New Mexico State University Foundation

New Mexico State University Foundation

The foundation was chartered in 1959 as a private nonprofit corporation separate from the university's balance sheet. Dr. Sylvia Acosta serves as CEO, while Louis A. Vega, President of Dow North America, chairs the board. The entity's sole purpose is to secure, manage, and protect private gifts for New Mexico State University, a land-grant institution in Las Cruces. The investment portfolio is organized around a common endowment pool so holdings can be managed collectively. Asset classes include venture capital, mixed-use real estate concentrated in New Mexico, and tangible assets such as the Zuhl Collection — a museum of petrified wood and fossils housed on campus. Angeles Investors recognized the foundation with a 2025 Higher Education Impact Award, reflecting active engagement with the broader investment community as a means of sourcing opportunities. Three named governance bodies steer operations and allocations. Ross A. McCallister, Jr. chairs the Investment Committee, setting the risk parameters for the pooled portfolio. Former Board Chair Christian Hendrickson, a partner at Sherman & Howard L.L.C., provides continuity across business cycles, while professional affiliations with the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges signal an institutional governance model. As an endowment tied to a public land-grant university, the foundation operates with a structural commitment to intergenerational stewardship. It must balance the university's immediate programmatic needs against the perpetual obligation to preserve real-purchasing-power. That tension — between a regional land-grant mission and the foundation's private governance — defines its capital-allocation decisions more than any single manager or vintage.