Eastern New Mexico University believes in educating students of all ages. As part of this goal, ENMU started a summer reading support program in 2020 that supports the most extensive education program during the summer in the region, summer reading.
Eastern New Mexico University has supported summer reading programs in New Mexico and West Texas for five years. The ENMU Reads program originally started in 2020 and partnered with 32 libraries. That number has increased to over 90 New Mexico and West Texas libraries and is expanding into Southern Colorado this summer.
The program promotes education among young readers and encourages them by providing libraries with ENMU-branded reading certificates, bookmarks, posters, coloring books, and stickers.
ENMU also partners with companies across the southwest to provide grand prizes to help support summer reading. These companies include Dominos, Whataburger, the Albuquerque Isotopes, the Amarillo Sod Poodles, the El Paso Chihuahuas, and Meow Wolf. Everything ENMU Reads donates for the program is entirely free to the libraries.
Ashley Williams, the youth librarian from the Moriarty Public Library, said, "These things greatly help our library because they are things that we don’t have to buy and can save that money for other programming supplies."
John Houser, ENMU’s Assistant Vice President for Marketing and Communications, said, "This program is about supporting the largest education program in the region during the summer, summer reading at public libraries. Providing these items to libraries helps encourage students to continue to read and reach their summer reading goals. We are supporting everyone from the big libraries in Albuquerque down to small ones like Hatch Valley,"
Nora Timmons, a volunteer programs coordinator for the Placitas Community Library, said, "The ENMU Reads program supports children by showing them that someone is interested in their future." ENMU Reads encourages young readers but also helps to promote summer reading and local libraries, large or small.
"We are such a large library with minimal funding; everything that [ENMU Reads] gives us for the summer is just extra resources that the participants can have," said Cody Wesner-Ellis, the Events and Outreach Coordinator at the Albuquerque Library. "What they can put into the New Mexico Community is substantial." The Albuquerque Library has partnered with ENMU Reads since 2020.
For more information on the ENMU Reads summer reading support program, visit enmu.edu/ENMUReads.
