Interim president set to guide Texas A&M through transition
With deep Aggie roots and a focus on stability, Tommy Williams ’78 aims to ensure a smooth leadership handoff while championing listening and university traditions.
A longtime public servant, former state senator and dedicated advocate for higher education, Tommy Williams '78 has stepped into the role of interim president of Texas A&M University.
Texas A&M University Interim President Tommy Williams ’78 is focused on ensuring the next permanent president will have a clean slate from which to work when he or she takes the helm of one of the nation’s largest universities.
“The role of interim president, to me, in a nutshell, is to get the shiny side up,” he said. “There are so many great things that are happening at Texas A&M. And if you have the perspective of looking over the last 20 years at what’s happened here at Texas A&M and how we have become a world-recognized institution, it’s incredible.”
When Williams was asked to step into the role of interim president by Texas A&M University System Chancellor Glenn Hegar ’93, he said he was honored to serve as the bridge between administrations.
“There are so many great things happening at Texas A&M, and we need to keep the momentum,” he said.
All in the family
Williams is no stranger to Texas A&M. His dad and four siblings are all Aggies. The Marshall, Texas, native said his parents had kids in college at Texas A&M from 1974 to 1989.
“My roots here are pretty deep,” he said. “My dad played football with Gene Stallings; they were on the same team. I have two brothers and two sisters, and we all attended A&M.”
Like so many Aggies, his earliest memories of Texas A&M started well before his own time in school. He remembers his family packing up the station wagon to make the nearly four-hour journey to College Station to watch the Aggies play at Kyle Field, which made for a long day.
“My mother packed breakfast and lunch, and we would stop at a roadside park, usually around Rusk, eat breakfast and come down for the day,” he said. “They didn’t call it tailgating then, but I guess we were tailgating. Then, when the game was over, we’d get back in the car and drive back home.
“My dad was driving four or five kids, three or four hours each direction in a single day, so he was really committed to getting us down here,” he said.
That commitment ultimately translated into the next generation of Williams’ kids following their father’s footsteps, spending a cumulative total of 15 years studying in Aggieland.
I think it’s important that we give back to the state and to the institutions that helped us get where we are.”
“When my youngest brother graduated from Texas A&M, we gave my dad a trophy for 15 years of continuing education.”
Growing up surrounded by Aggies, Williams was very familiar with Aggie traditions and values before he even set foot on campus. But of the now-defined six Aggie Core Values, one stands out most to him.
“I think all of them are important, but having respect for other people is the foundational part of being a Texas Aggie,” he said.
After graduating from Texas A&M in 1978 with a degree in accounting, he spent many years in the private sector, including serving as president of Woodforest Financial Services, an affiliate of Woodforest National Bank. He was later drawn to public service, first in the Texas Legislature, then as vice chancellor of federal and state relations for the Texas A&M System.
“I think it’s important that we give back to the state and to the institutions that helped us get where we are,” Williams said. “It was a great honor for me when I retired from the Texas Senate to come and serve as the vice chancellor of federal and state relations for four years and be able to bring some of the skills that I’ve developed during my time in public service to help Texas A&M and the other System schools move forward. I felt like that was something that I could do to help my alma mater, and it was really a great opportunity.”
Bridging the gap
In his first few weeks as interim president, Williams has hit the ground running by engaging the Aggie community with a series of listening sessions.
“I want all the faculty, staff and students to know that I’m here to listen to what their concerns are,” he said. “That’s my focus in these first few weeks, to understand what the concerns are so that we can move this institution forward.”
While he won’t be able to personally hear from all voices across Texas A&M’s more than 100,000-member community, Williams is prioritizing listening sessions with established representative bodies of key stakeholder groups.
He has already met with over a dozen groups representing faculty, staff, students, former students, as well as individual academic and administrative leaders, CEOs of the university’s affiliate organizations and more.
Over the next few weeks, Williams will host listening sessions with other student, faculty, staff and former student groups as he formulates an action plan based on major themes from these meetings. For those he isn’t able to personally meet with, he’s encouraging feedback to be sent via email to president@tamu.edu.
“I’m confident that the regents will make a great selection for the permanent president. They’ve said this over and over again; they’re going to take their time and find the right person for the job,” he said. “And what I want more than anything is for that person to be successful and serve the university for a long time.”
