Education Focus - Southwest Austin - August 2008
Education Focus - Southwest Austin - August 2008
Written by Christi Covington and Darcie Duttweiler Friday, 22 August 2008
Auto program trains for high paying jobs
by Darcie Duttweiler
Although Austin Community College has had an automotive technology program since 1973, its collision repair and refinishing program is turning 1 year old this fall. Last year, it began holding classes at Reagan High School, and in January it moved into a new $3.5 million auto shop at Crockett High School on Manchaca Road.
With 75 ACC students enrolled in the program, the assistant department chair and lone instructor, Thomas Bragg, is busy training his students for the workforce.
“For students that want to do something with their hands and that like cars, this program gives them an avenue to continue doing what they like and train them to make good money,” he said.
Bragg said that a starting annual salary in the auto body field is around $40,000 with the average rounding out at $80,000. He said that some auto shop owners can make as much as $200,000 a year.
“As long as people keep driving, there will always be wrecks,” Bragg said. “There will always be good money in it.”
The auto collision repair and refinishing program is the only training facility of its kind in Central Texas.
“There was a need in this area for highly skilled workers,” Bragg said. “It was costing body shops more money to hire people and then train them. Now we have a spot where the industry can come train.”
The program is different from auto tech programs, which concentrate on the inner- workings of cars, because it focuses solely on the body of the vehicle and teaches students to estimate, repair, rebuild and refinish vehicles that have been damaged. They obtain expertise in auto body construction, surface prep, painting, dent repair, structural repair and welding. Students can earn an associate degree or individual certificates in auto collision and refinishing.
Long-term plans include two additional full-time instructors when more students are enrolled, and Bragg said he would eventually like to have his own separate facility outside a high school. Currently, ACC is only able to hold classes during the nights, weekends and summers to accommodate the high school classes.
The ACC auto collision repair and refinishing program relies heavily on donated parts to help train its students. They practice fixing dents on old fenders and painting sheet metal. Instructor Thomas Bragg said he needs fenders and hoods in good condition and newer vehicles (2000 models and newer). To donate, call him at 383-0638.
Southwest landmark: From future downtown to educational peak
by Darcie Duttweiler
At 145 feet tall on a hill that is 990 feet above sea level, the Austin Community College’s Pinnacle Campus can be seen miles away. Jerry Angerman constructed the building in 1984 as one part of a two-tower office complex that ACC purchased in 1990.
“We had no presence in this part of Austin,” said Judy Van Cleve, campus manager of the Pinnacle site. “We were at the Southwest Center, but we wanted a real campus presence.”
ACC was then leasing classroom space on South Lamar Boulevard. With the purchase of the Pinnacle Campus, ACC doubled its space for the Southwest area to more than 100,000 sq. ft.
Angerman had planned on making a “new downtown” in Oak Hill with plans for a second towered office building, but when the real estate bust occurred in 1990, the plans were canceled. The Pinnacle building was foreclosed. ACC later purchased it from Texas Commerce Bank for $2.8 million and the adjacent land for an additional $260,000.
At the time, ACC board president Pete Foster was quoted as saying, “There is no question this is one heck of a buy.”
With businesses taking up 35 percent of the space in the building until their leases were finished, ACC was not fully operational until fall 1993 after the closure of the Southwest Center. In 1991, the Pinnacle Campus had 145 students, and in 1994 the head count climbed to 2,894, roughly a little more than there are today.
Projects in the works include the addition of 108 parking spaces and a larger activity space in the Student Life Center.
“We continue to work very hard to provide an environment where you’re not just riding the elevator up and down and then leaving,” Van Cleve said. “We’ve had to learn how to function in this building, and I think we do a good job.”
Degree preps dance artists for next career
by Christi Covington
When Stephen Mills finished high school, he got through his first year of college before he was offered a dance contract in New York, requiring him to make a choice — either dance or finish school.
“Dancers often choose a professional track rather than education because dancing, I hate to say it, depends on youth,” he said.
At the time deciding to dance seemed an obvious choice, and although he has never been unemployed, he later started to wish he had finished his degree. Now after almost 10 years as the artistic director of Ballet Austin, Mills has seen how dancers’ careers typically end by the time they are in their mid-30s. Many of these professionals do not know what they are going to do afterwards or even what they want to do.
That is why several years ago Ballet Austin Executive Director Cookie Ruiz and St. Edward’s University President George Martin, who was on the board of Ballet Austin, discussed the possibility of creating a special degree for these dance professionals through the school’s New College program.
New College provides nontraditional degrees for adults, many of whom are already in the workplace. Students can get credit for their professional experience.
It took several years to create the new Dance and the Humanities degree plan, but this spring a class of 17, which included Mills, took its first semester of courses.
Mills decided to participate not only to complete unfinished business, but also to serve as an example to those he instructs. It was a “fun and difficult” experience that required a great deal of time management.
“I speak before hundreds of people all the time, but the first paper I had to turn in was very stressful. Are the commas in the right place? Am I grammatically correct?” he said. “But I am also used to being the instructor, so it was nice to be a student again.”
Ramsey Fowler, dean of New College, said most of the participants are in their early 20s. So far he has been able to identify only a few similar programs in the nation, none of which are in Texas.
Dancers can get between 24 and 36 hours of dance credit, and they also take courses, such as religion and history. Although he said some students expressed an interest in other degree programs, he said it was mostly important to create a plan the dancers could actually complete due to their rigorous schedules.
“We tell them, ‘Just get your undergraduate degree, and then you will be prepared to go toward what you want, but this may be your best chance. Indeed, it may be your only chance to get an undergraduate degree while you are still active as a professional dancer,’” he said. “Dancing is a very demanding profession.”
The classes operate in the fall and spring, although students can take elective courses in the summer. It is a degree completion program, so all classes do not have to be taken at St. Edward’s. Because the courses are offered off campus at the Butler Dance Education Center, the administration has agreed to a tuition reduction.
St. Edward’s is scheduled to complete the degree schedule of courses by 2010. Then they will have to reevaluate if dancers are still interested, but Fowler hopes the program will continue. Fowler said potentially dancers who are not members of Ballet Austin could also participate.
“I think we will be able to maintain it,” Fowler said. “I want to be able to maintain it, in any case. I think it is just too good of a program.”
University partners with wilderness preserve for student research
by Christi Covington
Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve has long had the protection of both Travis County and a nonprofit committee that has managed the 227-acre strip of Balcones Canyonlands since 1974.
Now a new partner, St. Edward’s University, has come to the table to expand opportunities for its students in research, internships, education and science.
The preserve is just a little north of Bee Cave Road on Loop 360, but Charles Bicak, dean of natural sciences, said most people do not know it exists. That is something he plans for the partnership, which was formalized in April, to remedy.
“It is sort of a hidden jewel in an urban environment,” he said. “We simply are hoping to make more people aware of it.”
St. Edward’s association with the Wild Basin dates back to the preserve’s formation when one of the school’s biology professors, Brother Daniel Lynch, worked closely with the women who organized efforts to get the land purchased by Travis County for preservation.
In recent years, the school has used the preserve for educational purposes, Bicak said. It soon became clear that strength comes in numbers. While Wild Basin could provide the land for academic studies, the university would have the ability to obtain grants and sponsorships for the preserve, something an educational institution has a better chance of accessing.
With these type of funds, Bicak said they hope to improve the public 2.5 miles of nature trail and update the interpretive center, which has offices, meeting rooms, a caretaker’s quarters, kitchen and restrooms.
The county still owns the land, but will depend on the university to help with managing and marketing. In exchange, students will do research and studies in the preserve, including documenting plant life and assessing water quality.
“What jazzes me is the opportunity for our students to use this land for an environmental research program and to learn land management,” Bicak said.
Although the school of natural sciences will rely most heavily on the partnership, Bicak said all of his fellow deans from the university toured the preserve last winter to see how their departments might be able to get involved. Even in the school of humanities, students studying philosophy might spend some time in Wild Basin during a course on environmental ethics, he said.
What to expect at Wild Basin
Charles Bicak, the dean of natural sciences at St. Edward’s University describes the Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve as having, “a mosaic of habitats,” making it ideal for study and interesting hikes.
What lives at the preserve
Animals:
- green anole lizard
- ground skink lizard
- white-eyed vireo bird
- golden-cheeked warbler bird
- deer
- raccoon
- skunk
- opossum
- Texas spiny lizard
- blue jay bird
- yellow-breasted chat bird
- yellow-billed cuckoo bird
- various Great Plains snake species
Plants:
- ashe juniper
- live oak
- Texas oak
- evergreen sumac
- Texas persimmon
- Texas kidneywood
- elbowbush
- waferash
- American beautyberry
- red buckeye
- threeawns grass
- sedges grass
- Lindheimer muhly grass
- sideoats grama grass
- Texas grama grass
- buffalo grass
- little bluestem grass
- Indian blanket
- bluebonnets
- senna
- prairie bluets
Environmental Education Center hours:
- Tuesday-Sunday 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
- Trail hours: Daily, sunrise to sunset
Trail admission: $3 (adults), $2 (seniors and children 5-12 years old)
A decade’s vision for St. Ed’s nears completion
by Christi Covington
Since 1999, the year St. Edward’s University developed its 10-year plan of strategic growth, the campus’ square footage has increased by more than 200 percent and the student population has almost doubled.
“Ten years ago this was a campus of little more than 2,000 students,” said Patrick Kirby, associate vice president for financial affairs. “It would be unfair to call it a sleepy, backwoods university because such a thing does not exist in Austin, but certainly it was not distinguished.”
He said that has now changed, but it took the initiative of the trustees and the university’s president, George Martin, who set some goals to be completed by 2010, to make that change happen. Part of the vision was to raise total enrollment to 4,000 students. Now the school has more than 5,000.
St. Edward’s had hired a planning firm to mesh all the different elements of city, campus culture and goals. Often larger campuses emphasize research, which Kirby said has its place, but that was not the vision for St. Edward’s.
Those involved in planning wanted to increase enrollment, but not change the environment of a more intimate, pedestrian campus. They also wanted to continue the commitment to the Hispanic community.
“The desire was not to be big, but to be modest-sized so we could have the kind of resources to make a potential academic impact in our end of the world,” Kirby said.
To support the growth, the university has almost completed 10 new buildings, as well as renovated older facilities. By January, St. Edward’s will open another residence hall with three buildings, which, along with 300 beds, will have student support venues and a dining hall.
Kirby said with the goals of the 10-year plan satisfied, the university is preparing for the next vision.
“The reality of it is we are educating people today for jobs that don’t exist for technology that hasn’t been invented,” he said.
This month, he attended a retreat with other campus senior faculty to look at the next steps.
Physical growth is no longer the priority, but opportunity expansion into other parts of the world probably will be. Already this fall, students can participate in a study program with a college in France.
“We are looking at innovative ways where we could partner with similar institutions with similar values and bring the global component to the quality of education that we have,” Kirby said.
New school in town
University of Phoenix will be opening in Southpark Meadows at 9900 S. IH 35, Building W, Ste. 150. in October or November. The location will provide tutoring, academic workshops, enrollment capabilities and study space. It will offer associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees in studies such as business management, nursing and criminal justice. Visit www.phoenix.edu or call 344-1400.
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