Austin Community College board names 3 finalists for chancellor. Who are they?

The Austin Community College Board of Trustees has named its three finalists for chancellor of the city's only public community college system.

The candidates are Joyce Ester, president of Normandale Community College in Minnesota; Robert Garza, president of Palo Alto College in San Antonio; and Russell Lowery-Hart, president of Amarillo College.

Whoever is selected will replace Richard Rhodes, who is leaving his position Aug. 31 after leading the college for 12 years.

The trustees selected the three finalists after the ACC Search Advisory Committee reviewed the candidates' applications, conducted interviews and made its recommendations to the board. The committee included 35 trustees, faculty, staff, students and other community members.

Members of the public can meet the finalists when each candidate visits ACC for a community forum during the last week of June. The Board of Trustees will then visit the campuses of the finalists before making an offer.

Before their public forums, the American-Statesman spoke with each candidate about their experience and why they want to lead ACC. Here's what they said:

Joyce Ester

For nearly nine years, Ester has served as the president of Normandale Community College, where she said she has worked to eliminate barriers and opportunity gaps for students and supported students by increasing the number of advisers and counselors around campus.

"We have really leaned into this notion of being a student-ready college, but I also think that that encompasses being a leader who understands that in order to get that work done, you must be able to support, encourage and get behind the employees who are doing the work," Ester said.

She said she was interested in joining ACC as its chancellor partly due to the college's strategic plan and its emphasis on student success and equity in student outcomes.

Ester, who currently leads a college with an enrollment of about 13,800 students, said she's also looking to serve in a position where she can help more students; ACC currently has about 34,500 students.

"The ability to impact a larger number of students, be a part of a yet another institution that is really focused on student success and have the opportunity to work with a board to be able to make very specific decisions for the specific students and employees of that district, that's something that's very interesting to me," Ester said.

Ester said she would bring a "wealth" of senior leadership experience to the role, including nearly 11 years leading higher education institutions. She previously served as president of Kennedy-King College in Illinois, associate vice president for student services at Bakersfield College in California and assistant vice president at California State University, Fresno.

Robert Garza

Garza has worked at Palo Alto College for about 20 years and served as president for the last five years, where he said he has centered "caring" and building connections with the college's approximately 10,560 students.

He previously worked as the college's dean of community development and partnerships, dean of student success and vice president of student success, as well as president of Mountain View College in Dallas.

Garza said he feels like he has grown up in community colleges through his work talking to students and parents in admissions offices, serving as the college's leader during the COVID-19 pandemic, and working in virtual education programs.

"I bring innovation, I bring some creativity, and I bring a diverse perspective in thinking about how we serve our community, what the needs are of our students and how we can navigate that," Garza said. "A lot of that comes from my own experience."

Garza said he wants to lead ACC partly because the college's efforts to address gaps in the job market and finding solutions to challenges facing the industrial workforce align with his "core beliefs of serving community and helping people." He said his background in community colleges and the workforce will help him deliver on the college's vision.

"I have been provided this opportunity to serve the Austin community that is really aligned to my own personal values, (which are) aligned to Austin Community College's values," Garza said. "I really would love the opportunity to be a part of that solution, be a part of the Austin Community College family (and) to help serve the community."

Russell Lowery-Hart

Since 2014, Lowery-Hart has served as president of Amarillo College, a community college in the Texas Panhandle with about 12,000 students.

As president, he said his accomplishments include building "a robust culture of caring" that drives student success and building the college's Advocacy and Resource Center, which provides social services, food and other support to students outside of the classroom.

Lowery-Hart said that Amarillo College was one of two winners for the 2023 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence due to its focus on post-graduation student success and improving graduation rates.

"We dramatically improved our completion rates, closed almost all of our equity gaps and doubled the labor market outcomes for our students who get a credential or degree," Lowery-Hart said. "Those are the metrics that we've held ourselves accountable to because they're the metrics that will change students' lives."

Lowery-Hart has also served as vice president of academic affairs at Amarillo College and as associate provost for academic affairs at West Texas A&M University.

If selected as chancellor, he said he's most excited about the potential to use ACC's resources to provide additional support services to more students, including those facing poverty, working extra jobs or raising a family, so that they can earn a degree.

ACC "has a reputation for embracing the latest innovations. It's a really good district and school in a really lovely, inclusive community," Lowery-Hart said. "I never envisioned that I would leave (Amarillo College,) but when you look at the landscape of higher education, Austin is one of those jobs that I think everyone would aspire to."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin Community College board names finalists for chancellor opening