Dr. Robert Vela’s presidency at San Antonio College (SAC) has resulted in a more diverse administration that reflects the student body, increased engagement with the surrounding community and a soon-to-be-developed diversity initiative that aims to embed a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion across the college’s divisions.
These ongoing changes are part of what Vela calls “serving our backyard,” a nod to the greater San Antonio region that is home to many of the college’s more than 20,000 students. As SAC leaders work to accomplish the institution’s strategic plan, Vela acknowledges that a chief priority has been pointing every campus member to the “north star” that is student success.
“The guiding, north star for us is that, first of all, student success is for all, but secondly, that whatever we do, we must provide our students excellence,” said Vela, who has been SAC president since 2014. This requires “excellence in instruction, excellence in the way we deliver our services and excellence in the way our institution looks so our students can begin to understand and know and feel what it’s like to experience excellence.”
Vela makes it a point to interview all full-time hires – from the custodial staff up to vice presidents – to inquire about if they truly want to fulfill SAC’s mission and if they have a “purpose-driven” character, he said. He likens transforming institutional culture to turning a big battleship, adding that it takes leaders in critical positions such as department chairs, directors and faculty to truly make a difference.
“They can truly turn it one class, one student at a time,” he said. “It’s important that everyone in the organization feels like they can make that difference.”
Equipping and training leaders and faculty on campus to work with data has also been key to serving students at SAC. Vela was one of the first in the Alamo Community College District to create a division uniquely dedicated to data that guides institutional decision-making, helps leaders establish lead and lag measure and disaggregates student outcomes to see if outcomes gaps are widening or closing in real time. It is named the Division of Integrated Planning and Performance Excellence.
“It was important for us to get out in front of this and be able to get the data in front of us to make decisions on the fly, week by week to be able to hopefully make a change on that outcome at the end so we can ensure that all students are winning,” Vela said. “We break [data] up by ethnicity, by gender, by veteran status, by socioeconomic status. We look at it from class to class, professor to professor, service to service, and we see what those areas are that we need to improve on so we can continue to get better for all students.”
