Opinion: ENMU President Frost should be remembered

Everett Frost was not Eastern New Mexico University’s most famous president. He didn’t make many headlines. There are no streets or buildings named in his honor on the college campus.

His work was largely behind the scenes.

But Patrice Caldwell, his friend and colleague, credits Frost’s vision and relationship-building with decades of university growth that continues today.

Frost, who died Monday at age 82, should be credited with building strong sister campuses at Roswell and Ruidoso, repairing a fractured relationship with Clovis Community College, and the birth of nursing and social work programs and a focus on “student success,” Caldwell said.

She tells his story like this:

“Clovis Community College had separated from Eastern before Dr. Frost became president,” said Caldwell, who, like Frost, spent most of her higher education career to ENMU.

“(CCC) was an important feeder for Eastern and those relationships needed to be re-established, and he did that.”

CCC was created as a branch campus of ENMU in 1961, but by the late 1980s its leaders and many in Clovis wanted their own educational identity. An election was held and CCC became independent in 1990, competing for students with its parent college.

When Frost became ENMU’s eighth president in 1991, one of his first priorities was to get to know CCC President Jay Gurley and find common ground.

“Both campuses needed each other,” Caldwell remembered. “They needed transferability.

“That whole nightmare was on (Frost’s) desk when he moved into office and I think he did a commendable job building those bridges back and creating what I think is one of the strongest relationships Eastern has with any institution today.”

Frost also worked through issues with ENMU’s Roswell campus in his earliest years as president.

“That community also wanted more independence,” Caldwell said. “Dr. Frost went down there, had town halls, talked about the costs to go independent.

“Because of his outreach and some very important people on that campus, Roswell … stayed in the system and now they are still an extremely strong partner. Because Dr. Frost went down there and talked to them face to face, they basically did everything they wanted to do but they did it under the umbrella of (the ENMU) system.”

ENMU also opened its Ruidoso campus under Frost’s leadership.

Then it expanded its system-wide nursing program.

“We already had a very strong nursing program at Clovis and Portales,” Caldwell said. “He proposed we start a (bachelor of science) nursing program and we did it with the help of all three community colleges (in Clovis, Roswell and Ruidoso). … All Dr. Frost’s vision.”

A large percentage of nurses across eastern New Mexico today learned their crafts at CCC or in the ENMU system.

Portales community activist Dolores Penrod asked Frost to bring back a social work program that had been part of ENMU’s curriculum decades earlier. So Frost called on alumni and area non-profit agencies and that program was re-established.

“It’s booming now,” Caldwell said. “We added a master’s (degree) in social work last year.”

Near the end of his decade as ENMU’s president, Frost turned his attention to technology, student retention and what Caldwell called “student success.”

“In 1998 I believe it was, we started our first freshman seminar. We put every freshman in it and immediately began seeing a positive impact on retention.

“He said ‘There’s no reason we have to play second tuba to anybody. We were doing exactly what the big schools were doing, we were doing it inclusively, and watching our budget to make sure it succeeded.”

Donald MacKay was ENMU’s first president.

There’s a book about Floyd Golden’s “Golden Years” leading the college for nearly two decades.

Steven Gamble was in charge from 2001 to 2017 and remains a familiar face on campus.

Caldwell worked 42 years from ENMU, including three years as president.

Most of us familiar with Greyhound history know those names and a little about their successes, failures and personalities.

Frost spent more than 30 years as faculty member and university president, but most of that time was spent away from the spotlight.

One friend described him as someone who kept his head down, working hard and taking care of business, without seeking attention.

Gamble said it was every university president’s goal to “stay out of the newspaper.” If that were Frost’s goal, he largely succeeded. A digital archive search of the region’s largest newspaper – the Clovis News Journal – found just 20 mentions of Frost on its front pages between 1991 and 2001 when he was ENMU president.

One of those newspaper stories reported Frost received a standing ovation at the last board of regents meeting he attended as president. That suggests those who knew his work the best were impressed.

The rest of us should be, too.

David Stevens is editor of Clovis Media Inc. Contact him:

[email protected]