Community College Leaders Research Articles

TOMORROW'S ESSENTIALS IN MANAGEMENT: DECENTRALIZATION, COLLABORATION, AND OWNERSHIP

The information age has created a “transforming era” in the American community college. Rapidly changing technology, increasing competition, declining public financial resources, escalating demands for accountability, changing student demographics, and broadening pleas for involvement in decision making by employees have created a period of instability in our institutions. This instability requires a change in management models. Successful community colleges in the next millennium will create organizational cultures symbolized by decentralized decision making, organizational alignment, and the ability to thrive on chaos. Victor Valley College, in California, underwent a systematic change in management direction during the first S years of this decade. A comprehensive change process of strategic planning, team leadership training, process reengineering, organizational restructuring, and college‐wide staff development was used to transform the college culture. These changes, coupled with the president's efforts to execute management principles based on personal trustworthiness, interpersonal trust, managerial empowerment, and organizational alignment, led to a dramatically improved campus culture and climate. This article, a case study in organizational transformation, discusses the strategies used to create culture change at Victor Valley College. The authors conclude their article by warning the reader that change is and will continue to be a constant in our rapidly changing world. Community college leaders will need to give continuous attention to change in order to provide the best possible educational programs and services to an ever‐changing student population.

Changing the Way We Teach by Changing the College: Leading the Way Together

AbstractThis chapter describes a study that examines differences in levels of awareness of distance education among key community college leadership groups.

Sources and Information: Community College Leadership

AbstractAn annotated bibliography provides abstracts of documents from the ERIC system focusing on leadership issues in the community college and the relationship between presidents and boards.

Observations on Community College Leadership

External forces create demands that affect community college institutional effectiveness. Likewise, how leaders respond to those demands and their behavior within an institution can affect staff morale and effectiveness, and thus institutional effectiveness. The author describes leader behaviors that create a constrained and negative institutional climate and illustrates those behaviors with detailed scenarios. The following suggestion is made based on the author's observations: Leaders must maintain formal and informal communication channels to gain information that can help them to understand how their behavior is perceived by others. Such information can be used to develop positive leadership behaviors that can change institutional climate and thereby increase effectiveness.

The door that never closes: Continuing education needs of community college leaders

AbstractThe problems posed by the ever‐changing environments in which community college leaders work place great demands on their capacity to understand and analyze problems related to personnel management, organizational development, adult learning, technology, community relations, facilities, finance, and (not least) personal development.

Professors as leaders within the community college movement

AbstractThe professoriate of graduate programs that prepare community college leaders has employed the traditional roles of scholarship, teaching, and service to influence practitioners. This analysis links the halcyon past to the quality‐oriented future, concluding that it is no time to rest on our laurels.

Legacy of the post‐WWII growth years for community college leadership programs

AbstractThis chapter discusses the interplay between developments in the field and the emergence of graduate and continuing education programs for community college leaders in the thirty years following World War II. It concludes with a critical analysis of the legacy of those programs.

Preparing leaders for diverse institutional settings

AbstractThis chapter argues that a major gap in our understanding of community colleges is the need to recognize the diversity of institutional settings. A Carnegie‐style classification system for community colleges is proposed, with a discussion of implications for graduate programs preparing community college leaders.

Sources and information: Graduate and continuing education for community college leaders

AbstractThis chapter relates the points raised in this volume to previous literature, focusing on the aims of graduate preparation programs for community college leaders and the difficulties that sometimes emerge in professor‐practitioner relations.

Educating future community college leaders as skilled writers: Focusing the debate

AbstractThe authors focus the debate on educating future community college leaders by asserting the importance of writing skills.

The role of the professoriate in influencing future community college leadership

AbstractCommunity college administration faculty affect future leadership in the community college by determining which students are admitted, what they are taught, who teaches them, and how they are treated.

Diversity, discourse, and democracy: Needed attributes in the next generation of community college leadership programs

AbstractGraduate courses can help students understand democratic models of leadership, which recognize the leadership potential of all faculty and staff, not simply the college president.

THE SOCIAL POWER OF AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMALE ADMINISTRATORS IN THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

This study examined the association among race, organizational level, the use of social power by 128 female community college administrators, and the upward mobility of African American female administrators. The participants were selected from lists of female community college CEOs and leaders prepared by the National Institute for Leadership Development. Using the Rahim Leader Power Inventory, the social power base profiles of participants were calculated and compared by means of multivariate analysis of variance. Although organizational level had a significant effect on the scores (upper‐level administrators scored higher on each of the five power bases), race was found to have no effect on the social power scores.

COMMUNITY COLLEGE ADMINISTRATORS’ AND LOCAL STAKEHOLDERS’ PERCEPTIONS CONCERNING THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES USED BY NORTH CAROLINA COMMUNITY COLLEGES

This study compares community college and community leaders’ perceptions of economic development strategies adopted by community colleges in North Carolina. Eighteen economic development strategies were determined, and respondents were asked about their levels of satisfaction with and use of these indicators in their local communities. The findings of the study include the following: (a) community college and community leaders’ perceived levels of use of economic development strategies are significantly related to their perceived levels of satisfaction with these strategies, (b) the position of the respondents significantly affects their views of the economic development strategies, (c) the size (enrollment) of the institution correlates with leaders’ views of economic development strategies, and (d) community colleges in the North Carolina system are using only a few of the possible economic development strategies used by other North American community colleges.

LEADING THE MULTICULTURAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Access, without educational equity and success for students of all backgrounds, races, and ethnic groups, is not enough. A commitment to equity and success for a multicultural student body is necessary today. Achieving equity on college campuses requires a demonstrated commitment and desire to change, actions that match words, and measurable results. Relevant, local data are needed to modify existing policies, procedures, or programs, or to add new programs to meet changing local community needs. Measuring campus climates for equity is becoming an increasingly important issue for multicultural community colleges. Public and private partnerships are necessary to ensure that local needs are being met. The multicultural community college leader must demonstrate commitment to diversity, develop appropriate policies, gain access to reliable information, and collaborate with community groups and organizations to lead the college into the next century.

SYMBOLIC LEADERSHIP AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN ONTARIO'S COMMUNITY COLLEGES

This article describes the findings of a research project that examined symbolic elements of presidential and governing board chair leadership in four large urban‐suburban Ontario, Canada, community colleges. The findings underscored the significance that images of organization and leadership, collaboratively generated by presidents and governing board chairs, can have for the process of institutional change and development. The article also explores the implications of the findings for community college leadership and concludes by arguing that college leaders should position their organizations to construct and act on formative interpretations of the external environment rather than wait for directive information from outside the organization.

Gendered images of community college leadership: What messages they send

New Directions for Community CollegesVolume 1995, Issue 89 p. 67-77 Article Gendered images of community college leadership: What messages they send Susan B. Twombly, Susan B. Twombly Susan B. Twombly is associate professor and department chariperson, Department of Educational Policy and Leadership, University of Kansas, Lawrence.Search for more papers by this author Susan B. Twombly, Susan B. Twombly Susan B. Twombly is associate professor and department chariperson, Department of Educational Policy and Leadership, University of Kansas, Lawrence.Search for more papers by this author First published: Spring 1995 https://doi.org/10.1002/cc.36819958909Citations: 6 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume1995, Issue89Spring 1995Pages 67-77 RelatedInformation

The status of faculty in community colleges: What do we know?

AbstractA challenge for community college leaders will be to move beyond the rhetoric and push for increasing the employment opportunities for faculty of color.

Re-Visioning Leadership in Community Colleges

The authors apply discourse analysis to the images of leadership found in the literature about community and junior colleges, in the context of organizational life cycle theory. They found: (1) the discourse of community college organizational development reinforces the ideology of a specific small group of male writers and (2) the effect of such writing systematically promotes an image of leaders as “commanders,” excluding those who do not fit that image. This favored image, they conclude, is inappropriate for community colleges at the renewal stage of organizational development.

NEW LEADERSHIP CONSIDERATIONS FOR OLD REALITIES

A current major concern in community college circles is focused on leadership at the institutional or local college level. The American Association of Community and Junior Colleges, as well as selected universities, are devoting increased attention to leadership development for America's community and junior colleges. One of the main concerns seems to be the overly autocratic inclinations of community college administrators. A related problem is that community colleges, as opposed to universities, have no history of shared governance. University history is rich and varied and provides a philosophical basis for the place of faculty in higher education governance. Community colleges are young by comparison and have no such heritage of faculty involvement. As a consequence, community college leaders could learn from university governance models to pay more attention to those functional areas that have always been the province of faculty: curricula, subject matter content, methods of instruction, faculty stat...