located just over 40 miles apart.
== Notable people ==
=== Alumni ===
There are approximately 120,000 living NMSU alumni. The NMSU Alumni Association is one of the university's oldest organizations, dating from May 24, 1898.
==== Notable alumni ====
Kevin Johnson, president and CEO of Starbucks Corporation;
Paul Wilbur Klipsch, founder of Klipsch Audio Technologies;
Jerome Shaw, EVP/COO of Volt Information Sciences, Inc;
Christine Aguilera, president of SkyMall;
Jorge Gardea-Torresdey, nanoparticle researcher and professor at the University of Texas at El Paso;
Alvy Ray Smith, co-founder of Pixar;
Kathy Lueders, the first woman to head NASA's human spaceflight program as the Associate Administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate.
Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and writer. Known as the founder of virtual reality
=== Faculty ===
Notable faculty include:
Antonya Nelson, named by The New Yorker as one of the 20 best young fiction writers in America, has published three …
