On Saturday, December 9, 1972, Austin voters said “Yes” to a new community college. Whether Austin needed or could afford a community college had been debated for years. Three times, in 1963, 1965, and 1968, voters had scuttled plans for a tax-supported college. But this time the results were different,..Read More Members of Austin Community College’s first graduating class receive their degrees, certificates, and diplomas. In 1975, ACC opened its second full-time campus in the former Austin High School building at 1212 Rio Grande Street and renamed it the Rio Grande Campus. Joe Lostracco discussing the early days and founders The histories of Austin Community College and Austin High School first intersected in 1972..Read More By 1976, a bit of the excitement coming from starting a college from scratch had worn off the ACC community’s psyche. This happened despite all the fun and gratification members of the ACC team experienced: weekend picnics in Austin’s parks, bicycling around the city, pickup touch football games at the..Read More The new logo was the creation of Austin Community College commercial art student Beverly Kennon, a transfer from the University of Houston. Kennon was also a full-time social worker in Austin. In February, she won a contest conceived by Student Government Association president Phil Grimley and organized by Commercial Art..Read More Cecil Groves became Austin Community College’s third president, following founding president Thomas M. Hatfield and president ad interim Marvin Shwiff. Groves came to ACC from Delgado Community College in New Orleans, a school comparable in size to ACC and where he had been vice-president for campus operations and academic affairs..Read More Austin Community College won city-wide recognition when the City Council selected ACC government instructor Rosemary Gillett-Karam to serve on the Council’s Charter Revision Committee. Not even five years old, ACC approached an enrollment of 13,000 students in the spring of 1978. Approximately half (62 percent) of those students were enrolled in college-credit courses like English, biology, and government. Twenty-three percent of ACC.s students took non-credit courses. Speak-easy, February 14, 1978 First Instructional Television Course Approved Using video as an instructional tool at ACC began almost from the time that the College opened its doors over five years previously. Chemistry instructor James Archer and Physics instructor John Cise used video tapes to illustrate key principles in their respective disciplines. Similarly, Charles..Read More Acclaimed musical composer and teacher Roger Dickerson spent two days on Austin Community College campuses visiting with students, faculty, and staff informally to entertain and inform members of the college community about his hybrid African-American blues and jazz tunes from Orleans and classical, mostly European concert music. These elements of..Read More In December of 1978, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), the regional accrediting agency, extended full accreditation to Austin Community College. Now all courses taken by ACC’s more than 12,000 students would be recognized by all other institutions belonging to the Southern Association. Full accreditation also gave the..Read More Austin Community College offered its first courses by instructional television (ITV) during the spring semester of 1979. One hundred twenty-nine students enrolled in one introduction to United States government course, and during the fall, 1981, semester, 473 students took five ITV courses. The leader in developing ITV courses for ACC..Read More With the start of the 1980 fall semester, Austin Community College became the primary provider of nurses’ training in Austin. Following the recommendation of a blue-ribbon panel, Brackenridge Hospital discontinued its School of Nursing, which had been supplying the Austin area with most of its nurses since 1915. ACC absorbed..Read More Taxpayers had established ACC with the understanding that there would be no accompanying taxes. But few anticipated the explosive growth that followed. Registration in the fall of 1980 approached 19,000 students, 700 percent more than in 1973. ACC served 40 percent as many students as the University of Texas at..Read More AISD divests itself from ACC, appointing nine members of a new ACC Board of Trustees. Cary Sowell, Faculty Librarian used to attend the AISD Board Meetings when they oversaw ACC. A high default rate led Secretary of Education Terrel Bell to announce the elimination of federal government loans to Austin Community College students. More than 800 schools nationally also will lose federal loan funding. ACC’s default rate was announced to be 30 percent, down 10 percent from the previous year...Read More At it’s regular meeting, convened on July 11, 1983, the Austin Community College Board Of Trustees voted not to renew President Cecil Groves’ contract. The tally was 5 to 4 against renewal, with the four minority trustees voting against renewal. Some of the heat came from a debate over whether..Read More Cecil Groves’ presidency of Austin Community College ended at the stroke of midnight on November 28. 1983, the day after Thanksgiving. Frustration and tension among board members had continued to mount as the school struggled to find sufficient funding after the gut-wrenching defeat in the tax-and-bond election ending in a..Read More In a move to meet the educational and training needs of residents and businesses in Austin’s northwest growth corridor along Highway 183, where Travis and Williamson Counties meet, ACC supporters residing within the Leander Independent School District voted in favor of annexation by the Austin Community College District. In a trade-off,..Read More Austin Community College trustees voted to boost student tuition by $2 per semester credit hour for in-state students (from $13 to $15 per semester hour), making ACC student tuition the highest in Texas. Out-of-state student tuition jumped from $40 to $45 per semester hour, and international student tuition rose from..Read More Austin Community College trustees approved a new school seal. President Dan Angel explained that the seal should be more than an interesting design on official documents and advertising. A seal is part of a “brand” that reflects institutional identity and values. The new ACC seal featured the date the College..Read More This was a well-conceived and effectively organized campaign, and ACC’s President Dan Angel deserved much of the credit. After all, he had been a Michigan state legislator earlier in his career and understood how to run a political campaign. But many others helped too, and that made a critical difference...Read More Austin Community College acquires a 35-acre tract for a new north Austin Campus. The property, purchased from a joint venture partnership that had recently declared bankruptcy and located along Metric Boulevard in far north Austin, cost the College approximately $2 per foot. College officials figured on 70,000 square feet of..Read More The Austin Community College Board of Trustees, ACC President Dan Angel, and faculty and staff launched a project to build the new, state-of-the-art campus. It was named Northridge. Substantial growth in student enrollment had pushed the College’s facilities to capacity, creating the need for more campuses, and winning tax support..Read More An open house brought together members of the Austin Community College family as well as friends from many backgrounds to celebrate not only the conclusion of a $2 million renovation of the Rio Grande campus, located at 1212 Rio Grande Street, but also the fifteenth anniversary of the 1972 election..Read More An effort led by Williamson County civic leaders to create a Williamson County community college failed to win the necessary support of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to establish a new school in the greater Austin metro area. Civic pride and the educational/training needs of a rapidly growing Williamson..Read More Austin Community College agreed to purchase 20 acres of land within the Leander Independent School District on which to build a new teaching center. The site was located on Cypress Creek Road, just south of Hwy 183 and within the Cedar Park city limits and also the Leander ISD. The..Read More In August of 1983, Austin Community College trustees reached a tentative agreement with the Austin Country Club to purchase 193 acres of property along Riverside Drive and Grove Boulevard on which the country club operated a beautiful 18-hole golf course played by such Austin golf legends as Harvey Penick, Ben..Read More To better serve the growing southwest quadrant of the Austin Community College district, ACC opened the doors to its newest facility: a teaching center in rented buildings situated in the Barton Ridge Plaza Shopping Center. Specifically, ACC agreed to a lease arrangement negotiated by Jim Brader, ACC’s Vice President for..Read More On August 31, 1989, ACC officially closed Ridgeview, the former L. C. Anderson High School and the school’s first full-time campus. In 1986, the ACC Board of Trustees had voted to pull out of the facility, which ACC had been leasing from the Austin Independent School District, because of structural..Read More The thing about dynamic and innovative organizations like Austin Community College is that about the time they become comfortable places to work and play, circumstances change, creating a sense of loss and confusion. In 1998, psychologist Spencer Johnson wrote a popular allegory called Who moved My Cheese to help employees..Read More In October 1990, Austin Community College trustees voted to approve the purchase of the Pinnacle building, located on Highway 290 just west of the “Y” in Oak Hill. The ten-story office building will serve the southwest quadrant of ACC’s service district. Built for $8 million, the Pinnacle cost ACC only..Read More In 1989, the Austin Community College Board of Trustees announced that the school would no longer utilize the building on Neal and Thompson streets that served as L. C. Anderson High School. Even more impactful, the Board resolved not to replace it, contending that the site was unsuitable for any..Read More Nineteen-year-old Austin Community College student Mark Henry won three United States junior Olympic weightlifting championships (1993, 1994, and 1997). Henry, from Silsbee, Texas, in his first-year ACC student set a new record in the “snatch,” which is one of two Olympic weightlifing events where the contestant stands above the barbell..Read More Austin Community College and the University of Texas’ College of Education completed a new arrangement, the “Transfer Articulation Agreement.” whereby ACC students who earn an associate’s degree could transfer credits for basic education requirements to the University of Texas’ College of Education freely, meaning that those students would lose no..Read More In accordance with a federal law enacted by Congress in 1986 and signed by President Ronald Reagan, Austin Community College and the Austin Hilton Hotel joined in a program offering free citizenship classes to immigrants who had been living and working in the United States illegally since 1982 in order..Read More During the 1986 tax-and-bond election, ACC representatives had promised voters in Leander that in return for their support the College would return the favor by build a new, full-service campus to serve their fast-growing area. For some time, northern Travis and southern Williamson counties ACC had been expanding its presence..Read More Besides Mark Henry, other Olympic weightlifters with connections to Austin Community College competed and made names for themselves and their school. In late 1992, several ACC and UT- Austin students formed a weightlifters’ club called ACC/Longhorn. Team members worked out together in the weight room on the ACC Northridge campus...Read More Responding to a rising demand from growing numbers of Hill Country residents for post-secondary, college-credit courses, particularly for courses in the allied health sciences, Austin Community College began offering classes in Fredericksburg High school in the fall of 1992. Students included residents of Kerrville, Mason, Llano, and Junction as well..Read More ACC’s new president, Dr. Roberto Aguero, was a shy but persistent 53-year-old third generation Tejano who grew up in Camp Wood, Texas, a small town deep in the southwest Hill Country. One day in the autumn of 1967, he sat at his desk in the 11-th grade English classroom at..Read More [Frame this better to include a statement regarding the success of the microchip training program.] In a major leap forward into the 21st century, Austin Community College and the Austin-based high-tech consortium Sematech announced a $4 million internship program to train engineers and technicians for 21st-century jobs in the field..Read More The current South Austin Campus opened in 2006 and has a proud tradition of providing academic and career-technical training for a diverse student population. The campus today is home to the Teacher Prep Institute, making it popular among future educators. In 2007, the story of Austin Community College turned sharply as a result of both necessity and opportunity. Since its inception, ACC’s financial situation had remained more-or-less tenuous–more so than most other public community colleges in the state. Voters approved the creation of the College but only with the caveat..Read More On that chilly Saturday in December,1972, voters residing within the boundaries of the Austin Independent School District gave birth to Austin Community College as an appendage of the AISD. ACC could not tax property-owners to raise money to meet operating expenses. Expenses would be paid for by student tuition and..Read More The inauguration of Austin Community College’s Round Rock Campus in 2010 marked a significant milestone in the institution’s expansion and commitment to accessible education. This state-of-the-art campus quickly established itself as a beacon of learning, offering a diverse array of programs and cutting-edge facilities. From healthcare and science programs equipped..Read More The opening of Austin Community College’s Elgin Campus was a significant milestone in the college’s history, representing the fulfillment of a long-held dream for the residents of the town and surrounding areas. The campus opened its doors in the fall of 2013, and its arrival was warmly welcomed by the..Read More ACC opened its 10th campus and the first community college in Hays County. In addition to a variety of academic courses and career training in areas, the campus features the award-winning Public Safety Training Center for regional first responders. Austin Community College opened the first phase of its new Highland Campus in 2014, offering a state-of-the-art facility for students and faculty. The campus is located on the site of the former Highland Mall, which was a popular shopping destination in the 1970s and 1980s. The mall experienced a decline..Read More ACC’s Elgin campus offers the first veterinary technician training program in the greater Austin area after a successful bond election in August. ACC’s president Richard Rhodes expressed appreciation for the voters who demonstrated their support for what the College has done to educate and train the citizens of the district..Read More To boost the number of engineering graduates and come closer to meeting the demands for engineers in the state of Texas and the United States, Austin Community College’s president, Richard Rhodes, has initiated a partnership that would reduce the gap between junior and senior colleges in the perceptions of many..Read More Meeting the need for registered nurses in Central Texas was becoming more and more difficult as the region’s population continued its remarkable growth. Stephanie Berman, a single mother of three residing in Round Rock, completed the requirements for an associate’s degree in nursing from Austin Community College and subsequently moved..Read More ACC closed the Pinnacle building in 2018 to evaluate needed repairs. In 2019, the board of trustees decided the building would cost too much to repair or renovate. Now the college is debating whether to build an entirely new campus on the property. That will likely involve tearing down or..Read More With roots as a Reconstruction-era gathering ground for African-American Baptists, the St. John Encampment Commons is designed to honor the rich history of community, education, and empowerment at Highland. The St. John Encampment Commons also is home to the new UFCU Pavilion. The pavilion offers a space for college events,..Read More Austin Community College District (ACC) Chancellor, Dr. Richard M. Rhodes, will retire in August 2023 after 12 years of service to the college and the Central Texas community. He is the longest-serving Chancellor in the college’s 50-year history. Since joining ACC as President/CEO in September 2011, Dr. Rhodes has cultivated..Read More
History of Austin Community College
ACC Founded
First Graduating Class
Rio Grande Campus Opens
ACC’s Founding President Tom Hatfield Moves On
A New Logo for ACC
A New President for ACC: Dr. Cecil Groves
ACC Faculty Member Earns City Council’s Acclaim
ACC Enrollment Reaches 13,000
The Beginning of Distance Learning at ACC
Roger Dickerson: Another Distinguished Guest Visits ACC
ACC Accredited
Instructional Television (ITV)
ACC Takes on Brackenridge Hospital’s School of Nursing
Voters Say “No” to Taxing Authority.
First ACC Board
National Direct Student Loan Program
ACC at Age Ten
Cecil Groves’ Presidency Comes to an End and the BOT Appoints Brent Knight Interim Head
ACC District Annexes Leander ISD
A Big Financial Crunch
A New College Seal
Taxing Authority Approved
A New North Austin Campus
Dedication of Northridge Campus Site
Open House celebrates renovation of ACC’s Rio Grande Campus
Campaign to Establish Williamson County Community College Quashed
Cypress Creek Campus
Riverside: ACC’s Third Campus
Growing Toward the Southwest
ACC Closes Ridgeview Campus
Rio Grande Campus on the Chopping Block?
Rising to the Pinnacle
Eastridge: ACC Returns to East Austin… Sort of
ACC’s Olympic Weightlifting Champion
ACC and UT Course Transfer Agreement
ACC Amnesty Classes for Immigrants
Cypress Creek Campus: A Promise Fulfilled
ACC/Longhorn Weightlifters Shine
ACC-Fredericksburg
ACC’s New President: Dr. Robert Aguero
ACC Partners with Sematech in Nanoelectronics Technology
South Austin Campus Opens
A Shopping Mall: Not What ACC Used to Be
ACC Celebrates 35 Years (2008)
Round Rock Campus Opens
Elgin Campus Opens
Hays Campus opens
Phase 1 of the Highland Campus Opens
Veterinary Technician Training Program at ACC Elgin
ACC Partners With Texas A&M
ACC Earns the Right to Grant Baccalaureate Degrees in Nursing, with Conditions
The Pinnacle Campus Closes Suddenly
The St. John Encampment Commons and UFCU Pavilion at ACC Highland Campus Opens
ACC Chancellor Dr. Richard M. Rhodes Steps Down
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