In this book, Carrie B. Kisker illustrates how community colleges can utilize design thinking to identify and evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities, and experiment with the internal changes necessary to optimize outcomes for stakeholders. Kisker outlines a process whereby college leaders can empower faculty and staff to think creatively about how…

US colleges and universities have operated on the belief that academics need the freedom to question received wisdom, test new pedagogical methods, and produce knowledge that can be transparently shared for the public good. However, the same institutions are increasingly engaged in competition for resources through externally imposed…

On Friday, March 13, 2020, at 12:25 PM, on the eve of midterm break, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty and staff at a Midwest Florida Community College were notified by email that the college would extend midterm break and terminate all non-essential operations for an additional week; however, most college operations and course…

The mission of a community college is distinct from a research one university, where empirical research is valued over investigation of discipline-based teaching and learning. The open-access, affordable, workforce, and transfer emphasis that serves many non-traditional community college students is a rich, meaningful environment for fostering the…

The National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program gives two year college educators leadership roles in developing model technician education programs for advanced technology fields. Since the first ATE grants were awarded in 1993, community college educators across the nation have partnered with industry and other…

In recent years, two-year colleges have tried various strategies to improve student outcomes and remediate skill deficits in order to promote academic and employment success. Promising approaches include career pathways, dual-enrollment, competency-based credentialing, sectoral strategies, wrap-around services, and acceleration. Taken together,…

After years of working in the background to build the capacity of two-year college science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) faculty and the skills of technicians, the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program is gaining recognition as a source of STEM workforce expertise. The ATE program's effective mentoring of STEM educators and its…

Community colleges and businesses have a shared interest in preparing students and existing workers to be successful in their careers. Community colleges seek to educate and train individuals in their community to have the knowledge and skills for current jobs and long-term career opportunities. Employers seek employees with both job-specific…

It is a truism of American social policy that our nation has great success generating innovative programs that improve outcomes for participants--but that we are far less effective at moving from small, "boutique" programs into broadly applied solutions that improve the prospects of large numbers of individuals. This is certainly true in…

More and more young people are enrolling in postsecondary education, particularly in community colleges, with the goal of preparing for jobs that provide access to middle-class wages. Unfortunately, too few students succeed. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest is the large number of students who lack the academic skills to do…

Many states are experimenting with mechanisms for making college more affordable while maintaining quality and access. This report examines promising or innovative state programs to improve college affordability and credential attainment. Many of these approaches show innovative thinking and bear watching to see if they result in meaningful…

When the going gets tough, the tough get...innovative. That's the approach some forward-thinking community college leaders are taking as their institutions set about the task of restocking the nation's workforce in the face of historic enrollments and severe, if seemingly unending, budget cuts. Recognized by the Aspen Institute as the most…

Building on their work through Achieving the Dream, six states and 15 community colleges joined the Developmental Education Initiative (DEI) in 2009 to take on one of higher education's most daunting challenges: improving the success of students who enter community college academically underprepared. The states and Jobs for the Future, which…

When Valencia College became the first recipient of the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence last month, an unsung sector earned uncommon recognition. Now that the speeches are over and the prize money has been awarded, the Aspen Institute is sharing early lessons from its yearlong effort to determine the top community college in the…

The authors prepared this report after exploring programs using a 90-day cycle process borrowed from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). The IHI 90-day cycle scans activity in the field as a "quick way to research innovative ideas and assess their potential for advancing quality improvement". The goal was to "get under…