3.3.1.5 Community/Public Service

Southwest Texas Junior College is a comprehensive, public college serving eleven counties in southwest Texas. The College provides accessible, affordable, high quality education that prepares students to successfully transfer to senior colleges and universities; enter the job market; pursue their professional and personal goals; and contribute to the economic growth of the region.

JUDGMENT: Compliant

STATEMENT OF RATIONALE FOR JUDGMENT OF COMPLIANCE

SWTJC defines community/public service as voluntary work intended to help people in a particular area. This concept includes students, employees, and the general communities in its eleven county service area. The mission clearly addresses community service as pursuing “personal goals” and contributing “to the economic growth of the region”.

These can be observed in many aspects of the SWTJC college life:

Activities

SWTJC Annual Turkey Trot – to encourage health and fitness, the kinesiology department holds a community 5K run/walk.

Criminal Justice Competition – high school students that are interested in law enforcement are invited to the Uvalde campus for a day of criminal justice related competitions.

Christmas at the College – the entire community is invited to the College to see the lighting of the Christmas tree, pictures with Santa Claus, and fun activities.

Conversations with the President – once a month the President holds a forum with students to answer questions they might have and to improve communications.

Partnerships

Palomino Fest – in partnership with the Tejano singing group, Los Palominos, the college assists in hosting a three day rodeo and carnival. In 2014 the attendance at the event was over 20,000 people. This event brought $25,000 in scholarships to SWTJC.

County Livestock Shows (Uvalde, Real, and Zavala Counties) – SWTJC offers scholarships to the winners of the County Livestock shows.

Assisting high school in 11 counties – helping the school districts in the SWTJC service area is an ability to promote higher education and strategic planning between the College and the Independent School Districts.

Chamber of Commerce participation – partnership with the various Chambers allows the College to reach out to the business communities and learn of their needs. SWTJC Registrar (Luis Fernandez) is the president of the Uvalde Chamber of Commerce.

4H Leadership Conferences – in the summer SWTJC hosts the weeklong conference to promote leadership.

SWTJC Friends and Alumni Network – partnership with FAN provides scholarships for our students. Fan hosts the SWTJC Gala every spring.

President’s Report

The President keeps the Board of Trustees up-to-date with all of the College’s activities and partnership with the President’s Report; presented during the monthly board meetings.

June 2013
September 2013
November 2013
January 2014
February 2014
March 2014
April 2014
May 2014
June 2014
July 2014

Leaves

In the summer of 2014 the Cabinet began discussing how various departments allowed employee leave during working hours. It was determined that some departments readily allowed leave and others were not as cooperative. A policy (DEC(LOCAL )) was developed. Educational leave (DEC(EXHIBIT)) was allowed (up to three hours per week) and Community leave (DEC(Exhibit )) of 16 hours per years was allowed. This policy was approved by the Board of Trustees at the June 19, 2014 meeting.

This leave is tracked in our enterprise resource system, Colleague. Thus far, we can document that our employees are involved in many various community volunteer programs (church activities, Uvalde Food Bank, St. Henry de Oso Family literacy program, little league).

HEB Read for Three

SWTJC has partnered with the HEB grocery chain to promote early reading in the community in fall of 2013. Six of SWTJC’s Child Development students in Uvalde read to the children and trained their parents. The trainers did various activities to encourage engagement with books and reading. The College hosted a graduation dinner for the participants and their families.

Due to the success and growth of the Uvalde program, in fall of 2014 SWTJC and HEB expanded the program to include the community of Del Rio. The College is hoping, in fall 2015, to expand the program once again to benefit the Eagle Pass community.

Southwest Texas Junior College faculty and staff assess the quality of these types of community outreach activities by surveys and meetings immediately following the event to determine if the event would be worth repeating, what parts of the event were particularly successful, what parts of the event could be improved? Click here for an example of such a meeting after the 2014 Christmas at the College.

Impact on Local Business Community

In an effort to measure and quantify Southwest Texas Junior College’s impact on its local communities, SWTJC hired Economic Modeling Specialist Intl. to evaluate the College’s impact on the local business community and the return on investment provided by the college to students, society and taxpayers. For Executive summary click here. The firm reported that in fiscal year 2012-2013, SWTJC’s total impact on the SWTJC service area economy was $156.9 million in added income.

The Report highlighted the return on investment to society provided by the College. Southwest Texas Junior College raised prosperity in the state, improves the quality of life, and its benefits to society outweigh social costs.

Evidence