After 17 years as a member of the CSU-Pueblo nursing department staff, Katie Cadena-Priebe has resigned as an administrative assistant.

Cadena-Priebe said she resigned over a conflict with the associate dean of the nursing department She said she reached out to the dean to try to solve this conflict, but decided to resign.

Because of her resignation  Cadena-Priebe said she will be able to get back into what she loves the most, which is photography along with her husband.

“I’m going to get back into photography,” Cadena-Priebe said. “Hopefully we can be successful with that with wedding pictures and fine arts photography, knotting and everything else”  

In addition to her photography, Cadena-Priebe also said she will be working at the University of Northern New Mexico in the business department.

“I went on a tour with them, and they took me around and they introduced me to all the people I would be working with,” Cadena-Priebe said.

“I worked with Patricia Trujillo with M.E.Ch.A, she helped me a lot with M.E.Ch.A last year, and she taught English here and she’s back in Espanola, and I worked with David Trujillo, he’s a grant writer, and I worked with him about 15 years ago.”

At the University of Northern New Mexico, Cadena-Priebe hopes she gets to advance there with her new career she said.

“I was an administrative assistant one for 12 years, and the past five years,” Cadena-Priebe said. “There was no chance for me to advance here on the campus, because of the politics.”

Cadena-Priebe also claimed that the department did not give anybody in house a chance for a promotion, despite her having a degree. She said they just hire whoever and didn’t even advertise for the job.

Besides trying to advancein her position, Cadena-Priebe will also be taking classesat the university. She will take them during work, and that they will be free. She also said that she will be able to exercise an hour-and-a-half there and that the benefits are good.

Cadena-Priebe said, that she hopes she will fit in there because it is a small community, and that she did not get in at the university last year.

Despite Cadena-Priebe moving on, she still will always remember her time here at CSU-Pueblo. She said the thing she will miss the most will be the students, and that she had a good experience here.

“I made life-long friends here, and I have students that graduated 15 years ago that still call me,” Cadena-Priebe said. “I still see them, I still talk to students that left, and I have just found the most wonderful friends here.”

Although Cadena-Priebe did have a wonderful experience here, she said she would probably not come back if she had the chance to do so. “I don’t want to go through the politics again,” Cadena-Priebe said.

Even though she may not be back at CSU-Pueblo, Cadena-Priebe will still continue to make her homemade tortillas that she is known for among many students at CSU-Pueblo. She said she would be making tortillas for all her “chongos,” and her little “monkeys”  in New Mexico.