New Mexico State University will conclude the spring 2025 semester this week by conferring more than 2,000 degrees to students across its six colleges.
NMSU leaders and officials will recognize spring 2025 graduates at three commencement ceremonies over two days at the Pan American Center.
A graduate ceremony for students earning master’s and doctoral degrees will begin at 6 p.m. Friday, May 9. The first of two undergraduate ceremonies will start at 9 a.m. Saturday, May 10, for students earning bachelor’s degrees from the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, the College of Business, and the College of Health, Education and Social Transformation, followed by a second ceremony at 2 p.m. for students earning bachelor’s degrees from the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering.
When Audrey Dijeau bids farewell to NMSU, she will not only have earned a Ph.D. in astronomy and a graduate certificate from the Department of Borderlands and Ethic Studies, but she will have left behind something more lasting – a program she long fought to build that supports Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander communities at NMSU.
Dijeau was the driving force behind what is now called the Asian and Pacific Islander Program. Dijeau, who is half Asian, specifically Chinese Indonesian, and half white, struggled to connect to others on a cultural level after moving to Las Cruces from San Francisco in 2019. That set in motion a grassroots effort to organize a campus organization for a community that needed better representation and visibility at NMSU.
“When I say the program started in my inbox, I mean that literally,” said Dijeau, who will earn a graduate certificate this week and complete her Ph.D. dissertation later this year.
Dijeau started the movement with emails to fellow Aggies, then formed a student group that worked collectively to turn the program into a reality. A petition supporting the program garnered more than 200 signatures, and within a year or so, NMSU administrators endorsed the group’s efforts.
Since its launch in 2023, the Asian and Pacific Islander Program has reached hundreds of individuals, providing free resources and community events to meet the needs of Aggies from Asian, Pacific Islander, Arab, Indian and Asian American backgrounds.
Dijeau spearheaded the program on top of school demands. As a Ph.D. candidate, she researched galaxies in the nearby universe and their immediate environments while investigating the activity of the black holes at their centers. As a graduate assistant for the Department of Borderlands and Ethnic Studies, she researched the history of Chinese Americans in rural New Mexico and the borderlands and created course materials for K-12 students. She also developed NMSU’s first Asian American Studies course.
Dijeau said she is proud to have led the program thus far and hopes it will continue to receive university-wide support long after she leaves NMSU.
“This is something that I really would like to see the university commit to bringing forward for the next 50 years,” she said. “I want to see that Asian and Pacific Islander students are still being supported 50 years from now.”
Kim Ballou was one of many students who found a sense of community through the Asian and Pacific Islander Program. Ballou, who will earn a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education this week, relocated from southern California to Las Cruces in 2020 after being furloughed from a marketing job. She decided it was the right time to return to college, finish her undergraduate degree and become a teacher, a lifelong dream.
Ballou, a mother of four of Filipino descent, said she felt alone after struggling to find cultural connections with her peers at Doña Ana Community College and NMSU, something made much more difficult during the pandemic.
But that change when she joined the effort to start the Asian and Pacific Islander Program.
“API helped me feel not so isolated,” she said. “It made me feel like I had a community that I could share with my children, so they could learn about that part of their identity.”
For two semesters, Ballou worked as a student employee for the program, planning events, creating social media posts and supporting research projects.
She said the program played an important role in helping her complete her degree and become a teacher. She plans to teach in Las Cruces.
On Friday, Erica Nikolaisen will earn a Ph.D. in educational administration and leadership, her third degree from NMSU. Outside the classroom, Nikolaisen spent many years working for NMSU’s Office of Experiential Learning, leading the Education Abroad and National Student Exchange team. She is currently an assistant director for the study abroad programs at Temple University in Philadelphia.
As an undergraduate student at NMSU, Nikolaisen studied abroad in England for a semester. It was a formative experience that has since shaped much of her education and career. Afterward, she landed various roles in NMSU’s study abroad office, working as a student employee, graduate assistant and eventually full-time adviser and manager.
“Thinking about NMSU holistically, I feel like NMSU set me up for my career trajectory,” she said. “They gave me my first job, I have three degrees from NMSU, and I’ve had every role in the study abroad office – all because of my own study abroad experience.”
Before leaving NMSU, Nikolaisen received a Fulbright scholarship as part of the United States-Germany International Education Administrators Program. She was also selected by the U.S. State Department to participate in the Association of Southeast Nations University Connections Initiative.
Nikolaisen said she hopes to begin teaching classes on global citizenship – the topic of her dissertation – in addition to her regular duties at Temple University.
The Pan American Center will open to the public one hour before each commencement ceremony. Tickets are not required. Graduating students should also arrive one hour before the ceremonies start. The three ceremonies will also be livestreamed on NMSU’s YouTube channel. For more information, visit https://commencement.nmsu.edu.
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Cutline 1: New Mexico State University will host three commencement ceremonies for spring 2022 graduates Friday, May 9, and Saturday, May 10, at the Pan American Center. A ceremony for graduate degree candidates will start at 6 p.m. Friday, and two separate ceremonies for undergraduates will take place at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday. (NMSU photo by Josh Bachman)