IAIA Alumni Council

IAIA is pleased to announce the establishment of the Pueblo Homelands Scholarship
Endowment, created through an initial $50,000 gift from lAIA alum, Trustee, and renowned artist Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo) ‘07, ‘18. The new, standalone endowed scholarship is intended to support undergraduate students at IAIA from the 19 New Mexico Pueblo Nations, the Hopi Nation, and the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo Nation.
Beginning in the 2026-2027 academic year, the fund is designed to support up to four students each academic year, with awards of up to $2,500 per student. The scholarship is intended to grow over time as a source of merit-based scholarship support for generations to come and reflects Simpson’s ongoing relationship with IAIA, including the 2024 dedication of “Heights I” on campus and her service on the IAIA Board of Trustees.

Image: (detail) Artwork by David Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo)
‘17, courtesy the artist; photograph by Jason S. Ordaz.

Thanks to all our alumni who came out and supported the 2025 IAIA Holiday Art Market!

If any Institute of American Indian Arts alumni would like to update their email or apply for a [email protected] you can do so at this website https://iaia.edu/support/alumni/ photo courtesy of Jason Ordaz, IAIA.

The IAIA Alumni Council thanks Guido Lambelet for his dedication and work to the IA community. Happy Retirement Guido!!! 👏🏽👏🏽 Guido Lambelet, Café Bon Appétit’s just-retired executive chef at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), has been feeding students here for 15 years. Chef Lambelet has been a familiar and comforting figure at IAIA when it was at the College of Santa Fe Café from 2002 to 2009, and at the IAIA campus from 2010 until his retirement in 2025. The Swiss-born chef explains that he helmed food services through the agency until the College of Santa Fe closed in 2009 and then returned with Bon Appétit when IAIA began its incarnation on the campus where it is today.

Although Chef Lambelet has officially retired as of late May 2025, students will see him in the kitchen once a month on a Thursday when he helps cook up meals for the non-profit “Friday Night Dining,” an organization where Lambelet and his wife are the volunteer chefs. They offer a sit down, three-course meal to low-income seniors in Española, with the help of volunteers. “The students at IAIA are people who spent the last 15 years eating the food I have prepared,” Lambelet explains. “I have a lot of friends here at IAIA.”

Read the full story at https://iaia.edu/chef-guido-lambelet-retires/

Photograph by Jason S. Ordaz, Institute of American Indian Arts.

The IAIA Board of Trustees has named IAIA Faculty Emeritus Stephen Wall (White Earth Nation) as interim president, effective upon Dr. Robert Martin’s (Cherokee Nation) retirement July 31, 2025. Wall will assume presidential duties until the Board of Trustees completes the search for his replacement.

Wall was conferred the title of IAIA Faculty Emeritus in 2019, after teaching for 14 years in the Indigenous Liberal Studies Department. He was also named IAIA Faculty of the Year in both 2009 and 2017.

Wall has served as a Tribal Justice Specialist, Chief Judge for the Mescalero Apache Tribal Court, Behavioral Health Coordinator for the Tohono O’odham Nation Health Department, Community Alcoholism Prevention Team Member for the Albuquerque Area Indian Health Board, Research Analyst for the American Indian Law Center at UNM, and Cultural Studies and Political Science Instructor at Fort Lewis College, as well as offering other numerous Tribal law consultations, presentations on culture and history, and publications in those areas. Wall has a Juris Doctorate from the University of New Mexico and a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Fort Lewis College.

In a recent article published in the Tribal College Journal, Wall wrote, “We live in a society in which the arts and humanities are more essential than ever and are needed to mediate the inhumanity of uncontrolled technological development…The arts and humanities can reconnect people to our shared humanity. For Indigenous communities, the shock of dehumanization has been a part of our history. Tribal colleges and universities provide the mechanism for exploring this history and reconnecting with Indigenous ways of life and values needed to strengthen our humanity.”

Stephen Wall’s appointment as interim president starts on August 1, 2025.

https://iaia.edu/stephen-wall-named-interim-president-of-the-institute-of-american-indian-arts/

Photograph by Jason S. Ordaz, Institute of American Indian Arts.