This story has been updated.
When Josiah Rodriguez was approached to apply to become a student trustee for Alamo Colleges District this past spring, it didn’t immediately make sense to him.
He thought; How could one person create an impact for more than 80,000 students?
“I said, ‘What are the first steps?’ I mean, I didn’t even know what I was going to eat the next day, let alone how to plan for a full year ahead,” Rodriguez said.
In 2014 Alamo Colleges District became the first community college system in Texas to add a student trustee position to its board of trustees. The way it works is that the board selects a student trustee and an alternate. These appointed, non-voting positions, are meant to add the student perspective and voice to the board’s decisions.
Rodriguez, 23, will be graduating in May with an associate degree and plans to transfer to the University of Texas at San Antonio to pursue a bachelor’s degree in public administration.
He is the 12th appointed student trustee to share the dais with the elected board of trustees, which is comprised of nine board members, each representing a section of Bexar County.
“I think my position is more important than ever,” Rodriguez said. “Right now voices are being suppressed… so being able to have a voice and still be able to be a student, I think goes a long way.”
Northwest Vista College student Nala Knight, 27, serves as the student trustee alternate. She is working toward a degree in education and is currently the only active member of her college’s student events organization.
Both Knight and Rodriguez attend board meetings, district events, conferences and they stay in close contact with the student government associations of each of the five colleges to better understand and represent their needs. They represent nearly 88,000 students.
The student candidates are selected through a series of interviews that begin with the president of the main college they attend. One student from each of the colleges — San Antonio College, St. Philip’s College, Palo Alto College, Northwest Vista College and Northeast Lakeview College — is selected to then be interviewed by the board of trustees during a special board meeting that normally takes place in April.
“If you would have asked [me] two years ago: ‘Did you ever see yourself being here today?’ Absolutely not,” Knight said. “This is more than what I can imagine and I just can’t wait to see what I look like in the next two years.”
The appointed trustee and alternate then serve a one year term that begins in May and ends in April. The district provides a stipend of $3,750 for the Student Trustee position, and $1,875 for the Alternate Student Trustee.
Both Knight and Rodriguez were recruited through their involvement in clubs and student government associations at their respective colleges.
Rodriguez recalls his interview with San Antonio College President Francisco Solis and later with the board as a nerve wrecking experience. He focused on anchoring his answers not on his accomplishments, but on the achievements and needs of the more than 80,000 students like him. And he believes this is what stood out to the board.
“I know I’m a good student — not to sound cocky — but I also know that when we see the perspectives of every student is when we make the most change and [have] the most success,” Rodriguez said.
‘Who owns the Alamo Colleges?’
The process of creating this role began in 2013, when trustees and Alamo Colleges leadership agreed that the student perspective would be helpful. University systems across the state, including University of Texas System and Texas A&M University System, each select a student regent every year.
Rodell Asher, director of district-wide student engagement and leadership, researched the position for the board back in 2013. The goal was to develop a role that provided as much opportunity for growth for the student as it did for the board.
“They gain so many skill sets that they would not have otherwise,” Asher said. “They have access to experienced educators and experienced business council representatives. They have access to establish a mentorship relationship with any of the trustees. They have access to understand the operational side of the house.
“They explore and expand their knowledge, but it also helps them as they go advocate for students whether it’s at the state level or at the national level,” she added.
In 2014, Jacob Wong became Alamo College’s first student trustee, today he works for the district’s human resources department.
Wong enrolled in college about 12 years after graduating high school, and reluctantly engaged in student clubs and student government.
Wong said he didn’t immediately realize the impact of his involvement, but he was looking for a better experience in college than what he had in high school. He was looking to be more connected this time around.
“I couldn’t point out what that was at the time. When you’re going through it you have no idea what it is,” Wong said. “But there was something relatable about going through college with people, people you got to know or got to engage with.”
Although he heard of the push to create a district-wide student government position, Wong said he didn’t think it would be created in time for him to have anything to do with it. Then, at the start of his last year at San Antonio College, he was approached by his classmates to apply for the role.
He did, and he will never forget the question that landed him the role.
“The question was so simple: Who owns the Alamo Colleges?,” Wong recalls. “And I said, ‘The people of Bexar County own the Alamo Colleges.’”
For Wong, one of the biggest lessons he learned along the way, was not to lose sight of the purpose of their role, which is to always act and speak with the best interest of students in mind.
“I remember having a very serious conversation with an advisor,” Wong said. “She was a faculty senate member and she never pushed me towards anything, she said ‘Nobody should. You represent the students. Remember that. You don’t represent us.’”
The ripple effect of education
After a decade of selecting students for this role, Asher said they’ve built a network of students who have remained engaged with the colleges one way or another.
She considers what they do as work. By representing all students, these student trustees spread the word of the role of community colleges in the lives of many students who may not have seen their needs met by universities and other colleges.
Asher works with them to develop their presentation skills for regular meetings and even at state and national conferences. They also get to pass along their knowledge and lessons to the next generation.
“It’s helpful to have someone who’s already gone through the journey and to see it through their eyes,” Asher said. “Because it is one year, so there’s a whole lot to learn in a short period of time realistically.”
For Rodriguez, who is halfway through his term, the main lesson so far has been to take every opportunity he has to learn what the current student’s experience is and use his own knowledge and position to communicate it.
“With the power of education we really can succeed and we can recognize when we are being suppressed,” Rodriguez said. “What Alamo Colleges is doing, is trying to drive home the fact that education ends poverty, but it also ends so much more. It ends the cycle of repetition of being suppressed.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the group in which Nala Knight is the sole member. It should be a student events organization.
The San Antonio Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
