This chapter discusses the forces creating a strong demand for innovation, highlights innovative practices at various community colleges, and concludes with recommendations for igniting and sustaining innovation across the rural community college sector.

Despite the fact that Career and Technical Education (CTE) prepares students for high-wage careers and in-demand jobs (Gordon & Schultz, 2020), it silences the voices it aims to empower by focusing on career alignment rather than community. This dissertation examines perceptions in rural communities in Wyoming to determine how CTE programs can…

Rural-serving community colleges (RSCCs) play vital roles in their communities yet often struggle to facilitate student transfer to further education, especially in STEM fields. This mixed methods study explored how rural STEM educators leverage relationships to support transfer. Social network analysis of focus groups with 36 educators at five…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Objective: We wanted to identify factors associated with pre-nursing student retention and success at a small, rural two-year institution in South Carolina. Method: Transcript analysis generated a dataset for pre-nursing students (N = 125). Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze high school and university data. Results:…

The community college is a robust environment with a dynamic student population. Each student brings a unique network of relationships and connections as they enter and endure academics at the community college. The community college often provides various support services to help students succeed at the community college. However, for many…

Rural-serving community college (RSCC) STEM faculty play an essential role for their students and communities. We employed an institutional ethnographic (IE) approach to elucidate the social and ruling relations organizing the everyday work of RSCC STEM faculty in Wyoming. Our data confirm that RSCC educators see students at the center of their…

Objective: Community colleges have historically reported high levels of student mental health needs, with low levels of available face to face services. Ways of meeting this mental health staffing challenge is an area of import for each institution. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this situation. The objective of this analysis is to examine the…

Increasing the representation of skilled workers in STEM fields has been a priority in the United States, with a particular emphasis on supporting underrepresented groups. While urban areas with established higher education institutions have made efforts to engage underrepresented students in STEM, this study sheds light on the challenges faced by…

Workforce development education programs in community colleges impact the economy of a region, surpassing other public or private educational institutions (Bradley, 2013; Drury, 2003). Workforce development education programs provide short-term programs with the aim of training individuals in specific skills, promoting individuals' upward…

Higher education institutions world-wide were impacted by the unprecedented novel coronavirus (COVID-19) beginning in early 2020. COVID-19 caused a disruption in services to students and resulted in pivots of teaching, learning, and student support. Community colleges differ from four-year counterparts through varying student demographics, funding…