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 [chairman] of the board. The focus on suburban growth really fell on me, and I embraced it.
