Each month, Texas State University President Dr. Kelly Damphousse sits down with faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and community members for a conversation about all things TXST — the past, the present, and the bright future of the university.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
- If you could talk to Richard Garcia when he was a freshman or a sophomore, what would you tell him?
- I said, "Don't be afraid to use your imagination."
- [Kelly] Oh, yeah.
- Because if you start thinking outside of the box of what you're doing education-wise and what you wanna do in the future, you'll be very, very successful.
- Hey Bobcats, Kelly Damphousse here, president of Texas State University. And welcome back to "The Current" podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about what it's like to be a first-generation student. About 43% of the students that come to Texas State are the first in their family to come here. And our goal is that they're not just the first to attend college, but that they're the first to graduate, and then ultimately have this impact not just on themselves, but on their siblings and on their future generations that follow behind them as well. And so I had that experience of being a first-generation student. My mom went to grade 9, my dad went to grade 12, and didn't really have a plan for going to college back when I was in high school. It kind of happened by accident. But somehow, those of us who find their way into college have sometimes a little different experience than people whose parents actually went to college as well because they have a different kind of support system in place. And so today we're joined by one of my favorite alumni, Richard Garcia, who is also a first-generation college student. Welcome to the podcast, Richard.
- Thank you.
- Yeah. It's good to have you here. Tell us a little bit about your story about deciding to go to college when you were in high school. Like what was that process like for you as a first-generation student?
- Well, the family, my parents both did not go to college, naturally. My dad actually dropped out of high school to go to World War II in the Navy, and later got his GED. And then my mom, of course, she graduated from Tech High School in San Antonio. But they always wanted my brother and I, there was only two of us, to go to college. And so they were involved a lot with the PTA in elementary school, junior high school, and high school. The high school we went to was Thomas Jefferson, and it was a college prep-type high school. But I really did not know what I wanted to do in life. Did not know what to take course-wise in college. I did know that one of the things that was interesting to me was law enforcement. My brother was 11, I was 12. My dad's cousin was a police officer in San Antonio. He shows up in this police car, which was the baby blue and white car with the gumball red light on top.
- The red bubble on top, yeah?
- Red bubble on top. And he let us sit in the car listening to the radio and nobody was talking. And he said, I'm still remembering the comment. He says, "When you want them to talk, they don't talk, and when you don't want them to talk, they're just eating up the radio." So in the meantime he says, "Turn the switch on." And it was the red light. And I could see it reflecting off the house, and I was hooked. And I says, "I wanna be a cop." And so kept going through junior high and high school and such. And there was a friend of my mom's in the PTA whose daughter was attending Southwest Texas at the time. Here, Texas State. She was a year older than me. And so she came home from school and sat with me and says, "You know, here's some of the courses that they are out there." And they brought, I guess the book, they shows the different types of-
- Course catalog.
- Course catalog and stuff. And there's one that said, "Criminal justice." Really? She said, "Yeah, they have a criminal justice program there." I was hooked. I said, "All right, I'm going there." And I told my parents this is where I want to go and such. So my parents, my dad was civil service with the Air Force at Kelly Air Force Base. And he was working a tremendous amount of overtime to see and ensure that myself and my brother, who was younger than me by one year, go to college. So we get to college, I get to college. My brother follows after he graduates and comes to Texas State as well. Then Southwest Texas. And we worked into the law enforcement program and I got my degree in law enforcement. And so it was because of their determination that they wanted us to get an education and get college is why I wound up getting here and getting my education and my degree.
- Do you remember, try to go back to your freshman experience, like coming onto campus for the first time. Was it like, smooth sailing or were you nervous when you got here?
- Very nervous. They had an orientation. So we come over here not knowing exactly what did you need to bring for your orientation. They put us up in these dorms, which it was not... You just had one per room. And of course I didn't bring anything per se, like more changes of clothes or anything like that. There was no sheets. There was no pillow. There was just a mattress in there. And so I felt like I was in a dungeon for a second like that. It was cold, and so I had my clothes on because I was freezing, listening like that. And then go to the orientation the next morning and says, "All right, I gotta do something better than this. I gotta figure out how this thing works." And so, yeah, it was very nerve wracking. I was kind of like the guinea pig, if you will. I would tell my brother, I says, "OK, when you go to orientation, make sure you take this, this, and like that." So I kind of led the way for him as far as how he can be a little bit more comfortable going to school and everything else like that.
- You know, I think about that a lot. You know, the impact of a first-generation college student going to college can have an impact on their own lives. But as I said in the opening, I didn't even know about your brother, but your siblings are looking up to you, and they get to experience it differently because you went through it before and so you can kind of help them out. Maybe like your parents couldn't, but you could.
- Correct. And so I was, like I said before, was the guinea pig for like that. 'Cause my brother followed me through my career too. I went to the Dallas Police Department after I graduated, and I went to the FBI after Dallas Police Department. He did the same thing. He was Dallas PD and then later in years he got into the FBI as well. So he kind of followed my whole career and such.
- So talk about your parents a little bit. It's kind of interesting, I think to me, to think about how people who don't have a college degree, like both of our parents who never went to college, still understand the value of it. And sometimes we hear people say, "Getting a college degree isn't worth it. It's not a good investment," and so on. "The return on investment's not high enough." But why do you think your parents thought it was so important for you to go?
- Well, I think because of the work ethic and such. They had to really work hard to earn the money that they were earning. My dad did a lot of technical schools with the Air Force and learned to do a lot of electronics and such. And that's, unfortunately, also where my brother and I got our interests in gadgets, if you will, 'cause he was bringing back the old RCA catalogs and test tubes and little meter boxes. And we would play with his tools and sometimes break his tools. And we learned, I guess, you know, you shouldn't do certain things with those things. But he understood the need to try it because he was improving, as far as himself, on what he was doing at work. As he got his various technology education, if you will, the in services, he was being promoted, if you will, to do this on the B-52 bombers and then this and like that to where he was doing quite a bit, and even teaching others on how to do certain things in the electronic field, which he did not have that background until he got to learn these skill sets from these technology schools that the Air Force was putting him through. So he knew that having education can improve what you do. And he instilled that in us. And my mom was a beautician, and she also would go to different schools, if you will, to learn more on how the new techniques as far as the beauty.
- Sure.
- And she saw that importance as well.
- Yeah, and both of those are hard jobs right? My sister was a hairdresser and there's a lot of standing all day and your hands are up above your waist, and so you're hard on your shoulders and your hands and so on. So they probably saw that there's an opportunity for you to get a job that wasn't quite as demanding physically, where you could use your brain more and use the value of that college degree.
- Well that's funny too because, you know, like on sports, for instance. When we're going through high school and such like that, my parents, more my mom, didn't want us to get hurt so they would not encouraging us to join the football team or different things like that. So what do we do? We get into law enforcement so we won't get hurt.
- Running around doing stuff.
- Run around with criminals and such.
- You know, it's interesting. Back in the day, not very many people who wanna be police officers went to college. What drove you to do that? 'Cause there wasn't a requirement to have a degree.
- It wasn't a requirement to have a degree. And my interest, like I said, was through my dad's cousin, seeing that, be a police officer. And then when I graduated in the May of '75 with my degree, that cousin of my dad was with the police academy in San Antonio PD. And so he said, "I got good news and bad news. It says you're in the next class, but there's a hiring freeze."
- Yeah.
- "So they won't hire anybody for least a year." And said, "I can't wait a year." So the chief of police for the campus was a retired Dallas police officer. So I called him up and says, "Is Dallas hiring?" He says, "Let me make a phone call." And he calls me back, "Yes they are. Here's a number." So I called them and I got hired by Dallas police. Now Dallas police at the time had had a minimum of two years of college before you can apply.
- Oh, really? OK. Yeah.
- So they were a very progressive department
- That was unusual back in the '70s, for sure.
- Very unusual. And they would pay you more if you had a degree. So I was actually gonna get more money working for Dallas than I did with San Antonio. So it was a total move outta my hometown, up to Dallas on my own, and finding a place to live, go to the academy and everything else there to become a police officer, which was... Everybody in the family lived in San Antonio, so I'm breaking away. And that was different from the families, but they encouraged it and they supported me to do that.
- Now aside from the orientation where you struggled not having the bed clothes, and by the way I totally identify with that. Were there other struggles you faced as a first-generation student maybe other students didn't face?
- Well, there was a lot of different friends that I made, and I've actually visited their parents' house and such in Austin and other places, that their lifestyle was a little bit more nicer than my grow up lifestyle. My parents and I were in a two bedroom, one bath wooden-frame house in San Antonio when we grew up. So we did not have the wealth, if you will. And then we're going to these houses that they're brick. They have a den and a study with books in the shelves. We did not have the extensive reading material available to us in books there in our house. Anything we wanted to read we had to get out through the library. There was no internet back then, as you know.
- It's hard to remember a time there wasn't internet, but life was different.
- Life was very different. No social media, no nothing to share my experiences with, 'cause I was growing up with the kids in my neighborhood who were all basically in the same economic level, if you will. And even in high school, I did see some differences there at Jefferson High School that there were students there that had parents who were college educated, and you could tell the difference. You really could. You could tell the difference on what they knew and what they didn't. They were involved with tennis and other things, and golf that technically you needed to have a little bit of income in order, especially in golf, to support that. I didn't start my golf career until I was in Miami in my thirties.
- That's funny. I remember the first time I played golf too. Was that same kind of thing. It was just like, I didn't know I could do that. And then had to go out there and buy some clubs and try to figure it out on your own. But I was probably 30 years old before I golfed, too. Yeah. Interesting. I hadn't thought about that for a long time. What about your experiences at Texas State? I know you probably spent a lot of time studying in the library and going to classes, but do you have other memories of doing things that were kind of extracurricular things?
- The extracurricular things started when I got involved with my service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega. It was my second year, end of my sophomore year I got involved with that. And then that, I got involved more with the intramurals. We started playing other fraternities and other groups around the campus. We started doing more activities. I remember as a freshman and going to a sophomore, I was trying to get over the fact that there's a 100 students in class. And if you don't keep good notes or pay attention like that, you can get lost. And there's a few times I got lost and such. And so I had to go to the teacher and says, "OK, can we sit down and talk about this a little bit?" And so I struggled my way through different things like that. And so that was learning that discipline of what you had to do to keep up and ensure that you graduate, 'cause I know I won in my graduation, my last semester, I think I did a 3.5 GPA in the thing, which I knew that I needed a 3.0 to graduate. So I did 3.5. So what the heck? So I got out and got my degree.
- You touched on something that's pretty interesting. I think for many first-generation students, it takes, like, almost a year to figure out that it's not just about going to class. There's intramurals and joining fraternities or sororities, something like that. Where second- and third-generation students, they know going in that there's Greek life you can be involved with, or student organizations, or intramurals. That's kind of baked into the DNA. But it takes a first-generation student a while to figure that out. What is everyone doing when they're not going to class?
- It's true. And the service fraternity was a good move first at the Greek level because people that were in my fraternity at the time, we still get together at this time. Matter of fact, when we played football at the NRG here recently they were all there. They were there. My old roommate from college, and others in the fraternity, we still communicate. We still get together. Matter of fact, they're talking about next year it'll be our 50 year anniversary for graduating. And so we want to come to campus to hang out, and tour, and walk around, and grab lunch, and different things like that as a group. So we're gonna do that.
- You touched on something else there too. That the friendships you make in college, if you're wise, you'll look for opportunities to make friends, and those are friends that'll be your friends for the rest of your life, right?
- They're a lifetime. And in the business world and the connectivity and the networking, and the ways that they get involved in their careers and such sometimes help you. And one in particular, this individual was with Frost Bank at the time and he was one of the lead investors and such. In one of my FBI cases we had an informant and such that we paid a significant amount of money for what he did. And he needed an accountant, but I needed somebody that can talk to him that was, keep it confidential. So I contacted him. He came and sat with the guy, and he was a little bit nervous and like that. And I said, "Don't worry. He's all right. He's Colombian, but he's fine." And had him do his taxes. The hard part about it is when he explained it to the Colombian says, "This is how much you have to pay in taxes and Social Security." He said, "What?" And so he didn't understand that. So he did tell me, my roommate, or my old college friend, he says, "Look, if this thing ever becomes a movie, I wanna be a cameo to come in to be this accountant, if you will." I said, "Yeah, we'll work it out."
- That's funny. You know, I think networking is something that young people don't think of as something they want to do. And I think they think is kind of like cheesy and you're gonna be trying to use people or so on. But networking is a really important skill to gain. Like, how to do it, and then how to use that, and not in a way where you're using people, but to engage with people, learn more about opportunities that are out there that you might not know about otherwise, and then to actually can strengthen the thing you're doing if you know other people, either in the field or outside the field, that might complement what you know.
- That's true. Back in the day you gave business cards out. So the business cards are not necessary. They're still there, but they're not necessary the way to do things. LinkedIn has been the kind of the new way to network, if you will, in the business level. Sometimes it gets a little political or non-business related, but for the most part it's business opportunities. And I always encourage people that says, make contacts. Get their name, get their email. Know how you can get ahold of them because one day it might be beneficial to talk to them about something that you may need.
- You never know when you're gonna need them.
- You never know.
- So networking is really important, but do you have another tip for first-generation students who might be listening to this? If you could talk to Richard Garcia when he was a freshman or a sophomore, what would you tell him?
- I said, "Don't be afraid to use your imagination."
- [Kelly] Oh, yeah.
- Because if you start thinking outside the box of what you're doing education-wise and what you wanna do in the future, you'll be very, very successful.
- Well, and I think that people put limits on themselves. And oftentimes, even in my own life, I know that people saw something in me that I never saw in myself. And we tend to be self-critical too much and a little cynical about our own abilities. But that's such a great story there about using your imagination and thinking about what you can be. Because if you, there's a great line, if you aim at nothing, you're sure to hit it, right? So if you use your imagination, think about where you're gonna be. You want to be a police officer, maybe want to be an FBI agent at some point. And you made that happen.
- Through opportunities and through contacts that came about. Because if you have an imagination, you're only limited by your mind. And your mind has no limits.
- Yeah. That's great. Well, thank you for coming and sharing a little bit of story. Now, we haven't even begun to talk about the rich history of your career. It's an unbelievable story. We've gotta have you come back and talk about that. We wanna talk more about being a first-generation student today, but really wanna have you come back and share more about your career in law enforcement and the FBI, and some of the cases you were involved with are unbelievably interesting. And so as a former criminal justice major myself, I can't wait to hear more about that. Thank you for coming so much.
- It's my pleasure.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- It was good to be here. Nice to see you again.
- All right, now my favorite part of the podcast is the final question here. "Which set of stairs do you think are the hardest to walk up on campus?" I do a lot of walking on campus and everyone talks about Alkek and Alkek's pretty challenging. I will say to me it's actually at the football stadium. So I'll be walking around the game, and I'll have to go up to the suite to talk to our alumni who are up there. And for some reason it seemed to be kind of hot at the game. So I'm all hot and sweaty already. And then to have to walk up those stairs to get to the main concourse to get in the elevator, that seems to be hardest. There's no railings there so I'm always like stopping periodically, like to shake hands with people as if I'm just introducing myself to people. But I'm really just resting to catch my breath 'cause it's a long walk up there. And so those are the hardest stairs on campus. But you know, there's a lot of tough stairs, a lot of hard walking around this campus, for sure. But it's a beautiful campus. We love the topography and the changing levels of the campus. It's one of the cool things about Texas State is you walk in to a building and you're on the second floor, and you have to go down to the first floor in some of those cases and walk out the backside. You're different levels. So we love what our campus looks like. It's one of our great features here. So thank you for submitting those questions. I look forward to sharing more about what's going on at Texas State. All right, States Up.