After 25 years, San Antonio College lost a valuable tradition, ousted professor says
Rick Hopkins was fired as a tenured professor at San Antonio College last year by officials who said he was holding another full-time job. He tried to appeal with arguments that his position directing the Texas Academic Decathlon was part time, but lost.When the Alamo Colleges District board voted April 19 to uphold the firing of a tenured professor, it ended a murky argument over his two salaries that had raged for months.
“In addition, he has used College District property and resources, including SAC’s address as the business address of the Texas Academic Decathlon,” it states. “One of the most disappointing aspects of this termination was the fact that the president of San Antonio College did not ask me directly about this,” Hopkins told the board. “This could have all been avoided by speaking man to man instead of relying on mediators.”
Well before the firing, there seemed less enthusiasm about keeping the event at SAC after Vela became the college’s president, said Kathy Rollo, the head of the decathlon’s governing board.“The previous president of San Antonio College, they were very supportive of the Texas Academic Decathlon,” said Rollo, who is the Lubbock Independent School District’s superintendent.
Hopkins presented similar letters from campus staff through the years and district reports as recent as 2019 acknowledging the competition taking place at the college. In an interview, Hopkins said he wasn’t made aware of any issue with his work for the decathlon prior to being summoned in November to Vela’s office, where the college president, human resources staff and campus police were ready to make his termination official.
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