Chancellor's Memorandum

M E M O R A N D U M

NEW BEGINNINGS
FALL, 2009

TO: Alamo Colleges Family
FROM: Dr. Bruce Leslie, Chancellor
DATE: September 22, 2009
RE: Fall, 2009 Welcome Back

We have a number of accomplishments this past year to be proud of, several new initiatives well underway and a number of challenges I’d like to review with you as we welcome in the new fiscal year. First, let me congratulate everyone for the improvements we are seeing in student productive grade rates, course completion rates, and fall-to-fall retention rates. As you know from a previous Alamo Colleges Family email, in May the Board, as an extension of our Achieving the Dream efforts, charged us with increasing student success rates, especially those of our developmental students. There is room for improvement, but the good news is that we had a very productive and successful faculty retreat in June that has laid the foundation for a renewed emphasis on student success with a number of substantive, best practice strategies that will be implemented during the next couple of years. Kris Clark presented the plan at the Convocation on August 17th, and it is available on the Alamo Colleges’ web site (http://www.alamo.edu/main/html/admin/vcas/presentations.htm). The architects of this plan were over 200 faculty and staff from all the colleges and district. Their collective efforts will certainly benefit all of our current and future students.

Second, the entire Alamo Colleges family is to be commended for strengthening our level of student engagement over the past year. For the first time, the Alamo Colleges rate above the state and national average in student engagement as measured by the Community College Survey of Student Engagement. Over 650 community colleges participated in this survey. The excellence of all our employees is clearly reflected in these results.

Third, enrollments rose 14% this summer and 12% this fall achieving a new record enrollment of over 60,000 students! I have been especially pleased to hear from employees across the system that thanks to the dedication of staff, faculty and administrators, registration was among the smoothest ever despite the large enrollment increase.

Fourth, our state revenue for this year and next reflects a 6% increase, but we were disappointed that our request for $3.5 million in new start up-funds for NLC was reduced to $255,000 for each of the next two years. Given our explosive enrollment growth, we will actually be receiving substantially less revenue-per-student in the next two years than we did in the past two. We can also expect only a very small increase of approximately .06% in local tax revenues, a result of the flat assessed property valuations. This is a dramatic change from the increased revenues we had been receiving over the past several years and clearly challenges our budget. On top of all this, this week we received a copy of the Governor’s Executive Order charging the Higher Education Coordinating Board with reducing the costs of higher education in Texas. Clearly we face a fiscally challenging future. I am, however, confident that we will work through these challenges together and emerge as a stronger and more efficient district as a result.

Fifth, please keep your thoughts and ideas coming in via the Chancellor’s Suggestion Box located on my web page. Thus far your ideas have led to the reengineering of our travel procedures, assisted our efforts to reduce printing and production costs, initiated a reengineering of our CE delivery model, resulted in the establishment of an early retirement incentive, and reduced the cost of technology, just to name a few. We are all benefitting from your participation in this initiative. Thank you and well done!

Finally, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce everyone to two new administrators. Mr. Jim Eskin has accepted the position of Executive Director of the ACCD Foundation replacing Roland Dubay. Jim comes to us with a number of years of experience as Vice President of Institutional Advancement at Our Lady of the Lake University, Director of Advancement at UTSA, Director of Corporate Communications at the Associated Milk Producers, Inc. in San Antonio and Director of Communications at the Agriculture Council of America in Washington, D.C. Jim was also a major force in organizing the fundraising in support of the construction of the Alamodome. We will be counting on Jim to reenergize our efforts to raise private funds in support of all the good work each of you do.

Dr. Robert Aguero has accepted the position of Vice Chancellor for Academic Success replacing Dr. Kris Clark. Robert most recently served as Vice Chancellor for Instruction at Tarrant County Community College, President of Austin Community College, Vice Chancellor of Instruction at the Dallas Community College District and President of Eastfield College. Robert thus brings great experience and his focus on developmental education will be especially valuable to our Student Success initiatives. It is my expectation that Robert will reach-out to faculty and staff and stimulate engagement in all our efforts dedicated to promoting student success and shared-governance.

Please join me in welcoming both Jim and Robert to the Alamo Colleges Family.

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Bruce H. Leslie
Chancellor
Alamo Colleges
201 W. Sheridan, Bldg. B
San Antonio, TX 78204-1429
(210) 485-0020 (Phone)
(210) 485-0024 (Fax)
bleslie@alamo.edu