Assistant Vice President for Academic Resource Management 

Nicole Dopson is the assistant vice president for academic resource managemen. Her role is three-pronged, having responsibility for finance, academic spaces and the Academic Affairs Fiscal Shared Service Center.

She describes her job as being involved with everything from “fires to football helmets” in a given day. She oversees fiscal activities for the schools/colleges/divisions that report to the provost, working closely with the provost, vice provosts, deans, chairs and vice presidents in strategic financial planning and analysis. Dopson’s role is to be the voice for Academic Affairs on fiscal/budgetary matters with divisions around UNM.

A native of Roswell, N.M., Dopson is a double alumnus of UNM, earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s in accounting. She began as a work-study student at UNM for a variety of areas before joining the Office Academic Affairs in 2011. In 2022, she was promoted to assistant vice president for academic resource management.

Coming into UNM as a nontraditional student with a young child, she was not at all sure what she wanted to study, or even if college was for her. She remembers in third grade, running a cupcake stand with her friend. She let her friend do all the marketing, but young Nicole was already keeping an income and expense ledger. Aside from that early exposure, it was a professor at UNM who convinced her she had what it takes to make accounting a career.

In the Fiscal Shared Service Center, she employs a lot of work-study students and enjoys working with them in their career development because of how she benefited as a student. “For me, if I didn’t have the people who took an interest in me and provided a support system, I don’t think I would have made it.”

Although with her experience and knowledge, Dopson could work at many places inside and outside Academic Affairs, she says she enjoys the mission of helping students be all they can be.

“What keeps me in Academic Affairs is that we are transforming students. You legitimately change people’s lives,” Dopson said. “There are a lot of creative ways to get things done. As a native New Mexican, I am here to care about the institution. I am very grateful to be in this role.”

In her spare time, she enjoys hobbies like golf and crochet, as well as spending time with her husband and two daughters — one who is a UNM grad and the other who is in high school.