LITERATURE A COMMUNITY COLLEGE PRESIDENT SHOULD READ TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE

Abstract

To be a community leader and an effective community college president, one must be aware not only of the community college literature but also that of other disciplines. Hence, although most of what follows is from the extensive literature on the community junior college, some business management literature is mentioned, as well. To round out the article, moreover, I have included a number of books that I, as a community college president, have found instructive—books that have nothing to do directly with colleges or management. Their inclusion here reflects the hope that these works will give the reader as much pleasure as they have given the writer over the years. Two general series that are continually renewing the available literature are the publications program of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and the Jossey-Bass publications, particularly New Directions for Community Colleges, a paperback sourcebook under the general editorship of Art Cohen and Florence Brawer. At the very least, the reader should regularly peruse the annual catalogs put out by both these valuable sources. Periodical literature must be reviewed regularly. Particularly helpful are the journals and newspapers dedicated to our field, particularly the Community College Journal of Research and Practice, the Community College Review, the Community/Junior College Research Quarterly, the Chronicle of Higher Education (which deals with the entire field of higher education but frequently has useful articles on our subfield), the Community, Technical, and Junior College Times, and Community College Week. The book that the author of this bibliographic essay considers to be the best introduction to community colleges is still Michael Brick's Forum and Focus for the Junior College Movement (New York: Teachers College, 1964), which is a history of the American Association of Junior Colleges (as it was then called). It also parallels the formative years of