associate of science or associate of applied science, as well as certificates of completion. The second ceremony will honor those who will earn degrees in associate of arts and associate of arts in teaching.
UTEP, TTUHSC El Paso Fall Commencements: The University of Texas at El Paso will recognize more than 2,700 of its summer and fall 2023 graduates from its colleges of Science, Nursing, Education, Engineering, Health Sciences, Liberal Arts and the Woody L. Hunt College of Business during ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday in the Don Haskins Center, 151 Glory Road.
Additionally, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso will honor 75 students from its Gayle Greve Hunt School of Nursing who earned bachelor's in nursing and two others who earned master's in nursing during a morning ceremony on Saturday in the Starlight Event Center, 6650 Continental Drive.
Border Biennial Art Fair Returns: The Border Biennial/Bienal Fronteriza 2024 art exhibit, which showcases artists from the U.S. and Mexico, returns Friday, the El Paso Museum of Art announced. The works of 50 artists from across the U.S. and Mexico – including Florida, Texas, New York, Baja California, Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua – will be displayed. Among them is borderland artist Evan Apodaca, a grantee of the Center for Cultural Power's Border Narratives Project.
The selected artworks are tied to a variety of themes related to the region, including family, everyday life, home, gender issues, Queer identities, physical and imagined borders, migration patterns of people and wildlife. The opening reception will be at 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 15 at the EPMA, 1 Arts Festival Plaza. The exhibit will be on display through April 14.
This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
