By Dr. L.R. Griffin, English Professor
Lone Star College-North Harris Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC) instructor Randy Williams sat in front of his computer monitor one day during the fall semester of 2020. He was almost distracted by his struggle to settle in and focus on the box-framed presenters. His labored breathing vied for the attention he wanted to pay to the presentation. Feeling lousier with every passing moment, Williams gripped his pen to take notes.
“I am always eager to be a part of auxiliary initiatives at Lone Star College, especially those facilitated by my colleagues at LSC-North Harris. That day was no different, and I am sure I ignored my body’s cues when it continued to signal that my functions were shutting down,” Williams recalls. “During that time, especially, I was happy to once again be around my colleagues and learn from them although our meeting place was WebEx.”
That day would be the first of a months-long hospital stay, backdoored with a multitude of doctors’ consultations, a 155-pound weight loss, and the implementation of a snazzy Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) that is regulated by instrumentation Williams carries in a rather stylish sling valise of sorts.
Williams readily attests that the years leading up to his ultimate heart failure in 2020 were a stretch of exhilarating moments after he became full-time HVAC faculty in the LSC-North Harris Career and Applied Technology division.
“I was still managing my business and coordinating the large contracts we had just acquired. Fulfilling husband and father duties is non-negotiable, so I was surely not going to skimp on that. Then on top of all that, I was intent on being a transformative and transformational force for my students.”
HVAC is the avenue on which he parades many real-life lessons and real-life possibilities.
“I am always trying to think of ways to be inclusive and champion equity, especially for my students of color. Some of them have severe imposter syndrome, and I cannot pretend in those moments that HVAC is the most important thing that day when I have standing before me an unmotivated, unsure student who is one hiccup away from dropping out of college altogether. Keeping them inspired and motivated despite all that they face is hard work for faculty, but we are right there witnessing the train wrecks as they unfold, when students give up on themselves. I believe we are called upon to try and avert that. It is hard work, though. Very hard.”
Williams, an LSC-North Harris Faculty Fellow and an LSC-North Harris food pantry volunteer, was also an integral player in the redesign of the Lone Star College-North Harris HVAC Program.
“It was an honor to be recognized with our administrators and colleagues by The National Council of Workforce Education back then for our redesigned area. That was very gratifying.”
After that achievement, Williams was “pumped” to participate in Lone Star College system-wide initiatives.
“Randy is very personable and quickly develops new relationships everywhere he goes. He is quick to volunteer and be helpful when and wherever the need may be,” said LSC-North Harris HVAC Lead George Wentzel.
“As a Black man in my mama’s house, and in so many Black households, we were reared to do a thing doubly well-- twice as good as expected,” he said. “That is one of the reasons I would stretch myself and give so much of myself.”
That cultural prescription, plus Williams’s ties to Lone Star College, prompted him to keenly focus on majorly contributing to the college.
“Additionally, I wanted to learn as much as I could about this institution and be a face in the rooms of people who are empowered to make things happen. So, I took on more responsibility. I figured that was and is the best way. I wanted to serve on those committees that have been created to respond to specific challenges and together develop an action plan for change.”
According to Williams, he became the cover model of every cliché there is about being unbalanced, overworked, overstressed, and overextended.
“I was burning the candle at both ends and the middle, running around like a decapitated chicken, keeping the road hot, always on the go with no pauses.”
Williams intimates that even though he has always been a hard worker and was trained to even overwork, being a tireless worker in and out of the classroom in the name of Lone Star College was “automatic.”
The military veteran’s emotional bond to Lone Star College started to form when his mother set a goal to become a nurse and completed the nursing program at LSC-Kingwood.
“My sister took classes here, which set her on her path to becoming the Executive Principal of two campuses in Fort Worth ISD.”
His eldest brother previously received an Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree and inspection certification. He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Applied Science in Energy, Manufacturing and Trades Management here at LSC-North Harris.
Williams graduated from Lone Star College with an AAS degree in HVAC and Refrigeration after his stint in the military.
“I went to high school and graduated from Nimitz, so LSC-North Harris was always looming.”
Williams then completed his bachelor’s degree at Our Lady of the Lake when it was housed at LSC-Montgomery.
“Lone Star College was like a family member or a warm, giving, and wise neighbor. I seemed to always need to make my way back.”
He jokes about his sister’s image that long emblazoned the LSC-North Harris trucking school practice vehicles. (They doubly served as 18-wheeled mobile billboards advertising Lone Star College-North Harris some years ago.)
“They kept her face on them a long time. It was befitting. Lone Star College played such a powerful role in our family,” he said.
Williams recalls how he and his siblings as kids would be sardine-packed into his mom’s car on many evenings to accompany her to LSC-Kingwood.
“We went to school with my mom. My mother would drive the whole family from Greenspoint [our neighborhood] to Kingwood. [While she was in class], we would get out of the car and toss the football in the parking lot and just find something to do as we waited on her to finish. She sacrificed so much to get her education. We witnessed her becoming empowered through education in real life, in real-time. It was awesome to see that from beginning to end. Good teachers get to see it very often.”
When Williams first contemplated the notion of teaching at LSC-North Harris, he was an award-winning senior building engineer for Coldwell Banker Real Estate (CBRE), a global real estate company.
“It was a great job. We were dispatched to various places in the country, and our rewards for high performance were forthcoming and pretty sweet,” he recalls. “We were often bragged on and celebrated, rewarded in tangible and intangible ways.”
When offered to teach part-time at LSC-North Harris, Williams agreed, his interest only piqued by his affection for all things HVAC. He imagined that teaching would never become a full-time passion--“not enough of a passion to give up that day job,” he said. Then it happened.
“I really enjoyed the teacher-student opportunities to connect. I sensed how I was able to change minds and [thereby] change lives. The students gained something that I noticed in my mother when she attended Kingwood and became a nurse. It is the special thing that I see in empowered students. It is inexplicable confidence that lets you know that this person is going to be something and will be much more than what they had planned to be,” he said.
Williams’ students are riveted by his openness to discuss his entrepreneurial successes and narrate in episodic rhythm the saga of being reared in Greenpoint.
He openly recalls the tribulation and triumphs of his American story, which features the benefactors’ comeuppance due to his mother’s relentless ambition. He shares the agonizing tales of the trauma resulting from bouts against racist systems in the military, corporate, academic, and social spheres. This is the same traumatic stress caused by dodging crime’s randomness, witnessing poverty’s contagion, and “striving to thrive daily in Greenspoint and surrounding areas” that were the setting of his early life.
This unassuming, typical, married suburbanite father of four sons beams an ambivalent, uneasy pride. He is proud to have attained his portion of the American dream and the requisite knick-knacks that come with success.
“I enjoy my home, our neighborhood, and our safe environment, our pool, our toys. I like the fact that my kids attend schools in an exemplary school district. We made it. I have honored my mother’s legacy as best I could for now. All this started one hot, sticky Houston evening after a long ride to Kingwood College in a car not made for a family of five healthy people.”
Williams is admittedly prouder of his dreams than his accomplishments.
“I have so much I have to do as soon as I get this heart.” (Williams will soon be approved to be listed on the heart transplant list.)
He grasps his developing superpowers as an educator and survivor, and he embraces the similarities he shares with Marvel’s Iron Man beyond Tony Stark’s special heart apparatus.
“Like Tony Stark, I am a visionary, and I dream big for my sons, my students, and for the supportive, embracing, diverse, inclusive, and equitable culture of Lone Star College. My boys are clear on our standards for them—they will go to college and pursue higher education—not a debatable topic at my house,” said Williams.
Williams believes his eldest son, who graduated from Lamar College in May 2021, fully understands that his undergrad achievement is only a part of his greater pursuit.
“My sons will get their masters and become leaders in their spin-off companies that will be anchored by our existing company, Triple J. My students will start their own businesses and enrich their families; they will become the guiding forces for their communities, and a fresh batch of eager minds will fill our hallways every semester, sparked by our graduates and our graduates’ accomplishments. The dismal achievement numbers will be revived for all students, especially my Black and Brown male students.”
According to research, African American males are the least persistent--the least likely to embark on a collegiate path and complete with a degree. “Barriers faced by African American males in education are plentiful. [T]hey face higher suspension rates, society misconceptions, pre-conceived expectations, referrals to the office, expulsion, and higher special education placement than that of their peers” (Sirin & Rogers-Sirin, 2005).
“The barriers will be there. I strive to motivate my students by encouraging them to also be visionaries, to pursue their education beyond their trade certifications and associate degree. I preach to them that even amid the ills of society, they must endure.”
Williams encourages his students to refrain from confusing awareness of barriers with hypersensitivity to them.
“We must acknowledge and appreciate the disruptive barriers because as long as there are flawed, small-minded people, there will be systemic marginalizing. My classroom is a nurturing environment for possibilities and opportunities. We do not dwell on what has been or what is. We focus on what will be and how to circumvent the barriers we cannot change by accentuating talents and strengths.”
Williams cites the stupidity, callousness, self-importance, and evil that inspire people to form superiority complexes and wreak havoc on the lives of otherwise self-propelled students as the chief reason he has become a focused student of transformative leadership in the classroom.
“[Transformative leadership] takes into account the material, lived realities of those who participate in the institution” and is guided by eight specific interconnected and interrelated principles” including 1)the mandate for deep and equitable change, 2) the need to deconstruct and reconstruct knowledge frameworks that perpetuate inequity and injustice 3)the need to address the inequitable distribution of power 4)an emphasis on both private and public (individual and collective) good 5) a focus on emancipation, democracy, equity, and justice 6)an emphasis on interdependence, interconnectedness, and global awareness 7)the necessity of balancing critique with promise 8)the call to exhibit moral courage” (Shields, 2020).
“We must continue to honor our students, their culture, their home lives, their communities, their language, their style, their poverty, their lack, and their skin. When this happens, and they feel a genuine belonging, great things happen for the student and for the institution,” he said.
Williams will soon complete his master's degree in higher education leadership at Sam Houston University. He wants to continue teaching, but he shares his dream of becoming a collegiate leader.
“I am waiting for my heart transplant, and I am sure I will be getting it soon. In the meantime, though I am unable to take on jobs and tasks that strain my physical body, my mind is grinding, and I am constantly planning and visualizing.”
LSC-North Harris’ resident Iron Man believes his struggles, losses, wins, entrepreneurial spirit, and the undying pursuit of equity, his wife, and family will facilitate the achievement of new and developing goals.
As a college leader, Williams wants to lead a theater of war against debilitating forces that bring harm to students and their families, including poverty, crime, food deserts, poor health care, lack of childcare and elderly care, and biases of all stripes, “bad things” that are only good for choking the life out of those who would otherwise be vibrant and eager scholars.
“These teams of educators, including staff, administrators, and faculty, will create and implement programs that address the social and societal burdens our students bear. The possibility of student success on our campus and campuses all over the country begins long before a student walks on the school grounds. That possibility is sometimes suffocated before it can breathe air. And I know all there is to know about breathing, I believe,” Williams said through escaped chuckles.
These days, Williams is taking better care of himself and working towards a more healthful life balance, “resting up for my heart transplant.”
“I am taking it easy. For me, that is the hardest work I have ever done.”
Randy Williams, HVAC Instructor