The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has appointed TJC’s Department Chair of Government and Economics Geoffrey Willbanks to the Political Science Field of Study (FOS) Advisory Committee.
The committee is composed of 24 voting members (12 from public community colleges and 12 from public universities) from a representative sample of institutions of varying sizes, peer groups, and regions of the state.
The Political Science FOS Advisory Committee is charged with identifying the block of courses that students may transfer to a general academic teaching institution.
The FOS project contributes toward 60x30TX goals of increasing college completion by easing student transfer across institutions, and reducing student debt by making it less likely that students will take unnecessary courses.
Willbanks is a longtime resident of Tyler and graduated from Robert E. Lee High School. He holds an associate degree from TJC, bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UT Tyler, and has completed his Ph.D. coursework at the University of Houston. He has been department chair at TJC for the past 13 years and is a past president of the TJC Faculty Senate. He was the first director of the Carnegie History Center, a joint project of the City of Tyler, Historic Tyler and the Smith County Historical Society.
Willbanks prides himself on being politically active, saying, “I am a strong believer in participatory democracy in our great Republic. I look forward to advancing the success of students across the state of Texas in a most important discipline, political science.”