It's Their Job: Wendel Sloan

Name: Wendel Sloan

Job: Director of Media Relations at Eastern New Mexico University.

Background: I handle media and public information functions in the Office of Communication Services at Eastern New Mexico University. “I was living in Dallas at the time and saw an ad in the Dallas Morning News,” Sloan said. “I was invited to come for an eight-hour interview with the search committee. I have to admit that when I drove in the night before and saw Portales, I almost made a U-turn and headed back.” I was the State Media Representative for The Salvation Army in Texas, with my office in Dallas. That was in 1982, before that, I was an electronic spy for the Navy in Guam, worked at newspapers in Arkansas and Louisiana, and graduated from college at East Texas State University with a bachelor's degree in journalism, and, later (using the G.I. bill), a master's degree in counseling.

Time on the job: 27 years.

What does your job entail: I provide information, photos and news releases about ENMU to media and the public, produce a weekly electronic newsletter called the Monday Memo, am editor of “Eastern Magazine,” supervise arrangements to place and create paid advertising, supervise a graduate assistant and other student writers and photographers, and anything else my boss decides is a priority that day.

What is a typical day like for you: I get up around 6:30 a.m. when my neighbors begin yelling at their dog, get the latest on the Octo-Mom from the “Today Show” on my TV in the bathroom while trimming my toenails, read the Portales News-Tribune when I get to work to see if La Hacienda really is going to continue serving the same menu just with “different prices,” delete all my spam and angry e-mails, then read the ones that appear to be friendly.

After that, I write news and feature stories that I can't get my students to write, take photos and shoot and edit videos that I can't get my students to do, turn down advertising requests, play basketball at noon in a 14-year tradition, present my co-workers with food which I bought at Super Save but pretend I made in my other persona as Chef Juandel, play tennis after work, then finish the evening at home watching liberal TV shows, then read about such radical ideas as the earth might actually be more than 6,000 years old.