Out of a pool of 80 applicants, the district’s board chose Francisco Solis, a retired educator, to helm the historic college as its 14th president.
The son of a truck driver and a stay-at-home mom, Solis has an intimate knowledge of the education scene in San Antonio and is committed to the Alamo Colleges District North Star: ending poverty through education and training.
Solis is a graduate of Central Catholic High School, The University of Texas School of Law, St. Edwards University and San Antonio College. He credits his parents for his success and access to education, taking a moment to compose himself after briefly tearing up when talking about his family.
During our interview, Solis described a conversation he had with his mom when he briefly considered dropping out of law school.
“She said, ‘You know I haven’t worn secondhand clothing for you to quit on us now.’ And she said, ‘Your failure is our failure.’ And she said, ‘If I have to, I will take you. I’ll drag you back,” Solis said. “And so, I went back and I finished.”
Solis also traced his connection to SAC, where he enrolled in the school’s mortuary science program in the 90s, later becoming a professor and a dean. Solis also worked for the institution writing and planning the college’s accreditation report and applying for major awards for the college like the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
The San Antonio Report sat down with Solis in his office, a light-filled spacious room overlooking the campus, to discuss his goals and approach to leadership at a time when academic freedom on campus is increasing a target of federal and state legislation.
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Q: In San Antonio, only half of high school graduates enroll in a higher ed program and even fewer graduate from college. What role does San Antonio College play in addressing this issue?
A: I had recently adopted a little boy out of the foster care system when one of my colleagues asked me to attend a meeting for the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education held on campus. I went to the meeting because they had a free baked potato — I’m joking, you know — and the statistic that they read to me was just that exact statistic at the time. Especially the San Antonio Independent School District, they were losing half of their students, at almost every major marker. My son at the time, was two or three months old and he would have gone into Mark Twain. And I said, ‘That’s not acceptable.’
The truth is our Latino enrollment at San Antonio College is roughly 70%, and we’re very proud that our numbers and our data align so closely to the demographics of Bexar County. I think as a community college, that’s our purpose. That means increasing the graduation rate from about 29% to 40%, making sure students are graduating debt-free, and that means getting them into high wage, high demand programs that align closely with two things that we’re working on. The last thing is for us to align closely with the workforce needs. That’s part of the nearly $1 billion bond that just passed, is that alignment to those sectors by college and by our strengths. San Antonio College will expand its nursing program, doubling the current capacity of our nursing program here on campus from 500 to 1,000 students.
Q: At this moment in San Antonio, workforce development needs are soaring and several actors, in and outside the education sector are stepping up to create pipelines. How do you strike the balance between continuing to offer affordable pathways for students to attend traditional four-year universities and meeting the moment with trade programs?
A: Now you hear universities talking about workforce programs. It’s as if community colleges haven’t been doing it for the past 60 years. We’ve been invested in this work. We have longstanding partnerships in this area in workforce development. It’s interesting to see universities move into this space, but it shouldn’t be at the exclusion of the good work the community colleges have already been doing.
I think we need to stop talking about the workforce as if it’s distinct from, say, the transfer degrees. I don’t know anybody who goes into even university that’s not intending to get a job, right? So whether we’re thinking of it in the traditional sense or not, students are thinking of it that way already, and maybe we need to align our language to what students’ needs and language are.
Q: More legislation at the state and federal level is targeting academic freedom on campus. Have you seen the impact of this at San Antonio College already? What is your vision for maintaining the culture of academic freedom on campus?
A: If not on campus, then where? That was the purpose of higher education — to inform citizens. I think that we are still committed to that role. There’s no doubt we’ll have to examine exactly what the Texas legislature bills will mean, in particular, to how we do work on campus. Our faculty remain committed to the best experience for our students within the confines of the law. The voters will have to decide what academic freedom means on a college campus, and for now, they’ve decided. I think we’ll see, whether it’s the state government or the federal government, the impact legislation has on higher education or whether it will impact the next round of elections.
Right now, we’ve got so much to maneuver out of the Texas Legislature. The two biggest things impacting us are what will the homestead exemption, because of how we get our funding sources, and the taxing authority for school districts as we move forward. On the federal level, San Antonio College has about 19 grants for a total of $30 million. Will we be able to continue to operate with or without that funding? What will that look like? Those are all questions we’re exploring every day as new executive orders come out, and then those are challenged through the courts.
Q: Making use of artificial intelligence is the norm for college students these days. What are your thoughts on artificial intelligence technologies and how do you think San Antonio College can leverage or use them?
A: There are two things that concern me. First is, inwardly, as an institution, how are we using AI? And how are faculty using it? The other part of that is, how are we teaching AI, or are we teaching AI? What I do know now is that some of our students are reporting back that in some of their jobs already, AI is a requirement, and we’re not teaching it. So I feel like we’re already kind of behind the ball. We’re working real hard this summer to figure that out by creating an AI degree plan and rubric together. I’m not interested in engaging in a simple policy that says students can’t use AI. We are already beyond that. But what will a common policy look like? What areas of the campus, like student services, would be improved by using AI?
Q: Alamo Colleges has a history of partnering with K-12 institutions to create direct pipelines in the form of early college high schools and dual credit programs. From your view, what does the future of those programs look like?
A: In our service area, there’s roughly 100,000 students who could qualify or take dual credit. Currently in the Alamo Colleges, we’re serving less than a fifth of that, and our goal is to reach many more students. What we know is there is a vast difference in completion of students who take and are exposed to dual credit and those that are not. We also know that the more hours they complete, the more likely they are to complete a transfer degree. We know then that the benefits of dual credit in K-12 are undeniable. We also know that disproportionately wealthier school districts are able to expose more students to dual credit than the non-wealthy school districts. Currently, most dual credit students earn nine credit hours by the time they graduate high school, but we’d like to move the goal to 15 credits hours because that would be a semester completed. As more students and families move into the decision-making about a long range plan — and not just the associate’s degree and the baccalaureate — but possibly for a master’s or those thinking about a PhD program, I think we’ll see an increase in dual credit.
Q: What have you learned during your time as interim president over the past year about the college’s main challenges and opportunities?
A: It’s given me an opportunity to really kind of define my leadership style. I kind of fluctuate between two styles: transformative and collaborative. Aside from that, I think that before you can define your leadership, you need to define your values. Be kind to people. You can be kind and still move forward as an institution. The other thing is, I think you need some clear goals. People need to understand where you’re leading them. These principles have served me well.
What I have learned in this role in particular, is that this is a very complex job. For example, I have to guide a $93 million budget. Not many individuals have had that experience when you go into this role. The other thing is accreditation, which happens every 10 years and happened to line up with my time as interim. I had done extensive work for accreditation in the college’s mortuary science program. It’s basically the same thing, but maybe on steroids when you’re talking about the whole campus. There’s also the partnerships within Alamo Colleges, with other higher education institutions like UTSA and Texas A&M-San Antonio and with local employers like Toyota. It’s maneuvering all of that complexity with the everyday things that come up. It’s about how you manage a crisis, and the team that you use to manage it. I really believe in the strength of my team, especially the vice presidents and the deans, and I empower them to be able to work in their area and get their job done. I’m not interested in doing their job for them.
