Adjunct faculty are important to academe and have been part of community colleges since the early 20th century, providing community colleges flexibility with student enrollment by filling instruction needs while keeping salaries manageable. Rural community college adjunct faculty bring industry expertise and many other positives to their work.…

The teacher shortage is a critical issue in many rural areas around the world. This paper presents the findings of two studies that investigated the impact of financial incentives on teacher attraction and retention in rural schools in Western China. Using the theory of compensating wage differentials and a mixed-method approach, we found that…

Community college nursing students, specifically African American women, faced a myriad of challenges in the pursuit of higher education during the first year of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Most notably, in March 2020, the pandemic caused many community colleges to expeditiously transition to remote learning modalities. African…

This academic inquiry examines the efficacy of virtual reality (VR)-based pedagogy for higher learning, specifically analyzing immersive digital instruction for rural agriculture undergraduates studying soil science in Colombia. The investigation tests two hypotheses: first, simulated learning situations improve academic achievement and student…

Every year, a number of Chinese undergraduates from urban teacher universities are selected as volunteer pre-service teachers to teach in schools located in underdeveloped rural areas. In this qualitative case study, the researchers explore four pre-service teachers' 1-year experience as volunteer educators in rural schools, their communities of…

Participation in non-classroom activities has been documented to extend the intellectual, social, and psychosocial outcomes of the college experience. However, the benefits of non-classroom activities are often difficult to quantify due their voluntary nature, with findings mostly related to students within four-year institutions. The purpose of…

Students who enroll in college come from many different, unique communities to pursue a degree. For the intent of this study communities were categorized into four types--city, suburban, town, or rural. The purpose of this study was to understand if there is a relationship between school community type (i.e., city, suburban, town, or rural) where…

This qualitative case study provides an analysis of the structuring of middle-class aspirations at one rural university in the United States. Using a Bourdieusian framework offered by Zipin and colleagues, findings suggest that although student participants in our study are similarly positioned relative to social class background, those from…

The teacher attrition rate has drawn serious attention, but the extreme turnover in rural minority communities has become a crisis. To address it, one university's Educator Preparation Provider (EPP) partnered with local districts to offer paid yearlong residencies. In the residency model, residents receive income, intensive support, and…

The purpose of this concurrent mixed methods action research study was to investigate the impact of new technology-enhanced Dual Enrollment (DE) math courses on students' perception of college courses, the influence the technology-enhanced DE had on students' intention of going to college, and the students' perception of the technology-enhanced DE…

This study investigated the transfer pathway between a rural university and a community college to understand what procedural barriers exist for student degree attainment within existing structures. Process mapping was used as the intervention to examine the influence of enrollment and student services processes and investigate the perceptions of…

This quantitative research study sought to examine the differences in retention and degree attainment for college students depending on their home locale and the location of their institution of attendance. Students were divided into four groups: rural students who attended a rural institution, rural students who attended an urban institution,…

Objective: To assess the influence of specific COVID-19 impacts on college student depression, loneliness, and alcohol and cannabis use, and to investigate if resilience moderates these relationships. Participants: Data were collected from students (N = 1849, 80.9% white, 66.6% female) at a midwestern university during the 2021 winter/spring…

The critical shortage of qualified teachers in hard to staff urban schools has been a persistent issue in the U.S. for decades. Teachers and researchers have pointed to the inadequacy of teacher preparation programs to prepare teacher candidates to address the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students and special education students…

The purpose of this qualitative single-case study was to investigate how a partnership between a rural community college in New Jersey and a manufacturer of emerging optics equipment reflected the regional networked innovation system, a type of regional innovation system. This single case study provided a comprehensive overview of the perceptions…