Austin Community College: Highland Campus — Local services in Austin

My experience with ACC has been nothing but stressful and unpleasant. I was advised incorrectly for courses that did not apply towards my degree plan. After enrolling and attending those courses, my professors were the ones to inform me that I was incorrectly advised. Upon reaching out to department chairs/advisors to try to fix the issue, I was then told to drop those courses. After I dropped, ACC billed me for dropping those courses. I went through an entire appeal process to never hear anything back. During this process, I’ve been accruing late fees for the dropped courses. It did not matter how many times I have called and emailed for those fees to stop accruing, I was still being charged. I decided to just pay them so it didn’t affect me enrolling into a different college.

The complaints go on… During my first semester at ACC(Spring 2022), I was enrolled in Azzurra Crispino’s Ethics online course. This Professor never updated grades or gave feedback. She waited till the last week of the semester to update anyones grades. This same semester, I was enrolled in a different professors Intro to Chem course and found out on the first day of class that the professor I had chosen actually no longer worked for ACC. Myself and others were thrown onto Professor Bryan Bocknack’s first time teaching and Intro to Chem course in YEARS(he made sure to mention this quite often in class.) Professor Bocknack was extremely rude to students. He would answer your questions with another question, make you feel dumb for even speaking, and was not lenient or considerate of students and their time even though he had a new excuse every week for why grades were not submitted/updated. I put in a student complaint for both professors and even emailed the dean, only to never get a response.

During my Spring 2022 semester, I was enrolled in Elementary Statistics course with Valeri Bond. This was another online course where we never received any feedback nor did this Professor respond to emails or update grades. Our entire class had to rely on one another to piece together assignments, which can be difficult considering we were an online course. There were exams given to us that had nothing to do with the materials or homework that were covered. This was brought to ACC’s department chairs attention by myself and other students with no resolve. Let me remind you that this was Spring 2022 semester, which ended in May. I finally received an email back from Student Complaints on November 3rd about this matter and was given 4 days(November 7th) to respond. This means it took them 5+ months to get to my student complaint, while ignoring the complaints mentions above, and only gave the student 4 days to respond.

Although my time at ACC was not pleasant, I do want to give a major shoutout to my Microbiology Professor Lakisha Barrett. She was absolutely amazing and a pleasure to be educated by. She made class fun, listened to her students, appreciated feedback, and gave serious cool aunt energy. I highly recommend her for all my Nursing and Hygienist(and other clinical setting careers) people...

Good luck trying to find anything you need. The office buildings suite numbers are often not listed on the website and no one answers the phone. 45 minutes of walking around. After asking several employees, the first person said we were looking for “registration” and the 2nd said we were looking for “student services” and it would be downstairs to the right. All of this was incorrect. We needed something called the Accelerator which means absolutely nothing to us. If you want to create a jingoistic term then it’s on you to clarify to brand new students trying to figure everything out. And it wasn’t downstairs to the right, but straight ahead. And there was additional signage telling us to go upstairs. Most of the entry doors were locked “for your safety” so we had to sweat while navigating around the many buildings trying to find the entry.

There needs to be much better coherent signage inside, outside, and on the website. I can only imagine other ppl gave up after trying to find what they need. I attended three different campuses and was excited to see this one hoping it would be more accessible but they’ve managed to completely miss the opportunity given in this new building that I voted for.

Update 1: After we finally found what we were looking for, the advisor, Missy, was very kind, as were the other staff. They said there is construction and they are trying to improve the things mentioned. I really hope that they do as the campus has a lot of potential and seems to be a much better use of the space than the previous mall that was there. I am glad to have the ACC community college system in our area.

Update 2: Again, more problems, and everything requires going down there, trying to park (still a mystery the correct place) and trying to find the right office, so at least an hour of time. He tried to get his ID and the admissions office said he had no record of any activity for the student. Very unhelpful. I explained we spoke to Missy just a few days ago and he that my child was registered, but it made no difference. Didn't even move from his seat or offer us a place to sit down. It seemed like maybe we were disturbing him.

Then there were more problems again with the professor, even though my son emailed and said he would have to miss a day (in the email the professor said he could work it out) in person was a different story and he was unwelcoming and made it seem like it wouldn't work and was very negative.

I don't understand how anyone gets anything done here. I enjoyed my time taking classes at ACC, so I am not sure if it has just changed a lot since then or if there is something about this campus that is a problem, but it is a problem. I feel bad for the students who don't have someone to help them navigate this quagmire. It shouldn't be this difficult to take a community...

We, my mom and I, went to the College in the afternoon and on Martin Luther King day. A guard prevented my mom from entering and told her it was closed. This was odd since I had checked their website on Google and it said in bold print, it opens, from 8 am to 10 pm. A pop-up came on which implied that it might change. A little later the guard checked on us but I thought my mom had a plan since I didn't know where to stay. The next day began our first visit to this College. We started from the second floor this time and mom waited while I stood in line at the front desk and learned that you need a photo ID card to go through the school. You can get one at a certain office...for ACC. Anyway, I learned that pretty quickly because I wanted to meet a recruiter who I thought would be in the visual communication department. The door required a magnetic card or badge to get in. The recruiter was only found on the computer system so the 2nd person in the 2nd office took me with my mom to the computer lab and got us a proxy number to wait in line. I then waited on a computer self-service line for an adviser/advisor. She asked if there was anything she could help me with. I assumed she wanted to see my English essay which is what brought me here because my English teacher loved it. It was some paperwork she needed. I filled the papers out that she gave me and waited in line for enrollment. There were three more people to meet. I am now a student currently enrolled in College and people treat me with a lot more respect, I noticed, than...