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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
- So what we're trying to do on our end through partnership with you is to make them confident that the classes they are taking today at ACC will count two years from now.
- It's working. And it's not just working for us at ACC, I think it's working for any of the transfer students. And what we know from our own data is that when our students transfer here, they're successful here. This partnership is growing dramatically because students feel cared for on both ends. And that's really exciting and magical.
- Really excited to welcome my good friend, Russell Lowery-Hart, who is the chancellor at the Austin Community College District. And why do they call it a district?
- Because we have 11 campuses.
- So it's not just a campus. You guys are all over the place.
- We're all over the place and growing.
- Yeah, and growing more. And we're gonna talk a little bit about "Bats to Cats," because that's really our first kind of entree into, like, having supersized partnerships with community colleges. And we have a long history with Austin Community College, by the way. And so a lot of people don't know that it's our number one feeder school for transfer students. We'll talk more about that, but I wanna know more about you because you just started doing this job within the last couple years or so.
- Yeah, 18 months. Yeah, 18 months goes by fast, doesn't it?
- It does.
- And so let's kind of backtrack. Like, where did this all start? Did you always grow up wanting to be the chancellor of a community college?
- No, I didn't even know there was such a thing.
- I never did either. You know, I went to community college. I had no idea what deans and provosts were, or chancellors.
- I didn't know either. And I always loved education, but I grew up in a really small town. There were 11 people in my graduating class.
- So you graduated in the top 11?
- I was the second-ranked person in the class and wasn't in the top 10%.
- Top 20%.
- Right.
- Where was that?
- It was Wilson, Texas, in the Panhandle.
- Oh, okay. I've not been. Is Dalhart in that area?
- Dalhart, it's in that area. It's outside of Lubbock. I spent the last 30 years of my life in the Amarillo area, which is north of Lubbock.
- So anyway, so you grew up in a small town and always gonna go to college or kinda a last-minute thing?
- Yes, always gonna go to college. And mainly because I had teachers that were like, "You're smart, you're gonna go to college." It was just a part of the conversation. What I have to acknowledge when I look back is not everyone in my class went to college. And so I feel fortunate that I was able to.
- You know, I think it's pretty common to think that everyone who graduates from high school goes to college. Yeah, but the numbers are actually very small.
- Shocking.
- Surprisingly small. What percentage? I think in Texas it's less than 50% now.
- Well, and what worries me, Kelly, in Central Texas is a decade ago it used to be 60% graduated from high school and went somewhere. And now it's only 42%. And it wasn't a COVID thing that changed that dynamic.
- And there are some towns that are doing great and if it's 40% or so, you know, there's some towns that are doing terrible. And so for whatever reason, something broke in that community where kids are just saying, "Well, I guess I'll just try to make it happen without going to college."
- I worry about that a lot because I grew up with those kids. And feel fortunate not to have been in that path. But it shouldn't be the luck of who your teacher was or the luck of a conversation of who gets to go to college
- What zip code you're born in or whatever. So what happened? You graduate from the top 20% of your class and where do you go to college?
- I went to West Texas State in the Panhandle and just found my voice there. And I went as an education major. I thought I'd be a teacher. I thought I would be a middle school or high school teacher. And I had a mentor who was the department chair for communication. And he's like, "You need to get your master's and your Ph.D. You're wired for this." And I didn't know what "this" meant. But he talked me into taking the GRE and talked me into accepting an assistantship. And I knew within the first day of teaching as a grad student that that was my calling.
- Did you go to grad school there?
- Went to grad school at Texas Tech. So really the first 23 years of my life, I'd only lived in the Texas Panhandle. And I got my Ph.D. at Ohio University and it's the first time I left home. I couldn't wait to get away and move to Ohio. And my first year in Ohio realized that I'm a Texan and I couldn't wait to get home.
- Yeah, that's funny. So you do come home eventually.
- [Russell] I do.
- So what's your progression then?
- I left and I came, my first job outta grad school was at St. Edward's University here in Austin. And I loved that job. When you're making $28,000 as a professor and you're trying to start a family, not a job that we felt like we could live on. And so we had an opportunity to go back home and my first tenure track role was at West Texas State where I'd graduated from.
- Wow. You know, I went back to Sam Houston State where I graduated. So it's kind of funny to go back. I remember going to faculty meetings and I'd say something and people were like, "Why is that guy talking down there?" It's weird to go back to your alma mater to work.
- Well, and the weird thing, Kelly, is when I was a student at West Texas State, I was Rusty Hart. I grew up Rusty Hart.
- Now you shouldn't tell me.
- I was Rusty, and my little brother was Dusty Hart. So you can imagine what it was like to ride home on the school bus. "Rusty and Dusty Hart." So I graduated from WT as Rusty Hart and came back as Russell Lowery-Hart. And so it was a hard transition for a lot of my friends.
- That's funny. So then you're there and then what?
- I was the speech coach, the speech and debate coach, and our first tournament every year was on this campus at Texas State. And I never loved a job as much as I loved being in the classroom and coaching speech and debate. And it's still, I think, my favorite job I've ever had. But you travel every weekend, and when you live in the Panhandle, you're driving minimum eight hours to a tournament. And we had our, we got pregnant with Campbell, our middle son. And that lifestyle just didn't lend itself to raising a family. And so I had an opportunity to be a part of accreditation and leading our quality enhancement plan. And that led to an administrative career I never could have expected or imagined.
- I think most of us who end up in administration find our way there by accident. And someone says, "Hey, you should apply for this job," or, "Hey, you'd be good at this thing," or someone says, "Hey, no one will do this. Will somebody do it?" And then you say, "Well, I'll do it." And then you discover, "You know, I'm actually pretty good at this."
- Well, and that was my experience. I was faculty senate president and we had to go through accreditation and there were issues and they're like, "Would you step in and help us do this thing?" And that led to fixing a lot of things. And the advice I've often given people is just be a problem solver and pathways will open up to you. And I solved a lot of problems and now as chancellor probably create more than I solve.
- That's our job. We're disruptors, right? So when you got the job at ACC, a friend of mine who is also a fellow Bearcat, who's a president at Lamar State College Orange, said, "You're gonna love this guy." And so tell us about the process of transitioning to ACC and what you got going on there. I think the first time we met actually was in your office, which is in the Highland Campus, which was, I think, the young men's department at Macy's or something like that.
- Right, it was Macy's or Dillard's, I can't remember.
- Dillard's or something like that.
- Well, you know, I never expected to be in community college. Even as an administrator in the university, I had a path laid out to me in the A&M system. And I thought that's what I would do. But what I really learned to understand is that I was advocating for a student that was not the single priority of the university. But that student that I had dedicated my kind of career to as a speech coach, as a teacher, and then administrator was the typical community college student. And I had an opportunity to go as the vice president of academic affairs and all of my university friends were like, "You're ruining your career. You can't, once you go to community college, you can't come back." But I knew within the first month that I think I'd always been a community college advocate and didn't understand it until I actually worked at one.
- And so then you get the chance to come up to Austin. And this is a, it's a huge operation. How many students is in the district?
- We have annually 75,000 students.
- And where I was in Amarillo, I left there as the president after 10 years and we had 9,000 students. So it's a big, big shift in scale and focus.
- So it's 11 campuses, 75,000 students. That's, that's bigger. My hometown was like 1900 people, so you can imagine.
- My own town was 230.
- Exactly. And so you come up here and then you and I get a chance to kinda rekindle a conversation that we had started, but we're kind of like, it just kind of like hit a wall somewhere. And so talk about what happens. What are your students like when they come to ACC and what are their goals? And then how does that apply to Texas State or schools like Texas State?
- Well, so a couple of things. One, the community college funding model in Texas changed, and it's an outcome-based funding model. So we're reimbursed for successful transfer experiences, not just enrollments. So one of the first things that I wanted to do was know who our typical student was, and then I wanted to know what our data was around that student. And our typical student is Ashley. She's a 26-year-old mother raising 1.2 kids, working two part-time jobs, a first-gen college student living in some semblance of financial distress. She's a woman of color and she's really smart and she's really capable, but she needs us differently than I might have needed my school or that we've been needed probably 20 years ago. But we're needed differently by her now. And she needs Texas State differently now. And one of the first conversations that I had internally is looking at the data, I was surprised that Texas State isn't just the number one transfer institution for ACC students. It's not even close. Like you could add up all of the other transfer students and they still wouldn't add up to the number of students that transfer here.
- Yeah, literally thousands. And then on our end, you know, our traditional student is mostly the 18-year-old that comes outta high school, but increasingly people like Ashley who, for one reason or other, started community college, sometimes a little bit older. I just talked to a young man that came from ACC this afternoon and he's like 26 years old. He works in private security and he said, "I feel like I need to, if I wanna progress in that company, I need to get a four-year college degree."
- I gotta get a bachelor's degree.
- And so he's coming in, and he had ACC under his belt and he came over here and in two years he'll have a four-year degree and he'll be able to become a supervisor there. But sometimes going from, so what would be like the size of a campus, one of your campuses? Like a modest size of your campus?
- You know, like Highland, we probably have 10, 12,000 students.
- Ten or 12,000 students. Pretty moderate, pretty easy to park there.
- Yeah.
- Yeah. And you come to a place like this with 41,000 students. And so it can be really intimidating for a student to come here. And what on our end, we're trying to, in a way we didn't in the past, not Texas State, but four-year universities, and you were part of this as well, tended not to even think about what it was like to come here. Like they'll just figure it out there. And I think there's an assumption that since they're already college students and they're older, it should be easy for them. Because they're more mature.
- And it's the exact opposite.
- It's worse.
- And one of the things that I use secret shoppers a lot, and so I talked to Ashleys a lot. And one of the things that was really challenging for me as a leader and as an advocate is understanding that our Ashleys come on our campuses looking for affirmation they don't belong. So the first time they can't find a building or don't know what an acronym is or can't find a parking spot, they're like, "See, I knew I couldn't belong here." And they bolt.
- They're brittle, right? They're just like, they're easy to break.
- Yeah, and so Ashley needs, she's smart, but she needs relationships and she needs confidence and she needs support in a different way. And what I love about the work that you're doing here is that you're providing that in really profound ways.
- Yeah, and it can be done. I think it's easy to think, well, we're a big school and boy, if Ashley comes and doesn't make it, then there'll be Joanne will come right behind her and so on. But I've always felt, and I think you and I, 'cause I know you so well, share this idea that any student who comes here that we think is qualified to get in should leave here with a degree in their hand.
- Right?
- Yeah.
- And if they don't, it's not their fault. Typically. Sometimes it is, right? I'm living proof that you can cause your own grief by not going to class and so on. But for those who give it the college try, that if we remove all the blocks in their way that we put in, that we put there without even on purpose, we just have evolved a system that doesn't work very well for some people, that if we remove those, they can be successful. So our job is to, as we talk about being interrupters, is to remove those barriers.
- I really worry about higher ed because I think we are too quick to absolve ourselves of blame. And we're too quick to place blame on students or high schools or communities or families. And those aren't things that we can control, but we can control how we systemically love Ashley to success. And she deserves that. And our community and our survival really depends on us providing that.
- Because if we believe in what we're doing, if all we're doing is getting kids to come in and out and pay tuition so we can pay bills and so everyone has jobs and so on, then it doesn't matter.
- That's not our mission.
- But our purpose, our mission, which I believe is a noble mission, is to give Ashley a chance that maybe her parents never had and that she wouldn't have without us.
- And changing generations of communities.
- That's exactly it. Because if she's a first-generation student, the chances of her little brother or sister going to college 'cause she went are higher, the chances that she'll have kids who then go to college and whose lives are changed. And if you don't believe in the value of a four-year college degree or a two-year college degree, then that doesn't matter. But if you do believe in the value of it, then you say, "Well, I gotta do everything I can to get this kid through." And increasingly not kids. Right?
- Right.
- They're older people. In fact, the young man I was talking to today is probably 32 years old.
- Well, I think there used to be a day and age in the academy where this was a commodity that we reserve for the elite. And the world has shifted mainly because we've been good at this historically. And now the world requires the skills and the knowledge that we provide. And I fear if we don't get better at providing it in a collaborative, supportive way, that there will be other people that do it in our stead. And that may not require degrees in a typical way, but you already see companies providing their own universities. And they can't do what we do. But I think we've gotta challenge the notions of the ivory tower and ensure that it reflects the communities in which we reside.
- So let's talk about "Bats to Cats" now. So this is, I'm really excited about this. You know, you guys are the Riverbats and we're the Bobcats. And the whole idea is here is for students who either at the end of their ACC career or hopefully at the beginning.
- The beginning, yeah.
- Of their ACC career, say, "You know, here's my plan. Two years here, or one year here, two or three years there, and I got a four-year degree," through this partnership that people I don't even know exist created that will allow me to cheaply, efficiently, quickly get a degree that will allow me to change my life. And so talk about "Bats to Cats" and how it works from your end. And see if our notes match.
- Well, what I love is our job, if a student wants to transfer, is to get 'em on that pathway as clearly and as soon as possible. So the first question we're now asking because of this "Bats to Cats" work is we're asking students if you wanna transfer and if you know where, and the majority of them come here. And so we are advising them to your degree plan from the very beginning.
- They're getting a four-year degree plan?
- Yeah, from the very beginning.
- Two from you or one from you.
- Because we want every class they take to matter. When you're living in the war zone of poverty, like a lot of our students are, any class that's wasted is wasted money and time that a lot of our students don't have in excess. So this pathway that we've created isn't just a structural one, but a relational one where you're creating opportunities for them to become a part of the campus even before they're an official student here.
- We have a saying here in this realm where there's this whole idea before about no child being left behind, for us it's "no credit hour gets left behind." And there is, it's a tale as old as time, transfer students coming in and being told, "Yeah, we're not gonna count that class." And you know, they come in with four semesters of community college or some other college and only two semesters count. So basically almost starting from scratch again. And that's sometimes that's the fault of receiving school, sometimes it's the fault of the sending school.
- It is, yeah.
- But it's oftentimes because it's just not very well coordinated or you got a bad draw on whoever you talked to gave you bad information. You know, that's even worse.
- That's, that scares me the most.
- Because if I talked to Russell, I had two years count. If I talk to Kelly, only one year counts and so on. So what we're trying to do on our end through partnership with you is to make them confident the classes they are taking today at ACC will count two years from now.
- It's working. And it's not just working for us at ACC, I think it's working for any of the transfer students that you have. I think you'll grow as a university when a lot aren't because you're being transfer friendly. And what we know from our own data is that when our students transfer here, they're successful here. And that says a lot about you all and it says a lot about the preparation that we're providing, but this partnership is growing dramatically because students feel cared for on both ends. And that's really exciting and magical.
- Yeah, I think one of the things we know is that, so we call students who come here as freshmen, our native students, and our first-year retention is around 80, 81% or so. Something's about 20, 19, 20% don't come back for their sophomore year. And we're working really hard to get that to 85%. That's a goal that we've set. And then graduation rates of course, every year you lose some of those. Our retention and graduation rates for the transfer students is actually higher than our native students who come in, partly because in some ways they had a little bit of a, I don't wanna say friendlier or easier.
- They tasted success.
- Yeah, they tasted success. And they got, their confidence was greater. Some of our freshmen come here, have 4.0 in high school GPA and they'll proudly say, "I never studied a day in my life and I got a 4.0, how smart am I?" And then they get here.
- And it's not the same.
- And they take a chemistry class and they got their first F in their life, and then our students are brittle as well. And I go, "Well, I guess I'm not college material," or, "The teacher's bad," or whatever. Your students have, I think, and most community college students who come to us have had a little bit different experience and some of 'em are a little bit older as well. So they've got a little bit more life experience.
- And they understand it. They understand the importance of it in a different way.
- Yeah, and you know, when I went back to school, so I was, I went to a community college and I'm not proud of this, but I had a 2.5 GPA when I graduated. But for me it was "Cs get degrees." That's all I cared about, right? When I went back I was totally different. It was just three years later, but I was just, I was mentally ready to be back. And I realized the importance of going to class 'cause I'd worked for a while and I knew when you work you have to show up. And I guess when I go to class, I'm paying for it. I should show up, and totally different experience going back. And so yeah, so I feel really good about the effects that we're seeing of the students who come here because the results are playing out in a way that changes, that I think really has a profound change in their lives.
- Well, our job is to make sure we have more students that are ready for you. And I think the systems that we're building are gonna do that.
- Do you think that some students will become part of this program that aren't thinking about a four-year degree?
- Yes, yes.
- Because some of them aren't, right? They're just like, "I just wanna get..."
- I can't tell you how often that happens because they're not sure they're cut out for a two-year degree. And so they come in, they're like, "I'm just gonna take a class or two. I wanna get a credential-"
- "Tip my toe in."
- And then they get a B or an A or even a C in that first class. They're like, "I can do this." And the whole world opens up to them at that moment.
- Yeah, I think that's our thought is that students who, there's some students who always have that plan of transferring, but others who, they discover something about themselves they didn't know otherwise. They need it but they don't know what's possible. Final thoughts about "Bats to Cats"? What do you think about now or in the future?
- It gives me hope because I think it's a model that shows what higher education could be.
- I had a conversation with one of your colleagues at a different college yesterday and I said, "Let me start by just telling you my story about why I'm here talking to you about this." Because I think, I always wonder like, why don't four-year schools do more of this? I'm not talking about me or Texas State being more noble than others, but I think it just wasn't something that people really were concerned about.
- It's not been a part of our history.
- And hasn't been. And then almost like it's a competition. Like, I'm competing with you for students. And I think sometimes the receiving school will say, "Well, I don't want any of those community college kids here. We're gonna get the best and brightest," or whatever. But this whole system of higher education in the state of Texas works better when we're trying to get more and more students to have a degree, when we're collaborating as opposed to competing. 'Cause we're not in competition.
- We're not in competition. And our communities don't need us to be. They need us to be aligned and integrated.
- So one of the fun things about the podcast is that we ask our listeners to submit questions to me and we ask the guest to actually take on the role of asking the questions. I don't get a chance to read them in advance. So Russell, I'm gonna give you that.
- Okay.
- I've not seen it. Usually pretty insightful questions.
- So Kelly, the question is, what's one thing you learned in college that served you well in your career?
- We actually just talked about this a little bit. Like when I was in community college, I didn't realize how important everything I did every day mattered. And so, like if I... one of my favorite classes in high school was English. I loved to read and loved to write. And so I had an English class my first fall semester. And I guess I wasn't really paying attention. And that class was at 11 o'clock and there was a McDonald's in that town. And I discovered my love for McDonald's french fries. And my buddies didn't have class at that time. And so they would be going to McDonald's. I'd say, "I'm just gonna, you know, I got that English class in hand." And so I would just go to McDonald's and hang out with them. And I skipped that class all the time, not knowing that there was an attendance requirement. And I was kind of doing well in the exams and I was writing pretty good papers and I failed that class. It's my favorite class ever. And my dad was so mad because he didn't go to college and he couldn't figure out, of all classes, he said, "I could understand a math class because I get you." But it was that class. I'm still talking about it 45 years later, I'm embarrassed that I did that because I wasn't paying attention and I didn't think about how important it was to do the job of being a student. And when I went back to school, when I went back to the four-year school, I had grown up a little bit and paid attention about going to class and buying the book and, you know, studying. I remember the first time I took a test and I studied a little bit and I think I got like a 92. I said, "Man, if I'd studied a little bit harder, I could've gotten even better." And I don't know why I didn't understand that before, but it took me a while to like make the connection between studying and doing well, and then realizing that these things compound, that doing well in this test results in a good grade in this class which then results in a good GPA. And then when you write your resume, you got your GPA on your resume and that tells people that you're responsible, not just smart, but you showed up and paid attention. You could do, you can complete things. So that's it. What about you?
- One of the things that I learned in college was say yes. Just say yes. If there's an opportunity to be involved in something or to do something or to experience something, just say yes. You never know where it's gonna lead you. And so because I said yes a lot in my university experience, I had opportunities to travel, to meet people, to do things that I wouldn't have had the confidence to do otherwise. And I had the exact same experience in the beginning of my career. Opportunities? Say yes. Yes will always lead to other yeses.
- It's interesting. I think very rarely regret things I did, more likely regret things I didn't do.
- Things you didn't do.
- And when someone said, "Hey, let's go down there," I said, "Well, I'm just gonna stay back here and read a book." And then found out I missed a great opportunity to go do something.
- Yeah. Because even if it wasn't great, there's learning from it. But it's hard to learn from things you don't experience.
- Yeah, well great. Thanks so much.
- Thank you.