DESPITE TSC ACCREDITATION, LEWIS GOES, DEFECTIONS ON; MICROMANAGEMENT, LOWER EXPECTATIONS BLAMED

By Juan Montoya

Add Chet Lewis, President of Finance and Administration, as the latest high-profile administrator at the Texas Southmost College who is saying goodbye to the newly-independent community college.
Lewis is credited with holding the institution together as the community college struggled through its separation from University of Texas-Brownsville and sought its accreditation as an independent institution of higher education.
He has accepted a position with San Jacinto State College, sources say.
TSC president Lily Tercero announced that The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges this month awarded TSC accreditation.earlier this month.
She credited " a genuine team effort" for the accreditation. Tercero has been able to convince a majority of the TSC board to carry along Leonardo De la Garza, a consultant was also her former boss and who was supposed to advice her on getting accreditation for a proscribed period of time which has now stretched for almost three years.
That majority is composed of Kiko Rendon, Ed Rivera, Dr. Reynaldo Garcia and Art Rendon.
In this last budget year, that board's majority approved another $180,000 appropriation for De la Garza.
De la Garza was brought on board by TSC President Lily Tercero in the first year of her term to help with the "transition" between the UTB-TSC partnership and on the community college's accreditation as an independent entity.
"We have basically been paying for two board presidents," said a TSC staff member who recently left the community college after having endured the "extreme micromanagement" by Tercero and De la Garza.
"People who have left were discouraged because they love TSC and supported the community college through its painful separation process only to be treated with very little respect by Tercero," she said.
In particular, the former staffer said that the Nursing Progam administrator had confided to some colleagues that she had been urged by the administration to adopt polices that would lower the standards of the program, something that she had refused.
"When you only have 46 percent of the nursing students passing the certification, something is wrong," she said. Nora (Montlavo) was too much of a professional and couldn't get herself to do it."
When she announced that the SACSCOC had granted TSC accreditation, Tercero expressed her delight in the "short" time it had taken TSC to get it.
"It’s a huge accomplishment. And to do it in so short of a time as we did – people talk about teamwork, and this was a genuine team effort, starting with our Board of Trustees, our faculty, our students and our staff,” she said.
In fact, it was the third attempt that the college had made to get it. TSC had been turned away once and resubmitted the application again only to be told that there was missing data.
After it was turned down, TSC blamed the former UTB administration under Dr. Julieta Garcia for not providing them with the date required by the UT System. That required even longer time to generate the numbers needed for the application.
TSC and UTB had been accredited jointly by SACSCOC. The partnership between the two institutions was scheduled to end Aug. 31 with UTB becoming part of the new University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Because of the sanfus, the UT Board of Regents extended the educational partnership agreement between UTB and TSC for another year. This was done in order for TSC to hang on to its regional accreditation and continue offering classes until it received its own accreditation.
Tercero told the newspaper that TSC’s separate accreditation will now allow it to start creating new programs and give high school students the opportunity to earn up to 60 college credits, up from 27.
“We’re going to be able to move forward with paperwork that allows students to get 60 hours, so they can now get an associate’s degree, which is wonderful news for our community and all the students in all the high schools in our service area,” she said.
Meanwhile, just as proponents of the separation with TSC pointed out the dismal graduation numbers under Juliet Garcia at UTB-TSC, they now point to the graduation rates of an independent TSC and say it's headed in the wrong direction.
"When Texas State Technical College graduates 1,800 students and TSC graduated not even 300, and some of the instructors hired by the administration leave something to be desired, it's not a good omen of what's to come for our college," she said.
Many who have left were top notch educators in their fields who had a deep love for TSC. Now, as they see the Tercero administration with the support of a bare majority stumble to the future, they were discouraged and left, the former TSC staffer said (see graphic).
"Wee need a new vision to build the college," she said. "It's as if we were back to square 1 in 1991 when the partnership began. But it doesn't look like Tercero is leaving after all. Lewis didn't have to go. We could have given him what San Jacinto offered, but Tercero didn't and just let him go."
Trustee Adela Garza emailed us a comment on Lewis' departure for greener pastures.
"Good evening. Just read the blog concerning Chet. His leaving is very unfortunate for TSC and, in my opinion, could have been avoided. No TSC employee bled more for the institution in the past few years than Chet Lewis. His leaving should help the TSC Board finally recognize something is wrong at TSC. Thanks"