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 bitter defeat, making change at the top increasingly likely. To settle things down, the BOT (Board of Trustees) selected Roland Smith, ACC’s chief financial officer and a known and trusted quantity, to keep school operations running as smoothly as possible. After a nationwide search, however, the BOT named Brent Knight president ad interim with instructions to restore administrative order and predictability. He was given from six to nine months to complete the job. Although Knight declared his intention to act only with prudence and with the support of faculty, he acted aggressively, firing a number of administrators who, he said, did not have the College’s needs clearly in mind. Knight told the media that he expected to be the full-time president of a community college somewhere; meanwhile, enjoyed restoring old automobiles and spent some of his spare time restoring a Corvette convertible.
For some time, controversy had swirled around three major issues: (1) how best to find and allocate ACC’s limited financial resources to meet educational necessities, (2) the role of faculty in college governance, and (3) accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. One was the idea of governance shared by administration and faculty who collectively complained about Groves’ management style. The first issue was existential. Either a reliable and sufficient source of money would be found or the College would die. In addressing issues of governance that faced the College, President Hatfield had implemented a representative governance structure featuring an appointed Faculty Council comprising only full-time faculty. Under this system, some members of the faculty wanted to be involved in the generation of instructional policies. President Hatfield and executive Vice-President Marvin Shwiff regarded the administration as the primary generator and implementer of instructional policy. The Faculty Council functioned largely as advisors with involvement in policy generation largely limited to “input” and final ratification of administration policy.
At the end of the 1974-5 academic year, an explosive issue turned some of the excitement in starting a new college into bitterness. In scheduling and staffing the school’s first summer sessions, ACC’s administration treated them like a fall or spring term and offered faculty the option of teaching courses that ran the entire summer, providing them with employment for the entire year. That approach was popular among young faculty just out of graduate school and starting families. There was some advantage to the school as well. Students could use summer school to advance more quickly toward meeting degree requirements. At one Board meeting, faculty spoke passionately in favor of a full summer courseat the same time that he schedule that could stabilize family budgets. Cecil Groves had to deal with the fallout from his predessor’s policy at the same time that he wrestled with a maddening parking shortage that plagued faculty and students, especially at the Rio Grande campus downtown.
Another divisive and fundamental issue had to do with whether ACC was a single college with multiple autonomous campuses or multiple colleges more or less unified.
Brent Knight understood his mandate to be, first, to review the College’s effectiveness and efficiency. It was clear and did not take long for him to determine that to achieve that objective, ACC needed a tax-base, although he added “I do not,” believe I can bring about a tax-base in my six to nine months,” but that ACC students would not be under privileged compared to students in other community colleges whose tuition was less than ACCs because those other community colleges supported their schools with property-tax revenue. Knight came down very hard on faculty and staff members who, he asserted were undermining the College’s efficiency and effectiveness with their criticism of the administration’s.
Source: Speak-Easy: ACC Faculty and Staff Newsletter, December 6, 1983