Three of nine seats of the Austin Community College board are up for election this fall. Board members serve a six-year term representing residents of the ACC taxing district, which includes eight Central Texas independent school districts. Unlike school district board members, ACC trustees represent the area at large, not a specific region.
ACC enrolls more than 43,000 students each semester, and that number has been growing, mainly through the free tuition pilot program which gives free tuition and fees to high school graduates in the college’s service area. ACC has set a goal to achieve a 70% completion rate by 2030. In 2025 the rate was 47%.
Board members are in charge of creating policies that encourage continued growth in enrollment and higher completion rates. They also have to manage a budget of $583 million for the 2027 fiscal year, while navigating less funding from tax revenue and from the state, due to changing formulas.
Incumbent Dana Walker and Gloria Gonzales-Dholakia are running for Place 1. The candidates for Place 3 are Nan McRaven, who has served on the board for almost 25 years, and Trevor Hale. Place 2 is uncontested with Gigi Edwards Bryant running for reelection.
Place 1: Gloria Gonzales-Dholakia and Dana Walker
Gloria Gonzales-Dholakia has experience as a member of the Leander ISD board and works with a nonprofit that helps single moms. As a member of the ACC board, she says her priorities would be serving first-generation students and student-parents through stronger partnerships with non-profits in the area.
“I love that their enrollment has increased, but enrollment alone is not success. Success is a degree, it’s a university transfer, it’s a certification,” Gonzales-Dholakia said. “In order to hit this goal of 70% by 2030, there has to be a real focus on student parents because they’re the hardest to get to the finish line.”
She said she wants to see more student-parent spaces and resources for childcare and housing similar to what some four-year colleges offer.
Gonzales-Dholakia said another priority for her would be strengthening the relationships with school districts in Central Texas to offer dual credits and give more students the opportunity to attend college. She said that would also help address the budget shortfall the college is facing by expanding ACC’s taxing district and bringing in more students.
In addition to having a clear stance on artificial intelligence in the classroom, Gonzales-Dholakia says ACC needs to have a policy on its use by administrative staff, since the college recently launched an AI-powered student support platform.
“I know there’s a lot of questions about ‘does this mean I have less time with my human adviser?’” she said. “It is really important that we protect that staff relationship interaction. And that as a board, we set up parameters for what AI is going to help facilitate and for what it’s not going to remove.”
Dana Walker joined the ACC board in 2020. She said ACC has made a lot of progress in the last six years, highlighting that the college has increased its completion rates, approved a free tuition pilot program and worked on improving its wraparound services based on student needs data. She said there’s still a lot of work to be done, especially with the free tuition pilot program.
“I would love it if we could expand it to more than just high school seniors, but I think first we need to be stable financially with what we have,” Walker said.
Walker would also like to create more partnerships with developers and nonprofits in the region to make sure students have basic needs like food security, housing and child care. She said housing is not a problem ACC should solve on its own.
With ACC potentially getting less funding from property taxes and the state, Walker said she would look at expenditures with a cautious lens, and push to advocate at the Capitol for more funding. She said strengthening workforce partnerships with companies like Tesla could also help to fund education for many students while also helping continue the growth of the region by contributing to a strong workforce.
Walker, a former Meta employee, said it’s important for the college to be thoughtful about how it brings AI into classrooms and how student and employee data and ideas are protected.
“We are going to need to keep critical thinking at the center of how students interact with tools like AI, so that when they begin their careers, they are able to productively use AI as a tool without relying on it blindly,” Walker said.
Place 3: Trevor Hale and Nan McRaven
Trevor Hale is a retired university professor, having taught at the University of Houston-Downtown, Texas A&M, and more recently Huston-Tillotson. He says that while he is a third-generation university professor, he is passionate about first-generation students.
Hale said one of his main priorities would be increasing enrollment by rebranding the college with a name with “more gravitas,” suggesting something like, “The University of Central Texas.” He said he highly respects incumbent Nan McRaven, but another of his priorities would be to limit the terms trustees serve on the board.
“Maybe it’s one term of eight years, maybe it’s two terms of four, but 30 years on the board is something that shouldn’t happen,” he said. “This is a volunteer position and leadership comes with responsibility, and the same old same old, it’s not getting it done.”
Hale said he would like to see more partnerships with universities so more students can do their first two years at ACC and then move to a four-year college. He also said he believes education should cost less, and suggested changing the free tuition pilot program to be only for students who already put in their first two years.
“By that point, you’re hopefully engrossed in a major, you’re really serious about your studies,” Hale said. “I think there should be some skin in the game when you go to school like that. It needs to be something you want to do. I love the idea of free tuition, but it doesn’t necessarily work.”
Hale said that would allow ACC to solve future budget issues and increase enrollment by bringing in students from other cities like San Antonio.
Nan McRaven is the longest-serving member of the board, having joined in 2002, and has a doctorate in community college leadership. During her time, ACC has gone from having six to 12 campuses, passed two bond elections to improve buildings and purchase equipment, and added Lockhart to its taxing district.
“We want to create the college of the future, and to do that, I think we need good knowledgeable leadership experience, and I do bring that to the race,” she said.
McRaven said her top priority is to keep ACC affordable so anyone who wants to get a post-secondary credential can do so at the college. She said a decrease in funding could jeopardize the future of the free tuition program, but she hopes the community will step in by either accepting a tax rate or by creating an endowment for the program. She said the college will also continue to advocate at the legislature for funding for all colleges.
“I do believe the money’s out there and should be earmarked for community colleges from the state,” McRaven said. “We want all our community colleges to succeed and have the funding they need.”
To help students succeed and to increase completion rates, McRaven said she would like to create an easier navigation process for the resources students can access, including financial aid, childcare, food banks and advising.
She said she will work on ACC continuing to focus on the automotive, advanced manufacturing and healthcare industries. She also said she wants to continue working on making sure students have safe habits around the use of AI, while also getting the skills required for future jobs and new technologies.