ACC has great power.\u00a0 I want to take a moment of personal privilege and talk about the power of ACC to affect one person:\u00a0 Rhonda Little.<\/p>\n
Rhonda passed away on Sunday, June 14.\u00a0 She started working at ACC in January 2013 and she was immediately hooked.\u00a0 Her professional life had been in the legal field, working for large law firms.\u00a0 Switching from that world to a community college was, I expect, rather like going down the rabbit hole with Alice.\u00a0 But, while she took a considerable pay cut, and didn’t know anything about who and what we are, she dived in with her spirit of “let me help” and “I will learn”.<\/p>\n
I hired Rhonda to be an administrative assistant in my office when I was Dean of Social & Behavioral Sciences.\u00a0 She supported not only the work of my office in tandem with Mandy Cummings, but also the work of the Geographic Information Systems Department.\u00a0 Have you ever thought about what it might be like to plunge into an entirely different professional environment where you don’t know the norms or expectations or protocols?\u00a0 In Rhonda’s case, everything was different.\u00a0 The expectation of professional dress was different (read:\u00a0 much more casual).\u00a0 The expectation of supervisory authority was different (read:\u00a0 don’t tell faculty what to do).\u00a0 The rhythms of the job were tied to the rhythms of semesters.\u00a0 The holidays – oh, the holidays!\u00a0 Outside of education, most folks don’t get ten days at Christmas, a week in March, two days at Thanksgiving – plus accruing vacation leave.<\/p>\n
Rhonda loved ACC from the beginning.\u00a0 She loved the power of our mission.\u00a0 She loved helping students.\u00a0 She loved learning – and we are, after all, a learning institution.\u00a0 She took advantage of multiple professional development opportunities and accrued scores of hours of PD.\u00a0 She served as an officer in the Classified Employees Association.\u00a0 She applied for the Leadership Academy but was, unfortunately, unable to participate due to her challenging health issues.\u00a0 She loved helping me organize events (the annual SBS convocation, two conferences last year).\u00a0 She loved taking notes at my meetings, or purchasing “swag” for the faculty coordinators to give to students at AoS information sessions, or figuring out some new process or procedure or protocol.\u00a0 She loved everything about her job.\u00a0 And that’s because she loved what ACC is, who we are, and how we can save the world, one student at a time.<\/p>\n
Since the announcement of her passing, I’ve received lots of emails of condolence.\u00a0 One friend here described Rhonda as “fiercely protective of me”.\u00a0 She was indeed that.\u00a0 She was my work partner, my defender against all comers, and my dear friend.\u00a0 She never thought I was wrong (bless her!), and she would do anything I asked or needed.\u00a0 She thought I needed a caretaker, and she appointed herself to that role.\u00a0 The emails I’ve received mention laughing with Rhonda, having good conversations with Rhonda, and learning from Rhonda.\u00a0 She has been described as wonderfully kind, cheerful, helpful, patient, sweet.\u00a0 She was born to be an executive assistant and she did it well.\u00a0 And we were a great team.<\/p>\n
Did she get frustrated with ACC’s processes on occasion?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Did she get irritated when people wouldn’t return phone calls?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Was she sometimes stubborn and overly-critical?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Just as ACC is imperfect, Rhonda was imperfect.\u00a0 But ACC also provided her with the security of extended leave thanks in part to the generosity of colleagues who donate to the sick leave pool each year.\u00a0 And ACC provided her with benefits that mattered in the midst of extended health challenges.\u00a0 And most especially, ACC provided her with a caring community – and gave her reason to get better.\u00a0 When she was away from work with her illness, her goal was always – always – to return to work.\u00a0 That kept her going when life was a struggle.\u00a0 She was so captivated by our mission and impact, and by our people, and by our students’ stories, and by the commitment of our senior leadership, and by her daily interactions with friends on the 6th floor of HBC.\u00a0 She loved coming to work and making a difference.<\/p>\n
ACC has great power.\u00a0 In this instance, its power helped Rhonda fight the cancer beast for five and a half years.\u00a0 She is irreplaceable.\u00a0 I will miss her sparkle, and her quick wit, and her ability to be my sounding board, and her ever-ready willingness to support me and defend me.\u00a0 But what I will miss most is her belief in the power of Austin Community College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ACC has great power.\u00a0 I want to take a moment of personal privilege and talk about the power of ACC to affect one person:\u00a0 Rhonda Little. Rhonda passed away on Sunday, June 14.\u00a0 She started working at ACC in January 2013 and she was immediately hooked.\u00a0 Her professional life had been in the legal field, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}