Community College Leaders Research Articles

Doctoral Community College Leadership Program Priorities, Curriculum, and Evolution: Director and Alumni Perspectives

Doctoral Community College Leadership Program Priorities, Curriculum, and Evolution: Director and Alumni Perspectives

Equity in Action in Community College Leadership

Equity in action starts with a leader’s critical consciousness in relation to their identities, ideologies, and positionalities. In this essay, the following factors: ideologies, identities, and positionalities are explained and emphasized as they are essential factors that impact equity work. Leaders who center equity must explore their own critical consciousness through an equity lens so that they prioritize equity at the forefront while leading, collaborating, and making decisions in their leadership positions. The positionality of leaders is also critical on how they use their power to influence their community and amplify the voices of the underrepresented. One subset of the findings, Equity in Action, from my dissertation, Asian American Community College Presidents: The Power of Identities, Ideologies, and Positionalities is included in this essay. To set the foundation of the dissertation, the SEL framework, also known as the shared equity leadership framework (Kezar et al., 2021) is used to analyze how leaders build their own capacity in equity work. In addition, my positionality and development as an equity leader are reflected in this essay.

A Narrative Study on Authentic Leadership and Dual Credit Administration in Texas Community Colleges

ABSTRACT Community colleges play an integral role in early access to college via dual credit programs. Dual credit programs have grown exponentially in Texas, thus warranting further investigation into how these programs are led and administered at the district level. Authentic leadership is needed to ensure programs, students, families, and faculty members achieve success. Using authentic leadership and life-stories as a conceptual framework, this study focused on three community college administrators’ narratives, approaches to interpersonal relationships, and perspectives on dual credit challenges and priorities. The findings of the study indicated community college administrators lead these programs with a variety of leadership experiences. Furthermore, they must navigate relationships with multiple key stakeholders and respond to competing demands. This study also highlights the challenges of equity, lack of administrative infrastructure, and communication and compromise. Administrators shared their priorities in being “student ready,” strategic planning, and training and professional development. This study could assist researchers, educators, and policymakers in better understanding dual credit implementation by offering insights into the necessary training needed for district-level administrators to implement a dual credit program.

Carrying the Weight of Campus Change: The Role of Student Equity Leaders in Community College

ABSTRACT This article uses in-depth interviews to explore the experiences of four community college administrators leading policy efforts to advance racial justice efforts. Through a critical organizational lens, we document the unacknowledged labor associated with being the central figure driving institutional equity efforts and the primary person on campus responsible for overseeing and carrying out racialized organizational change. Our analysis yielded two themes: Feelings of taxation, isolation, and being burned out and the difficulty of navigating spaces of resistance to improve racial equity. The findings from this work have implications for policy and practice related to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, reframing community college leadership, and understanding racialized organizational change.

An Instrument to Assess Faculty Who Support Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder at Community Colleges

ABSTRACT Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are one of the fastest growing groups at the community college, and supporting faculty members who teach students with ASD is a challenge for college leaders. Faculty members need a knowledge base about these students as well as the pedagogical practices that lead to their success. There have been no instruments, however, specifically designed to explore community college faculty members knowledge about students with ASD and the instructional methods to support them. This paper presents the development of an instrument assessing faculty members knowledge about students with ASD and the pedagogical practices to help them succeed. The instrument also addresses faculty members preferences for professional development to enhance ASD student success. Implications for community college leaders are presented, including the using instrument to develop systematic professional development plans – involving both full-time and adjunct faculty – to improve instruction for ASD students.

“It’s Gonna Open Up Doors”: Alumni Reflections of Doctoral Community College Leadership Programs

Objective/Research Question: For decades doctoral community college leadership programs have prepared students for the challenges and rewards in steering community college campuses, yet minimal scholarship has explored these programs’ efficacy in serving their students. This study explores community college leaders’ motivations in starting, learning experiences during, and takeaways following participation in doctoral community college leadership programs. Methods: This narrative inquiry study draws on action learning as the theoretical framework and entails interviews with 19 community college administrators who graduated from doctoral community college leadership programs. Results: Findings are threefold, each related to the distinct pieces associated with the research questions at hand. Students’ motivations for enrolling in programing stem from financial and geographic accessibility, institutional credibility, personal fulfillment, and desires to advance their careers. During their time in programs, students benefited from curriculum that prepared them for their dissertations, cohort-based approaches that afforded community, and applicable assignments and activities that directly related to their roles as community college practitioners. Following their doctorate, students reflected on the value of having this degree for propelling their careers and recommended opportunities for programmatic improvement. Conclusion/Contributions: These findings offer new perspective into what doctoral community college leadership programs accomplish in supporting students’ objectives and professional practices, and also unveil ideas toward programmatic adjustments.

Leadership Practices in Scaling Efforts in Community Colleges

ABSTRACT Leadership in community colleges, and postsecondary institutions more broadly, plays a central role in the sustainability and scaling of promising innovations within institutions. Understanding what leaders do to support the sustainability and scaling of these innovations is crucial for helping leaders develop practices that enable them to support these efforts. Using practice theory as a guiding frame, this study sought to unveil central practices that shape efforts to scale a promising, evidence-based mathematics course within two two-year colleges. We found that executive and mid-level leaders engaged in the intertwined practices of tracking and leveraging, where they attended to institutional culture, practices, and policies, and drew on these institutional features to both constrain and enable efforts to scale. Our study highlights the power of examining practices in the day-to-day work of leaders to illuminate what leaders do to scale or inhibit innovations in their institutions.

Adaptive leadership in urban community colleges: Meeting new challenges through new ways of thinking

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic illuminated the need for urban community colleges to utilize an adaptive leadership approach to thrive during times of uncertainty. Adaptive leaders encourage team members to address problems through new ways of thinking to meet organizational goals. The community college sector, especially institutions in urban environments, has utilized adaptive leadership throughout its history to best meet the needs of its students. It is against this background that urban community colleges adapted to the COVID‐19 pandemic by reconceptualizing career programs to be completed in virtual spaces, hosting COVID‐19 testing and vaccination centers on campus, and ensuring that students had access to faculty and staff in a digital learning environment. In this chapter, we highlight the importance of adaptive leadership in urban community colleges and provide examples from urban community college leaders on how they utilize adaptive leadership to meet new challenges.

Stated Value, Renewed Commitment? Community and Technical Colleges’ Response to Racial (In)equities During COVID-19

ABSTRACT In this study, we interrogated the efforts adopted by community and technical colleges in a Midwestern state to address racial inequities since the onset of COVID-19. We analyzed such efforts reported in institutional newsletters and associated media through critical content analysis supported by text mining techniques. Our findings demonstrate a notable reckoning with racial inequities on the part of institutional leaders and stakeholders. However, many initiatives remain short-term solutions and are detached from a holistic equity focus. This study challenges community and technical college leadership to reimagine their policies, structures, and practices toward advancing racial equity.

Impact of Place/Space on Rural Community College Human Resource Management: A Systematic Review

In the following systematic review, the author examines how rural community college leaders address the unique challenges and strengths of working in a rural environment as they strive to retain, support, develop, compensate, and invest in their employees. Factors such as geographic isolation, small population sizes, and close-knit social networks require the rural leader to rely more heavily on locally available resources and existing infrastructure to support leadership decisions. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses alongside Flora and Flora’s 2008 Community Capital Framework, this systematic review synthesizes research that addresses human resource issues and explores human capital investment strategies employed by rural community college leadership. This article has important implications for future leadership development and training strategies across the community college sector, making clear the need for contextualized, strengths-based research that utilizes the experiences of rural community college leaders.

Thriving and Striving: The Paradox of Leading and Following for Women Mid-level Administrators in the Community College

In this qualitative study, I explored the meaning that ten mid-level women administrators ascribe to the experience of being both a leader and a follower within the community college sector. Previous research indicates that mid-level women administrators are under-valued as leaders and followers despite their capacity and influential connectivity up, down, and across the organizational chart. Participants discussed their experiences through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and described the perceived effects of those experiences on their leadership and followership practices. Three overarching themes emerged from the transcript analysis of the narratives: leading with purpose; complications of following; and navigating an adverse work environment. Implications from the findings suggest that community college leaders at all levels will benefit from shared leadership professional development, interrogation of implicit gender bias embedded with the institution, and the reduction and removal of race-based microaggressions among faculty, staff, and administrators. By understanding the leading and following experiences of women in mid-level administrative positions in the community college, this study contributes to a broader inclusion of leadership beyond the privileging of senior-level positions.

Recruiting and Retaining Higher Education Leaders for the Rural Community College “Lifestyle”

A significant amount of recent research and media coverage has focused on the challenges related to K–12 teacher shortages, particularly in rural regions of the United States. Far less research, however, has been conducted on the challenges faced by rural community colleges related to recruiting and retaining both academic and professional personnel. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to understand how current rural community college leaders are perceiving and addressing these challenges regarding recruitment and retention of personnel. A total of eight senior leaders in rural community colleges or state oversight agencies throughout one Mountain West state were interviewed. Through their experiences and insight, the authors synthesized their collective concerns to construct various promising practices on how to employ and hold on to personnel at rural community colleges.

Mobilizing theory to application: Equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership in community colleges

AbstractIn this final chapter, we reflected on the collective works presented in this volume by a diverse group of community college scholars and leaders. Through this reflection, we share how this scholarship sought to operationalize and enhance the definitions of equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership in community colleges. After introducing these definitions, we provide applications for how community college leaders can adopt equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership to their scholarship and practice. We conclude this chapter by providing reflective questions for readers to be able to mobilize equity and social justice to their daily practice. Furthermore, we provide reflective questions to apply these principles at the institutional, systems, and policy level practice.

An overview of equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership in community colleges

AbstractIn this chapter, we discuss the significance of social justice and equity in community college leadership. By examining the intersections between social justice and equity, we sought to understand the role that community college leaders play in applying these approaches. To contextualize our discussion, we outlined key challenges that community college leaders face in developing and implementing these equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented practices. This chapter serves as an introduction to the New Directions in Community Colleges volume dedicated to operationalizing and applying equity and social justice‐driven leadership in community colleges.

The role of community college leaders in developing a transfer sending culture for Latinx students

AbstractThis chapter provides community college leaders with recommendations to develop a transfer sending culture for Latinx students who want to pursue a pathway to a 4‐year college/university. Community college leaders can create a transfer sending culture for Latinx students by standardizing a transfer process so that all Latinx students who aim to transfer can do it efficiently and in a timely manner.

Equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership in community colleges

Equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership in community colleges

Category is, supporting BIQTPoC at community colleges: A systematic literature review to aid community college leaders in advocacy

AbstractIn this chapter, we provide a systematic literature review of current scholarship on BIQTPoC within community colleges. Through a queer of color critique lens, we analyzed literature published over the last three decades. Findings demonstrated a lack of empirical research that perpetuates a gap for community college leader practices to support BIQTPoC.

Uniquely called: African American community college presidents promoting equitable student success

AbstractBlack community college presidents are not exempt from racialized experiences as they promote equitable student success. This study explores the unique experiences of Black leaders who advocate for policies, practices, and procedures that promote equity and social justice at their institutions and in their communities. Together, applied critical leadership (ACL) and the principles of critical race theory (CRT) underpin the research study presented in this chapter and helped inform the interview protocol and identify strategies the presidents use to promote equitable change. In this chapter, five African American presidents share how they conceptualize equity‐driven leadership and how their racialized identities inform their approaches to improving equitable outcomes for all students, particularly students of color. Presidents shared strategies that any community college leader can use to demonstrate their commitment to social justice and advance the practice broadly.

Emphasizing equity amid transformational change at community colleges

AbstractIncreasingly, community colleges recognize the need to center transformational change on equity. This chapter presents findings from a multi‐site qualitative case study on how community college presidents and chancellors can keep equity at the forefront of the transformational change process. The three community college presidents and chancellors participating in this study reflected on how their colleges—all 2019 Aspen Prize finalists or winners—adopted an equity lens to guide their change efforts and guided sensemaking among their campus members to challenge existing institutional logics and develop an equity‐minded culture. This study found that community college leaders should: (a) lead their colleges in equity sensemaking; (b) embed student success and equity within their institutional mission; (c) leverage data and policies to increase equity; and (d) provide professional development for college leaders, faculty, and staff around equity and social justice.

Liberatory community college leadership: Education, decolonization, and emancipation

AbstractBuilding from Freire's ideas of liberatory education in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Carter G. Woodson's The Mis‐Education of the Negro, and Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, we outline a new and audacious approach in this chapter, in hopes that it will better position a more transformative and revolutionary approach for community college leaders to profoundly address the systemic inequities that exist in their colleges. Additionally, we critically examine current notions related to the principal tenets of equity‐minded leadership that are currently couched in anti‐racist frameworks, arguing for the need for leadership approaches rooted instead in liberatory ideas. Current anti‐racist frames are limited and ultimately fall short of producing the type of leadership that will lead to the deep systemic change necessary to dismantle, decolonize, and reconstruct systems that are rooted in institutional racism and colonialism. Our views are shaped both by scholarship and our holistic multifaceted experience. We draw from a variety of our own experiences and knowledge as community college leaders, including serving as college president, chancellor, and faculty, who have worked in rural, urban, and suburban institutions and both private and public and single and multi‐district campuses. Our analysis is rooted in our collective practitioner knowledge and commitment to social justice to examine radical leadership and its impact on campus culture.