On a balmy Friday morning in October, Salvador Hector Ochoa smiled softly as he looked at a painting perched at the top of a staircase in the voluminous domed entrance hall of Texas A&M San Antonio’s main building on the South Side.
“I see my grandmother in that,” he said, pointing out a painting of mariachis serenading an elderly woman called Las Mañanitas de Mi Madre by Joe R. Villarreal. “Seeing a part of your culture that’s proudly displayed … and really incorporating the history of this community has been a beautiful surprise for me.”
He then bounded forward, greeting professors and students as he whisked through the the campus, through towering doors and over to a newly opened library, pointing out intricate and intentional design features at the nascent university along the way, which he said reflect, lift up and support the historically underserved residents of South San Antonio.
Ochoa, a McAllen native who started as the third president of the university just over three months ago, said he sees himself in those elements and the students and professors that walk the halls.
The new president took the helm of the university amid record-breaking growth in programs, buildings and enrollment. He succeeds Cynthia Teniente-Matson, who accepted the position of president at San José State University in January.
At the same time, however, he is tasked with building trust and repairing a sense of community with employees that has deteriorated in recent years, driving 19% of faculty and staff to leave in the last academic year. Ochoa addressed that number during commencement in September, as reported by the campus newspaper, The Mesquite.
“We need to stop that,” he said at the time, referring to the exodus of employees. “We need to make sure that you’re valued.”
The loss of employees is also part of a trend, Ochoa said, of post-pandemic disruptions impacting many industries.
In the months since, he has gone on a listening tour, which is set to last until the end of the fall semester, and established standing meetings with representatives of both faculty and staff — reengineering morale in a short amount of time.
Leonard Love, the president of the Faculty Senate and an associate professor of management in the College of Business, said the difference so far has been palpable.
“The atmosphere at the university is changing very quickly,” he said. “It was getting very negative and we were losing not only faculty, we were losing good staff people. And that has changed.”
Much of that change, Love said, came from faculty feeling like they now have a voice in the future of the university and the president’s office.
Despite low morale, Ochoa said he has been heartened by the stories he has heard while talking to faculty and staff during his listening tours.
“Many of our faculty have told me that they’re from South San Antonio, and they’ve deliberately chosen to be here because they want to elevate their community,” he said. “I think that faculty who come here feel in many ways that they are pioneers, that this is a frontier for them. And they’re very, very committed to that.”
Rebecca De Leon, the president of Staff Council and the assistant director for community partnerships and campus visit experience, said Ochoa has also been present at many student events, like the first Jaguar Day for prospective students.
“We got feedback from faculty and staff that just to have his presence there was a really positive experience,” she said.
He also was at the second annual Zoo Ring Day, in which the class rings of students are left in the cage of B’alam the Jaguar at San Antonio Zoo, a nod to the school’s mascot.
But the most critical takeaway from interacting with the president so far, Love said, has been his commitment to the university’s mission.
“He is very, very energetic, and very engaged and he’s very committed to the mission of the university, [which is] a somewhat unique mission as being the only university on the South Side,” he said.
That commitment started decades ago when Ochoa was growing up in the Rio Grande Valley.
Beginnings in the RGV
Growing up in McAllen, Ochoa saw bright, capable peers struggle to succeed because of language and financial barriers that stood in the way of education.
Ochoa said he was privileged to have parents who graduated from high school and spoke English and Spanish, giving him a leg up that many of his peers didn’t have.
“That left a mark on me,” he said. “And is why I pursued the field and did my doctorate in the school of psychology from Texas A&M.”
The program was the only one in the U.S. at the time within that discipline to focus on how to serve and educate Hispanic children, he said, which has remained a focus of his throughout his career.
In addition to his doctorate in school psychology, Ochoa holds a master’s degree in education in guidance and counseling from Pan-American University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from St. Edward’s University in Austin.
His mission to tear down barriers took him from one end of the U.S.-Mexico border to the other, serving as dean of the College of Education at the University of New Mexico and the University of Texas-Pan American before his most recent post as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at San Diego State University.
Ochoa said he sees his current role as a homecoming and a convergence of those past experiences.
“For me, my research was trying to create those pathways, so I was very moved by the mission statement when I saw ‘catalyst for opportunities,’ and in many ways the real focus of wanting to be an exemplar for students’ success,” he said. “Then when I saw what they wanted to become, a research institution and to offer doctoral programs, I’ve had experience in those areas.”
The Hispanic-Serving institution is working to make higher education more accessible in various ways, including a tuition and fee assistance program for top students and transfers launching next year called Jaguar Promise.
The College of Education and Human Development is also working on addressing a shortage of bilingual educators, which leads to gaps in education during pivotal times.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the university a $1.5 million grant to recruit, train and retain English as Second Language (ESL) teachers.
“This particular grant will help increase the multilingual teacher pipeline,” Esther Garza, associate professor and chair of the university’s department of educator and leadership preparation program, said. “It will help us support students who are pursuing bilingual education and ESL education in terms of scholarships, and it will also help with their certification costs.”
In addition to the goals of the university aligning with his own, Ochoa also said he was drawn to the challenge and opportunity of spearheading the next chapter of Texas A&M-San Antonio, which is now the fastest-growing college in the A&M network.
“It’s a lot harder to be a president when you’re leading an institution that’s 14 years old, and you have to build it,” he said.
The future of TAMU-SA
Ochoa sees the coming years as transformational as more buildings and programs are set to expand opportunities for both undergraduate, graduate and doctoral studies.
The amount of programs has multiplied along with the addition of students, outpacing the college’s plans for student housing, with a shortage of on-campus housing leading to a dip in first-year students this year.
Ochoa said he is just starting to fully understand the enormity of the possibilities for the university, with hundreds of acres of undeveloped land and expanding partnerships with schools, businesses and hospitals.
On Friday, the university announced the addition of men’s and women’s basketball as intercollegiate athletic team offerings for the 2024-25 school year, building on the roster of programs that started in 2020.
“The new men’s and women’s basketball teams will build on this momentum, expanding the university’s footprint in the community, as well as enriching the student experience and campus life,” Ochoa said.
By next summer, the school will see the addition of a 96,000-square-foot student housing facility and a 22,322-square-foot recreation center featuring a gym, fitness/weight room, locker rooms and basketball courts.
Other near-term projects include a new public health and education building in collaboration with Texas A&M Health Science Center, multipurpose athletic fields and a 26,000-square-foot Educare center providing childcare and a learning model for early childhood education.
For Ochoa, the possibilities for the university’s 700 acres of land are endless.
“I will say that I have more cactus and mesquite trees than probably any other institution in the country … but the opportunities are incredible and in many ways greater than I envisioned,” he said. “And I feel very fortunate to be here to play a role and to work with our community partners, our county, our city partners and the system to bring that to fruition.”
