SOCORRO N.M.
The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology is being recognized by a 2008 college guidebook as the one of the hottest schools in the nation, specifically the “hottest in the war on terrorism.”
Kaplan and Newsweek, which have been putting the annual guide together for the past several years, selected the 25 hottest schools based on admission statistics and interviews with administrators, students and faculty.
“The school has reduced admissions red tape to a minimum, while quietly building with a flood of federal dollars one of the prime research centers for fighting the War on Terror,” states the guide’s brief profile on New Mexico Tech.
Newsweek and Kaplan plan to release the guidebook next Monday.
New Mexico Tech has done military research for decades and has helped train thousands of police and firefighters as first responders in emergencies. Its classes cover response tactics applied to real-life scenarios and situations involving suicide bombers, bioterrorism and car bombs.
Experts at the Socorro institute have even studied the possibility of liquid explosives on flights for the Federal Aviation Administration.
The school also operates a realistic-looking training ground in the state’s bootheel for U.S. law enforcement officers being schooled in anti-terrorism techniques. In the burst of anti-terrorism spending that followed Sept. 11, the school bought the once-dying town of Playas with a federal grant and transformed it into the training center.
The school’s Center for Energetic Materials Research and Training Center (EMRTC) does controlled explosions at Playas to simulate such terrorist acts as car bombings.
EMRTC received its own recognition this month in the latest issue of Popular Science, which profiled it as one of five research labs from around that nation that make going to class the best part of college.
On the Net:
New Mexico Tech: https://www.nmt.edu/
– Associated Press
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