Regional Community Colleges Research Articles

Capacity Building for Organizational Resilience: Integrating Standards on Risk, Disruption and Continuity in the Curriculum

Disruption is an inevitable factor in business and society, while inability to mitigate and manage risk can cause irreparable damage to business, the economy, and our ways of life. The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened interest in standards-based strategies for risk management and crisis preparedness to enhance organizational and societal resilience. University curricula that integrate national and international standards offer students a rich skill-set for effective performance in their careers. Moving forward, we must cultivate capable professionals who understand the challenges and risks facing society, and who grasp standards and systems for strategic planning, response, and recovery to promote organizational resilience and sustainable development. This paper focuses on the effectiveness of integrating risk management and continuity standards into university curricula, based on implementation at a large private university and regional community college in the Northeastern United States. We propose and evaluate a modular approach to introduce students to specific national and international standards, and teach them to identify and apply relevant standards based on the locally driven, whole community nature of disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Education using standards-based curriculum and the competencies that result will be key to readiness for tomorrow’s graduates.

Field Experiments Examining Trust in Law: Interviewer Effects on Participants with Lower Educational Backgrounds

An important prerequisite for democratic societies to function smoothly is that citizens put trust in the law and as such trust the judges in their country. Therefore, whether various participants actually trust the law is an important topic in many different studies. The current paper notes that insights into trust in law among lower educated participants is relatively lacking. We further note that there is a possibility that levels of trust in law may vary in important ways among participants with lower educational backgrounds as a function of who is conducting the research. Three field experiments tested this assumption. Results of all three experiments show that, when completing questionnaires given to participants by interviewers presenting themselves as coming from law schools, participants with lower educational backgrounds indicated that they hold higher levels of trust in their country’s judges than when the same interviewers presented themselves as coming from regional community colleges. Taken together, these findings indicate a robust phenomenon overlooked thus far in the literature, namely that trust in the judiciary can vary systematically among citizens with lower educational backgrounds as a function of interviewer affiliation. Implications on how to understand this phenomenon are discussed.

Strategic, operations, and evaluation planning for higher education distance education

Distance learning technology continues to grow and undergo significant changes in higher education settings. Applying strategic planning methods from organizational behavior and operations management can act as a useful guide for the implementation of a sustainable distance learning program. Strong planning can help ensure the distance learning program system’s operational readiness, effectiveness, and sustainability. Distance learning operations planning requires a defined strategy that examines organizational human and technical structures We discuss a distance education planning approach applied to three higher education cases with a goal of improving their distance education efforts. The research contexts were in the United States of America: a small Midwestern university seeking to grow online programs in support of its competitive strategy, a large western university with established distance programs, and a regional community college. This article will illustrate the use of business-oriented, systems thinking models for evaluation and distance education program improvement.

From Community College to Four-Year Institution: A Model for Recruitment and Retention

Increasing Numbers, Connections, and Retention in Science and Engineering (INCRSE) was funded with the goal of increasing the quantity, quality, and diversity of undergraduate students pursuing and obtaining degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) programs at West Texas A&M University (WTAMU). A major objective of INCRSE was to recruit STEM transfer students from regional community colleges (CC) and to provide academic and social support necessary for retention of these students. The INCRSE CC recruitment and retention model involved (a) strengthening relationships between faculty at WTAMU and regional CCs; (b) inviting CC faculty and staff to developmental workshops at WTAMU; (c) improving advising for transfer students at CCs and WTAMU; and (d) developing articulation agreements between WTAMU and regional CCs. Because INCRSE was funded in fall 2006, the number of CC STEM transfers enrolled at WTAMU increased from 214 to 253, an increase of 18%, while overall enrollment of CC transfers to WTAMU declined 3.5%. The number of new CC STEM transfers increased 22% from 92 in the 2006–2007 to 112 in 2008–2009 academic years. WTAMU's first-year retention of STEM transfers increased from 57% in 2006–2007 to 68% in 2007–2008, far surpassing the WTAMU first-year retention of traditional freshmen in the STEM fields by almost 30%. While all components of the model were important, much of the success can be attributed to improved relationships between WTAMU and CC faculty.

Placing John Ohliger in His Proper Historical Context

John Ohliger will be remembered as one of history's great adult educators for his unending fight against mandatory continuing education and as adult education's most prolific and articulate bibliographer. Yet, his position in history is so much greater than merely that of an outstanding adult educator. Historically, he should be placed in the company of John Holt, Joel Springs, Martin Carnoy, Ivan Illich, Everett Reimer, and all those educators who challenged the very existence and purpose of public education. Collectively, this group argued that mandatory education was a tool of the marketplace intended reproduce the status quo of the corporate state. The purpose of this article is establish the historical importance of Ohliger's life-long vocation both practitioners and scholars, and reintroduce the contestable issues surrounding compulsory vs. voluntary adult education. Ohliger became an adult educator like many of us, via the circuitous path of life's unanticipated side streets--a path that most of us never plan or imagine. Born in 1926, he grew love books as a child. In high school he was a reporter for the school newspaper. In 1945, he enlisted in the army and advanced a sergeant responsible for the Troop Information and Educating Program. Six years later he earned an A.B. degree at Wayne University (now Wayne State University), majoring in social sciences and speech, where he was also an activist for the the Democratic Party. As a young college graduate he began explore socialism and Trotskyism, while working part-time with the education department of the Michigan Council of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. By 1956 Ohliger's identity as an adult educator crystallized when he received a leadership grant from the Ford Foundation's Fund for Adult Education pursue a master's degree at UCLA. Here he began emerge as an intellectual who would challenge the field of adult education for the next 45 years. The Fund for Adult Education, established in 1951, provided those essential monies that supported this nascent field of study by aiding the newly formed Adult Education Association and later the Center for the Study of Liberal Education for Adults. It was one of the early foundations to recognize the potential of television and the importance of liberal education for business and union leaders (Stubblefield & Keane, 1994, p. 278). In the late 1950s, Ohliger moved from Los Angeles Chicago where he worked for two other programs supported by the Fund: the Great Books Foundation and the American Foundation for Political Education. In 1961, he moved back California and worked with Radio Pacifica, a progressive radio station founded in 1941 by anarchists. The station is still operating today. By 1966, Ohliger had completed his doctorate in adult education at UCLA and went work as the continuing education director for Selkirk College, the first regional community college in British Columbia. A year later he joined the adult education faculty at Ohio State University, earned tenure and stayed until 1973, when he moved Madison, Wisconsin, where he spent most of the rest of his life. At Ohio State, Ohliger began reflect upon his life and education, and concluded the most important and unifying theme in adult education was that it should be voluntary. In his words: Looking around for someone support this new-found consciousness I found one author, Ivan Illich, who led me others. Illich, and his educational mentor, Everett Reimer, were the only persons at the time I could find who recognized the oppressive direction in which schooling was moving. (1997, p. 29) For the rest of Ohliger's life he would remain true this theme, i.e., when the education of adults becomes compulsory it ceases be adult education. With academic status and tenure, Ohliger began seriously pursue his vision of adult education as a voluntary activity He became actively involved with Illich and Reamer at the Center for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, spending extended periods of time away from campus trying understand how education at all levels is used maintain existing social and class inequalities throughout the world. …

Then, Now, and Maybe Then

When I sat down to consider what I remember about the past of the National Council of Teachers of English, I came up with some admirable positions it advocated during the 1960s and 70s, and some admirable actions it took during that same period. I am, of course, using my own definition of admirable. Sometimes, it seemed to me, NCTE was influenced by and echoed the moods of the more general society, and sometimes it tried to influence those -noods. When newspapers, magazines, and television reported that literacy was at a low ebb, that the schools were doing a lousy job and something better be done about it quick, NCTE responded with resolutions opposing the worst of the so-called solutions and set up committees to demonstrate that the so-called crisis was greatly exaggerated. I remembered that NCTE has spoken out for the rights of racial minorities and made sure that they and their views were included in its own programs and committees. It has spoken out for the rights of women and-I can't say included them because we have always been a majority of NCTE's membership-but it has at least shown that it meant what it said by adopting a policy on sexism in language and by putting some muscle behind its support of ERA while that proposed amendment was still alive. It has spoken out for the rights of lesbians and gay men. It has spoken out against censoring books and against the abuses of testing. And I remembered that NCTE had acted admirably by forming three new sub-groups during those years. Through its related organization, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, NCTE formally recognized the importance of junior colleges in the educational system. Regional community college conferences were set up across the country and given financial assistance to help them along. As a result of that action large numbers of English teachers who had been existing in a kind of professional nobody's land became more professional. They met to talk about mutual problems, and more of them subscribed to and read professional journals. Eighteen years later two of those conferences are strong and vigorous, earning their own way. One, at least, is ailing and not

Assessing the Community College Transfer Market

A conceptual model is proposed in this article for strategic assessment of various potential clientele groups of higher educational institutions. Market segmentation, a modern marketing tool for planning and strategy development, is suggested as a framework for providing clues to the establishment of high-level administrative policy for four-year educational institutions. The approach is illustrated with a particular four-year institution's attempt to assess its regional community college transfer market. However, the market segmentation framework may be applied to any clientele group that is of interest to institutions of higher education.

Curriculum in Medical Technology—1972

Journal Article Curriculum in Medical Technology—1972: A Junior College Version Get access William G. Dwyer, Ph.D. William G. Dwyer, Ph.D. Board of Regional Community Colleges, Boston, Massachusetts 02133 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar American Journal of Clinical Pathology, Volume 50, Issue 2_ts, August 1968, Pages 266–268, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcp/50.2_ts.266 Published: 01 August 1968 Article history Received: 04 March 1968 Published: 01 August 1968