SAC graduate Christian Villarreal returns to head Writing Center

A former student has returned to campus to lead the SAC Writing Center.

Christian Villarreal is the newly appointed academic program specialist for the SAC Writing Center. He is responsible for supervising and managing day-to-day operations at the center.

The SAC Writing Center offers free services to students, faculty and staff, with professional tutors available to help students with writing in any discipline, through both in-person and remote tutoring. The center helps students with understanding assignments, generating ideas, creating a thesis, organizing their papers and more.

In addition to his full-time position at SAC, Villarreal is pursuing a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling at UTSA. He graduated from SAC in 2016 and transferred to Texas A&M University – San Antonio, where he graduated in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in English.

Villarreal brings first-hand knowledge of SAC resources to his role at the Writing Center, both from his time as a student and later as a tutor at the college. Before taking on his new role, Villarreal worked part-time as senior student success specialist for SACMEN while also assisting at SAC’s Integrated Reading and Writing Center.

As a student, Villarreal took a non-traditional route to SAC. He left high school during his freshman year. In his late teens, he decided to earn his GED.

“When I was 17 or 18, I knew in the pit of my stomach that I wanted something better for my life,” he said. “I was ready for that change and growth.” With encouragement from his aunt, he found a free GED program at Restore Education, across the street from SAC.

With his GED completed, he began attending classes at SAC. In his second year, he began to participate in extracurricular activities, including the Honors Academy and the San Antonio College Men Empowerment Network (SACMEN), a free program providing support, tutoring, mentoring and other services to help male students of color achieve their academic goals.

“The Honors Academy helped me expand the academic side of myself, and SACMEN helped me a lot with leadership and networking aspects,” Villarreal said.

Villarreal was instrumental in helping to establish SACMEN on campus, according to Geraldo Guerra, director of Academic Success Centers at San Antonio College. Guerra oversees the Writing Center, SACMEN and other SAC tutoring centers, which together served more than 1,500 students last semester alone.

“Christian is the perfect candidate for overseeing the Writing Center space because he understands overcoming challenges to pursue higher education and being persistent and consistent with his education,” Guerra said. “He’s a real role model to SACMEN and other students with similar backgrounds to see that higher education is for them.”

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