Amarillo College (AC) is pleased to announce that in 2024 it will begin serving as the regional facilitator of newly state-mandated active shooter training for professional peace officers.

Officials of both AC and the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center signed a memorandum of understanding in November that establishes AC as a regional training hub.

An early 20th-century love story that stands the test of time takes center stage Dec. 7-10 when the Amarillo College Theatre Arts Program presents Summer and Smoke, a play by Tennessee Williams.

The story centers around neighbors long smitten but kept at bay by their divergent attitudes about life – one is straight-laced, the other self-indulgent. Despite each coming full circle to the other’s point of view, the chasm persists.

Amarillo College (AC) applauds the Texas Plains Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals for its selection of profoundly generous AC benefactors John and Nancy Kritser for the 2023 Outstanding Philanthropist of the Year award.

Of course, the College applauds the Kritsers themselves even more!

Plains Dairy, a leading provider of high-quality dairy products, has solidified its commitment to supporting Amarillo College and AC Athletics through a generous donation of in-kind gifts valued at $263,000.

Included in the gift is a significant supply of chocolate milk and water specifically tailored to meet the nutrient-replacement and rehydration needs of AC athletes following their rigorous workouts.

Amarillo College is pleased to announce that its Communications and Marketing Department has captured three national marketing awards  –  two at   the topmost Gold level – from a leading authority on outstanding achievements in digital marketing for education.

The prestigious accolades come courtesy of the 11th Annual Education Digital Marketing (EDM) Awards, and AC captured Gold awards in the categories of Athletic Promotion and Social Media Content–Campaign. The College additionally claimed a Silver award for its Total Digital Marketing Program.

The second installment of the 2023-24 Art Force Piano Series at Amarillo College will be presented at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 7, when a noted visiting soprano helps a member of the AC faculty introduce a new original song cycle.

French-American soprano Jazmin Black Grollemund joins Dr. Nathaniel Fryml, director of choral activities at AC, for a concert titled “Songs of the Night,” which will feature the world premiere of Fryml’s song cycle NIGHTSFALL.

Computer manipulated images meant to communicate the artist’s personal and varied experiences with epilepsy comprise a unique exhibit now on display in the Southern Light Gallery at Amarillo College.

The exhibit is called Measured Disorders and was created by Andrew Joseph Ortiz, an associate professor of art and history at the University of Texas at Arlington, who has dealt with the physical challenges of epilepsy for more than 30 years.

Amarillo College sophomore Eliza Pearson was about 10 years old back when she first lugged her cello into the Music Building and became a member of the renowned Suzuki Program for young and aspiring musicians at AC.

These days she’s toting that stringed instrument of hers just a couple of miles farther down the road – a relatively short jaunt that nevertheless propels her instantly from academia, esteemed though it may be, to genuinely rarefied air.

The Education Credit Union Foundation today made a generous and impactful gift of $500,000 to Amarillo College to establish five endowed scholarships for students in STEM fields – science, technology, engineering or math.

In honor of the gift, the College has co-branded one its primary learning spaces in its STEM Research Center and christened it the ECU Foundation STEM Lab.

Amarillo College, which is ranked the top College in the nation by the Aspen Institute, will host an Employer Summit to honor the contributions area businesses have made over the past year in support of work-based initiatives for AC students in the STEM, Business, Childcare, Education and Creative Arts fields.

Amarillo College has selected a longtime member of the faculty at its Hinkson Memorial Campus in Hereford to become the next dean of campus operations there.

Dolores Arambula, a lifelong resident of Hereford and herself a graduate of Amarillo College, has served as interim dean of the Hinkson Campus since the untimely death last January of longtime Dean Daniel Esquivel.

Like most kids in the West Texas towns he once called home – Paducah, Matador, Abernathy – Terry Smith was intrigued by various aircraft that passed overhead. What set him apart is that his curiosity about planes never waned.

Smith’s desire to fully fathom the upkeep and precision necessary to keep those flying machines aloft and humming optimally became a full-fledged passion and led him to launch a long and successful career in aviation maintenance technology.

“Officer Buckle and Gloria” is an award-winning book that has charmed little kids for years, but when a real-life police officer reads the story about Gloria the police dog to a class of young students they tend to become downright riveted.

Through an outreach program dubbed Books & Badges, officers from the Amarillo College Police Department (ACPD) have been reading that book and others to enthusiastic young audiences comprised so far of pre-k, kindergarten and first-grade students at Hamlet Elementary School.

If a literature class that focuses solely on the short stories of celebrated author George Saunders piques your interest, then knowing the award-winning writer is planning to visit the class to conduct an in-person Q&A should be doubly alluring.

That’s exactly what’s in store for students who enroll in ENGL—2341 Selected Studies in Literature, a unique class being taught next spring at Amarillo College by Dr. Chris Hudson, assistant professor of English, who in addition to creating the course has dubbed it “Precarious Realism: George Saunders and the Contemporary Short Story.”

A cherished Amarillo College tradition that was interrupted by the pandemic will be revived in a big way when four outstanding individuals receive AC's Distinguished Alumni Award, which was last presented in 2019.

The honorees are Dr. Pablo Diaz-Esquivel, Dr. Clint Esler, Mr. Matt Griffith, and Dr. Paul Matney, who not only attended the College as a freshman but went on to serve as its president from 2009-2014.

The Academic Success Division at Amarillo College is pleased to announce that it has been named a fully certified tutor-training program by the internationally recognized College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA).

As a result, all Academic Success Centers across five AC campuses are staffed by CRLA certified peer and professional tutors.

Dr. Asanga Ranasinghe, Distinguished Research Scientist at Amarillo College, and Lisa Soper, instructional designer at AC’s Center for Teaching & Learning, soon will present findings of their collaborative research at a conference in Spain.

Ranasinghe and Soper have been invited to the 26th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL) Sept. 26-29 in Madrid, where they will share the results of a study they conducted at AC on the viability of virtual science labs.

Last fall, FirstBank Southwest made the largest gift in its history when President and CEO Andy Marshall announced a $3 million commitment to Amarillo College, establishing the Bank as “Founding Sponsor” of AC’s resurgent intercollegiate athletics program.

In recognition of that generosity in 2022, AC named its freshly renovated athletics facility FirstBank Southwest Center; but to further honor the bank and the man at its helm, the AC Foundation in 2023 has named FirstBank Southwest as the recipient of its yearly Chairman’s Award.

Amarillo College has received a grant that positions AC to acquire cutting-edge equipment essential to the redesign of its Industrial Technology program into an Advanced Manufacturing pathway that includes a specialization in automation.

AC was presented with a $346,340 Jobs and Education for Texans (JET) Grant by leadership of the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) during a ceremony on Sept. 14 at Frank Phillips College (FPC), which also received a grant.

René West and Mark Penland have been creating collages ever since they could hold scissors, but on their present-day digital odyssey they don’t need scissors.

West, associate professor of photography at Amarillo College (AC), and Penland, a freelance photographer and photography lab manager at Tarrant County College’s Northeast Campus, are now creating art with Artificial Intelligence (AI).