Rio Grande College Steps Forward

Long gone are the days when Sul Ross-Rio Grande College was little more than a dream to a small, but earnest group of professors who were dispatched from the main Alpine campus to sow the seeds of higher education across the western half of Texas.

Back in the 1960s, Sul Ross State University had taken the cue from a few other state-supported institutions by offering accredited extension courses wherever they could borrow a classroom and install a professor. SRSU extension courses were offered in El Paso, Midland, Odessa, Van Horn, Sierra Blanca, Big Spring, Snyder, Kerrville, Del Rio, Eagle Pass and Uvalde.

Confronted by a proliferation of off-campus courses taught by Sul Ross and other universities, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board stepped in to formalize extension programs and insure program quality. The Board began allowing the creation of upper-level centers in several locations in the state. Not quite free-standing institutions, these centers were to work in conjunction with a local junior college to provide a baccalaureate experience to regions of the state not served by four-year institutions.

It was during this time that Dr. William Tindol, math professor and Sul Ross’ registrar (in charge of extension programs), sat down with his counterpart at Southwest Texas Junior College, John Allen Davis, to discuss the feasibility of offering upper-level courses to enhance programs at the junior college’s Del Rio, Eagle Pass and Uvalde campuses. Governor Dolph Briscoe later persuaded a reluctant Coordinating Board to authorize the creation of such an upper-level center for Sul Ross, called the Sul Ross State University Study Center in 1973. Courses were held in Uvalde, Del Rio, Eagle Pass and Kerrville.

At the beginning, the Center had a name, one full-time faculty member, Dr. Don Smith, a director (Lewis Wood), three support staff, and a number of part-time faculty. In 1974, Dr. Tindol left Alpine to become director of the Study Center, serving until 1984 when he returned to the faculty as Professor of Education and Mathematics. Enrollment grew to about 600 students in the late 1970s.

“Mostly, we held (night) classes in high schools around the region,” recalls Dr. Tindol, 69, a 1960 graduate of SRSU-Alpine and the University’s longest-serving professor. “But we set up faculty offices wherever we could. My secretary at Del Rio worked out of a closet. My secretary at Eagle Pass had to put up with the noise of the high school vocational building where she had a tiny office. At Uvalde, we were squeezed into a copy machine room at the junior college.”

In charge of the Study Center’s early-day operations, Dr. Tindol hired Dr. Robert Overfelt in 1978, current chairman of Rio Grande College’s Liberal Arts Department.

“I was hired as the school’s first history professor,” recalls Dr. Overfelt. “But we (faculty) didn’t have the luxury of being specialists…we literally taught everything in the catalog.”

Once a week, Overfelt taught night classes at Eagle Pass High School. Arriving for his first class, he found no roster and no assigned classroom.

“The secretary yawned and said for me to just find a room and stand outside the door,” he remembers. “So there I was, hanging out like a hooker soliciting my first late-American History students.

“I thought, boy have I made a mistake in taking this job,” he went on. “But it somehow worked – by 6 o’clock the class filled.”

Dr. Tindol recalls the humble graduation ceremonies of the startup years: “I’d set things up in bank boardrooms, make a little speech, hand out graduation certificates to a few graduates, and have punch and cookies set up for afterwards…pretty simple.”

The first formal commencement ceremonies were held in May 1985, when about 25 of the 73 graduates from the Center for the year walked across a stage in a steamy SWTJC auditorium to receive their diplomas.

By that time, the Center had been reorganized administratively with three academic program areas: Business, Liberal Arts and Teacher Education – headed by a chair and nine full-time faculty. Dr. Frank Abbott joined the institution as its first dean. In 2001, with enrollment nearing 1,000, Rio Grande College reorganized again with the addition of a vice president Dr. Joel Vela.

In 1987, Senator Judith Zaffirini pushed through a separate funding bill for the now-named Uvalde Area Study Center. The bill quadrupled resources, allowing the Center to begin offering its first daytime programs. SRSU Dr. Jack Humphries oversaw the transition that soon resulted in nearly a 300 percent increase in RGC graduates. Dr. Vic Morgan later took Humphrey’s seat as SRSU president.

With new funding, the Center began to acquire separate space. Long-term lease obligations were arranged with SWTJC and in 1993, a 10,000-square-foot building opened in Uvalde with four classrooms and offices.

In 1994, Governor Ann Richards presided at the ground-breaking for the second Center building, a 5,000-square-foot facility at Del Rio. Within year, the Center, now named Rio Grande College, had its third building, an 8,000-square-foot structure at Eagle Pass. A second Eagle Pass building was completed in 2001. Meanwhile, Del Rio added a three-building complex of some 30,000 square feet.

In January 2008, RGC will vacate its original Uvalde building and move into its new 30,000-square-foot class and office facility, named in honor of Governor and Mrs. Briscoe. The College now has 30 full-time faculty and an annual budget of $7.5 million, a significant growth over the line item appropriation of $220,000 in 1984.

All RGC campuses have been constructed with funds from bond issues by SWTJC, which retires its debt through lease payments from the College.

Dr. Overfelt, who’s glad he remained long after RGC’s tenuous beginnings, reflects on progress made by the college over the decades.