Mesalands Community College announces Dr. Allen Moss as new president

TUCUMCARI, N.M. (KAMR/KCIT) – The Mesalands Community College Board of Trustees announced that it has selected Dr. Allen Moss as the college’s new president.

The selection announcement comes after the decision was confirmed during the board’s monthly meeting on Tuesday, according to officials with the college. As noted in previous reports, the selection was made from five candidates submitted to the board by the Presidential Search Committee in June.

Moss was previously installed as the interim acting board president in February 2023, during the same meeting in which the board enacted its emergency solvency plan in response to the college’s finances.

As previously reported on MyHighPlains.com, in February 2023 officials with Mesalands said that the college’s chief executive staff unanimously voted in favor of “no confidence” related to former Mesalands Community College President Dr. Gregory T. Busch and the board. Busch resigned from his position in March 2023, shortly after the resignation of the board’s former chairman.

Busch’s resignation letter at the time said that during his tenure, he reported to the board and/or the New Mexico Department of Higher Education that even before his arrival the college “was in noncompliance with more than two dozen federal, state, and accreditation laws, rules and regulations and that our employees and students were working and living in unsafe conditions.”

Busch further noted in his resignation letter that after the college was audited, he followed instructions from the board to implement Campus Works recommendations “which among other things, included staffing shortages, employee training, and improved technology to bring the College in legal compliance. I did as I was ordered to do by the board. I have spent two years simply working to fix inherited compliance issues of previous administrations.”

The emergency solvency plan that was enacted in February 2023, as noted previously, included a hiring freeze, no travel and no reimbursement of personal vehicle expenses, eliminating cross country and golf for the spring semester, and base salary cuts. The Mesalands board announced that it had begun searching for its next president in 2024, with applications that were open until April.

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