Alfaro & Cisneros

Sunday, Aug. 23, 1998

Ex-general's latest mission: Lead A&M-Kingsville

By HEATHER HOWARD
Staff Writer

Corpus Christi lawyer Dan Alfaro knew more than 30 years ago, as a young Army second lieutenant at Fort Sam Houston, that barracks-mate Marc Cisneros was a born leader.
It was the summer of 1961, and Alfaro, then barely 22, was impressed with Cisneros' always-immaculate uniform, unfailing devotion to his wife and intense dedication to the Army.
``He was always up at . . . 5 a.m. in the morning, ready to go, always ahead of me,'' Alfaro said. ``I could tell right then and there when I met him that he was destined to do great things, not only in the Army but in his life.''
Those things included a 35-year Army career with three tours of combat duty -- two in Vietnam, one in Panama -- and a position as a corporate executive.
Last week, Texas A&M University System regents unanimously selected Cisneros, who retired from the Army as a three-star general, to take over as president of Texas A&M University-Kingsville.
He will replace Manuel Ibanez, who announced in January that he would step down Sept. 1 after nine years as university president. Ibanez has said he will remain at A&M-Kingsville to teach biology.
Born in Brownsville and raised in Premont, Cisneros, 59, is a former commander of the 5th Army headquartered at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio and was responsible for Army activities in states west of the Mississippi River. In 1996, he became an executive for Fluor Daniel Inc., a San Antonio construction company.
``I think (Cisneros) exemplifies honor to your country, which I think in our society is something all of us are losing,'' Alfaro said. ``I think he will lead A&M-Kingsville with that same dedication.''
It will be a tough mission, Cisneros said -- one he hopes to fulfill by recruiting aggressively, becoming a mentor to young people and reaching out to area school districts to help them better prepare students for college.
About half of A&M-Kingsville's students must take remedial courses -- something Cisneros wants to change.
``That's a challenge throughout Texas,'' he said. ``I want to develop a comprehensive overview of what they can do to cooperate with area high schools to overcome this. I'm not accepting that there's nothing we can do to improve.''
The university also has faced declining enrollment in the past few years -- a trend at least partially attributed by university officials to the 1994 conversion of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi to a four-year campus.
A&M-Kingsville enrolled 6,576 students in fall 1993. Last fall, the school's enrollment was 6,050, university officials have said.
In fall 1993, A&M-Corpus Christi had 4,475 students. Last fall, it enrolled 5,686 -- a 27 percent increase.
``That was a big factor that caused the challenge in enrollment decline,'' Cisneros said.
Last year, U.S. News & World Report ranked Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi the top public regional university in the state in its 1998 ranking of the nation's best colleges.
The magazine, however, rated A&M-Kingsville among the lower level of schools that were ranked.
Cisneros said he is not deterred.
``I think Kingsville has some advantages no other schools (in the area) have,'' he said.
Those include, he said, nationally recognized engineering and agriculture programs and a campus that has the potential to bustle with student life.
``We have a beautiful campus,'' he said. ``Part of the development and maturing of child is an opportunity to be away from home. And yet it's close enough to get home on the weekends.''
Cisneros said he wants to encourage more students to live on campus -- something he hopes to do, in part, by seeking Legislative funding to provide money to help students with housing.
``If students are just commuting to school and leaving . . . that doesn't create a complete academic environment,'' Cisneros said.
Cisneros' said his No. 1 goal is to develop a mentoring relationship between faculty and students -- an ability friends say Cisneros honed in the military.
``He has mentored and led hundreds of young people,'' said Stephen ``Tio'' Kleberg, former head of the King Ranch's cattle and farming operations and a friend of Cisneros for more than 20 years.
But doing that also will depend, Cisneros said, on convincing students to go to college in the first place.
Cisneros said he intends to spend a great deal of time recruiting, talking one-on-one with students and parents and trying to convince students that going to college will give them more opportunities -- and show them how going is possible.
``A lot of parents are sending first-generation children to the university,'' Cisneros said. ``They don't have, a lot of them, the experience of how to get children through school.''
Kleberg said Cisneros' South Texas roots will help bridge that gap.
``I think he realizes there's an awful lot of potential and what he's faced with are third and fourth generations of people in families without college degrees,'' said Kleberg, who served on the committee that chose candidates for the president's position.
Helping those students succeed will be the key, Cisneros said, to securing a better future for South Texas.
``I was raised, my heart was developed, my values were developed in South Texas,'' Cisneros said. ``If I have been successful at all, I have done it because I was raised in the Coastal Bend area. When this opportunity came up . . . I said this would give me a great opportunity to contribute to the area.''