Sagel, Jim

Writer and educator Jim Sagel was born in 1947 in Fort Morgan, Colorado, to parents Edward and Betty Sagel. The eldest of three brothers in the farming family, Jim graduated from Fort Morgan High School in 1965, and published his earliest piece in the school’s literary newspaper “Prufrock” that same year. He continued his education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1969. Later that year, Sagel moved to Española, New Mexico, and began substitute teaching at Española Valley High School, where he met Teresa Archuleta, a native of the Española Valley. They married in 1970. Sagel continued to teach high school in northern New Mexico until 1976, when he received a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico for his thesis “Rebuilt,” a poetry collection.

Sagel’s tenure at Northern New Mexico Community College started in 1976, and during his 22-year career as a university instructor, he taught at the Institute of American Indian Art (Santa Fe), at University of New Mexico campuses in Los Alamos, Española, Santa Fe and Taos, and at campuses in Peñaso, Gallina, and Mesa Vista. He was appointed director of the Division of Humanities at the University of New Mexico in Los Alamos, a position he held until his death in 1998. He was awarded the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1993 and appointed the Carruthers Chair in Honors in the UNM General Honors program.

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