Board Chairman Victor Villarreal reflects on his time with Austin Community College.[/caption]
After 6 1/2 years on the Austin Community College board of trustees, board Chairman Victor Villarreal has decided he will not run for re-election in the fall. Prior to serving as a trustee, Villarreal served on Leander City Council for five years from 2005-10. Active in the public realm for nearly two decades, he said he feels he has accomplished his goals as a trustee and is ready to refocus on his teaching career and his family.
Why did you want to serve as a trustee?
When I served on City Council, we started an initiative to attract higher education to Leander. We were already in the ACC taxing district. … ACC was a logical place to start. By 2010, the college decided to buy land in Leander for a campus—they bought it in the perfect location.
I ran for mayor in 2009 and came up short. I started thinking, ‘How can I still push this campus along?’ I wanted to make sure the momentum of the Leander campus didn’t fade. I decided to run for trustee. At the time, I was an adjunct instructor of management at ACC. I had to quit teaching to run for the board.
What goals did you accomplish during your time on the ACC board?
One really big one was the San Gabriel campus that’s being built in Leander now. We also wanted to get a lot of work done on our existing campuses, and that was taken care of with the 2014 bond. I wanted to see our suburban campuses expand. That was one of my focus areas when I ran in 2010, was that the suburban areas weren’t put on the back burner, but that they were on the forefront. That’s where a lot of our growth is. They tell me I’m the second trustee from Williamson County and the first to be president of the board. The focus on suburban growth really fell on me, and I embraced it.
We’re starting all the work now. We’ve awarded all of the bond contracts, around $386 million. Now we’re at the point where some of these projects are starting to come to life. For the Leander campus we had a ground breaking in April.
How does it feel to see the Leander campus making progress?
It’s this sense that I’m looking at the future. When I moved here in 2000, the population was around 9,000. … It was hard to look at the future for such a small town. Now it’s 40,000-plus. … I feel like I can see where it’s going. I can imagine all the possibilities there [near the campus]; there could be hotels there, a bunch of restaurants, hangout spots for the students, apartments. When I look at this site I feel grateful that this part of the city has so much potential now. ... It’s going to change the city forever.
Someone told me once that whatever I work on, I should change it for the better and change it forever. When you’re connected with a small, growing city you can be someone who does that. That’s what I’m hoping to do for Leander—change it for the better and change it forever.
Why is the expansion of the Round Rock campus necessary?
We needed to build another building that was specifically for classroom use, not shared with any other discipline. The way they have to schedule classes now, you can have a room that is a lab one day, a classroom the next day, then a studio and then a lab again. ... That campus has about 5,000 students, and we calculated that a new building could increase it [by] between 2,000 and 3,000 students. One building with maybe 10-15 classrooms can make a big difference.
What has serving on ACC’s board taught you?
Mainly patience. I learned a lot about patience from City Council, too, but it was magnified at ACC. When you’re making policy, there are so many layers to it and so many people that could be impacted—you don’t want to run the risk of any unintended consequences. But having the patience to think it through and think of all the ways it can impact people, and the patience to take the time and craft policy that benefits everyone is something I learned at ACC.
Coming into ACC with a background in City Council, I had an understanding of how you can influence a governmental entity. When I came in as a trustee, I knew I didn’t have to wait a couple of years to start doing things—I had the confidence to jump in there and get right to work.
What is next in your career?
I really want to refocus on my teaching career. Unfortunately, I’ve had some opportunities come up that I wasn’t able to take because my priority was to serve the public as a trustee. I’ve done what I wanted to in the public realm, and I’m ready to get back to focusing on my family and my career.
