Community College Leaders Research Articles

Intercollegiate Athletics at the Community College

Each year, many community college leaders find themselves, either methodically or haphazardly, making decisions about intercollegiate athletics. There have, however, been few empirical studies on how and why community colleges initiate, expand, or terminate athletic programs. Two studies investigating leaders' perceptions of intercollegiate athletics provide data which may be helpful to community college officials considering the pros and cons of athletic programs. Recommendations are provided regarding the need for statewide guidelines on community college athletics and the importance of a campus-based Council on Athletics.

The Cohort Leadership Development Model: Student Perspectives

This study examined how graduate students enrolled in a university-based cohort community college leadership doctoral program perceived their leadership development experiences. A total of 50 doctoral students enrolled in the Morgan State University (MSU) doctoral program were surveyed. A separate group of students (20) participated in a focus group. Results indicated that although doctoral students generally reported positive experiences, some students reported that certain factors or characteristics and behaviors of cohort members were not beneficial to the cohort experience. The positive results (structure, instructors, networking, and curriculum) of the cohort experience seem to support the findings of a number of works in the previous research relating to cohort learning environments. The findings further indicated that such factors such as dominant group members, lack of commitment to the cohort, failure to meet group expectations, traditional instructional modalities, and inadequate facilities negatively impacted perceptions of the cohort experience.

The Landscape of Noncredit Workforce Education: State Policies and Community College Practices

Postsecondary noncredit education has become increasingly common in recent years, and at many community colleges, noncredit programs enroll more students than do credit programs (Bailey et al., 2003). Courses connected with workforce instruction and contract training account for much of this growth (Dougherty & Bakia, 1999), and such courses are noted for their important role in responding flexibly to shifting workforce demands. Still, the growth in community college noncredit workforce education raises questions about whether the colleges are keeping pace with student and industry needs, using resources efficiently, and providing adequate access to all students. The answers to these questions may challenge current state policies and college practices. The leadership of two major community college organizations — the National Council for Workforce Education (NCWE) and the National Council for Continuing Education and Training (NCCET) — sought to collaborate with the Community College Research Center (CCRC) to conduct a study that would illuminate the implications of recent changes in noncredit workforce education. These councils represent senior community college administrators nationwide who are responsible for workforce development and who have been grappling with their stances on noncredit workforce education when considering which policies to advocate. CCRC’s one-year study, summarized in this Brief, included the examination of state policies in all 50 states and case studies at 20 community colleges. Findings from the study document the empirical landscape of noncredit workforce education and identify issues that warrant attention from state policymakers, community college leaders, and policy advocates.

Community Colleges as Gateways and Gatekeepers: Moving beyond the Access "Saga" toward Outcome Equity

Community colleges are essential – though often overlooked – institutions of higher education. In this essay, Alicia C. Dowd draws attention to the challenges facing community colleges as they seek to balance their roles as both gateways and gatekeepers with their multiple missions, which include meeting the diverse needs of students at the postsecondary level and responding to the changing educational and economic needs of U.S. society. Using research from the California Benchmarking Project, Enhancing Institutional Effectiveness and Equity, Dowd offers insights about the ways community college leaders, staff, and partners might navigate these dual and often divergent roles. Her essay raises important questions about the nature of higher education accountability in the context of community colleges and the way these institutions are used, managed, and evaluated.

Transferring Leadership Skills: When Community College Presidents Become University Professors

University graduate-level programs are striving to address needs for community college leaders. One way they are doing this is by strengthening their graduate programs with relevant community college courses. Increasingly, however, community college presidents are being invited to join universities in professorial roles. These new graduate faculty leaders are bringing valuable transferable skills and experiences, but they are also experiencing transitional challenges. Studies have been conducted about other university executive administrators transitioning to university professor roles, but no studies have been conducted about community college presidents making this transition. This article represents an initial effort to explore a distinct class of leaders within academe—community college presidents-turned-professor. The findings of this exploratory study of 12 former community college presidents who transitioned to graduate university professors are reported along with stories, lessons learned, and advice for successfully crossing over from the community college sector to the university one.

Research Update: The Community College Survey of Student Engagement

The Community College Survey of Student Engagement, established in 2001 and administered by the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin, provides systematically collected data on the experiences of community college students. This article describes what has been learned through the survey to date and notes plans for the future, including the development of the Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE) for community colleges.

Nature and Status of Community College Leadership Development Programs

This study was conducted because of the paucity of research on community college leadership development programs. A mailed survey was used to gather data from a national sample of incumbent community college presidents with 286 out of 389 responding for a return rate of 74%. Of national and regional programs, the Chair Academy, the Executive Leadership Initiative, and the Future Leaders Institute had the highest percentages of participation by top-level community college administrators. Nearly 70% of presidents believe that there is a need to expand in-house development programs.

Outsourcing Student Housing in American Community Colleges: Problems and Prospects

Today's community colleges are experiencing tremendous growth at a time when higher education is experiencing little success in the fierce battle for public funding. Administrators believe that providing housing on college campuses increases enrollment and improves access, but they are having difficulty meeting students' demands for both quantity and quality of student housing. Community college leaders are challenged to find alternative ways to achieve new housing on their campuses. With resources already stretched, institutions sometimes struggle to find funding sources for these projects due to their impact on institutional debt service. Many colleges are turning to private foundations and corporations for their financing, construction, and management needs. This practice has increased dramatically over the past 10 years. To date, there have been over 214 privatized, nonrecourse-financed student housing projects on college and university campuses in the United States, with at least 11 occurring on community college campuses. Due to increasing demand, privatization of student housing is likely to increase. Very little literature exists addressing the evolution, problems, and potential of this practice, but administrators may need to have an understanding of the process as it becomes more commonplace on community college campuses. Interviews with community college administrators, student housing administrators, and representatives of private development and management corporations and a literature review were conducted. The results are synthesized into a history and overview of outsourcing student housing construction and management in the United States, including problems with outsourcing, strategies to avoid failure, future possibilities, and recommendations for future research.

What every community college leader needs to know: Building leadership for international education

AbstractThis chapter focuses on issues that community college leaders constantly grapple with to ensure that their graduates are globally educated and able to work and succeed in an independent and complex world. It also describes major obstacles that limit and confine international education and suggests strategies to overcome these obstacles.

New Rules of Business for the Future of Community Colleges: Design of the Critical Issue Discussion Forums

At the Community College Futures Assembly, 3 critical discussion groups, each organized by an area of focus, conceptualized “New Rules” guiding the operation of community colleges. Utilizing 55 “New Rules for Business” provided by the keynote speaker Mark N. Vamos, each group identified 2–3 New Rules relevant to community college leadership in the future, suggested how they may be resolved, and then suggested areas for future research. Assembly participants were provided the opportunity to electronically vote as to which New Rules they felt were relevant to community college leaders in the coming years. Results were simultaneously displayed, allowing conference attendees to receive real-time feedback of the participant perceptions.

Grocery Store Politics: Leading the Rural Community College

Rural America is characterized by decreasing populations, increasing poverty, limited economic growth, and limited access to cultural events. The context of the rural environment makes leading colleges in these locations different than in larger, more urban regions. The research reported here investigated the experience of rural community college leaders to determine more about the phenomenon of how they constructed their leadership given their rural context. Findings indicate less anonymity for rural community college leaders, a reliance on relationship building to accomplish goals, and a smaller local peer network to aid in reflecting upon the duties of the president.

Recruiting and retaining rural community college faculty

AbstractMuch is being written about a potential shortage of qualified community college faculty. Rural community colleges may be at the greatest disadvantage in attracting and retaining new faculty because they cannot offer the financial, cultural, and social advantages that more urban institutions can. This chapter describes the factors rural community college leaders must consider when recruiting and hiring new professors.

Residential living at rural community colleges

AbstractAlthough most community colleges do not have on‐campus housing, many rural two‐year colleges do. Relying on federal institutional survey data, this chapter discusses issues related to the operation of residence halls and implications for both students and rural community college leaders. The chapter concludes with recommendations for policy and practice.

Teaching and Mentoring Future Leaders in the Field

Any discussion of Arthur M. Cohen’s contributions to community colleges must include the students he taught and mentored during his 40 years as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Arthur Cohen and his colleague and spouse, Florence Brawer, had a huge impact on community colleges through the sheer number of former students who graduated and became community college leaders and scholars. Through frequent contact with students, deep understanding of the field, passion for the work, and willingness to include students in a community of scholars, Cohen and Brawer demonstrated what it truly means to be a mentor and teacher.

The Cohen Contribution to Community College Leadership

Arthur M. Cohen has spoken to community college leaders on a diverse array of issues for many years. This article focuses on his contributions to this leadership in three major areas: (a) providing a vision of community colleges as collegiate institutions, (b) offering valuable and thought-provoking insight into the current context for community college operation and its future operation, and (c) sharing probing commentary on enduring community college issues.

A case for the community college's open access mission

AbstractAmerica's community colleges have a unique mission to provide open access and affordable education to all who desire to learn. Unfortunately, this core mission is being threatened by myriad economic, social, and political challenges that community college leaders must confront and overcome.

The Influence of Subcultures on Planned Change in a Community College

This qualitative case study focusing on a collegewide change initiative was conducted to provide community college leaders with a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the role of subcultures in planned change. Research indicates that institutional culture is a primary factor in the success of change programs; however, little research has been conducted on the influence of organizational subcultures on planned change in community colleges. The results of this study indicate that subcultural groups differently experience, respond to, and influence planned change in a community college, leading to strategies for more effective planned change programs.

Short-Term Leadership Development: Meeting a Need for Emerging Community College Leaders

With retirements looming in the ranks of senior leadership, the need for short-term, intensive, focused leadership development targeting midlevel administrators has become acute. Through survey responses and in-depth interviews, this study examines leadership development needs of midlevel community college administrators who aspire to higher leadership positions. The plethora of short-term programs currently available through local colleges, states, and professional associations—while well-intentioned—are most often serendipitous and without clear focus or theoretical underpinning. This study suggests a framework for providing coherent, high impact, short-term leadership development opportunities to assist emerging leaders meet the challenges of today's increasingly complex colleges.

The uneven march toward social justice

PurposeThis paper aims to provide a framework for the development and implementation of educational administration programs that encourage practitioners and educational administration faculty to push application and preparation beyond reproducing tendencies of the status quo as well as to open education to the potential of embracing silenced or marginalized learners.Design/methodology/approachTwo programs developed and implemented by the Department of Educational Management and Development (EMD) at New Mexico State University are described and discussed. The programs are reviewed to show the gradual but significant transformation to a social justice content beginning with the more traditionally‐aligned program in educational administration, the Community College Leadership Doctoral Program (CCLDP), and concluding with a detailed description of the Educational Leadership Doctoral Program (ELDP), a leadership program that unites traditional educational administration curriculum with social justice inquiries of power and privilege.FindingsThe detailed information attempts to teach practitioners and educational administrators how to gain entry into institutional power structures so communication, collaboration, and reform can occur.Originality/valueThe paper provides the tools to survive in existing systems and the awareness to see inequalities. The capability of creating change in educational environments expecting a business‐as‐usual‐paradigm is also discussed.

Presidential Perceptions About Graduate-Preparation Programs for Community Colleges

ABSTRACT Community colleges are facing a growing need for well-trained leaders. These colleges have often looked to university-based preparation programs for their labor pools, yet few attempts at evaluating their effectiveness in leadership preparation have been undertaken. The current study was designed to explore both the current state of these university-based preparation programs in preparing community college leaders. It also tried to gain insights from current community college presidents about what should be included in graduate-preparation programs. Using a national sample of community college presidents, nearly 400 responses were obtained. Findings indicated that preparation programs, while well perceived, need to do a better job of interacting with the practitioner community and using real-world cases in their instruction.