THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE PRESIDENT'S AUDIENCE AND MEDIA CHOICES

Abstract

The complexity of the community college president's job is well recognized with leading, managing and decision‐making the tasks most commonly the target of quantitative studies. This study focuses on a component of these primary functions and, indeed, all of the tasks of the president. That component is communication. Presidents were surveyed as to their most important audiences, the frequency of contact with those audiences, and the primary medium chosen for a given audience. Using information gathered about the presidents, their institutions, and their perceptions of their college's internal and external environments, analysis of variance was used to identify differences between means of the responses. The most important audiences were those in the internal audience category, trustees/board, faculty and other administrators. This audience category also included the most frequent target of communication, other administrators. Media choices varied depending on the audience's ability to directly impact the institution. Those with the most direct impact were communicated with via telephone, one‐to‐one, and in small groups. The audiences less likely to impact the institution were communicated with via speech and the mass media. Overall, the findings were very homogeneous, with a few relationships of significance offering direction for presidential communication.