This qualitative study focuses on Director and Dean experiences during equity-focused program and initiative (PI) implementations at California Community Colleges (CCCs), as these leaders face the challenge of managing faculty, staff, and budgets, while also working toward the objectives of senior leadership. Despite a reliance on middle-level…

The primary purpose of this paper is to emphasize and reiterate the centrality of the faculty role in tutoring and learning centers, where peer-to-peer, discipline-specific collaborative learning is the primary objective. This paper provides a breadth of content for practitioners in the field and also assists those seeking to understand the unique…

While the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the short-term use of online courses, colleges' experiences with COVID-era online course delivery may also affect the way that they offer and approach online courses going forward. We draw on interviews with 35 distance education leaders from the California Community Colleges system to provide insights into…

California Community Colleges (CCC) are integral in ensuring student enrollment, persistence, and subsequent higher education degree attainment. As one of the most affordable institutions of learning, community colleges symbolize access to various degree and certificate completion options, transfer opportunities, vocation and remedial education,…

Community colleges play a key role in driving talent development in the United States, producing workers with the kinds of training that employers need while enhancing economic mobility for students. There has been a push among policymakers at the federal and state levels to hold community colleges accountable for the employment outcomes of their…

This qualitative study examined the experiences of formerly incarcerated students in community colleges. In this study, participants described how they made meaning of their postsecondary education experience through their decision to start college, the college preparation, and faculty interactions that collectively influenced their academic…

While most community colleges admit all students who apply for admission, the vast majority have required students to demonstrate specified levels of literacy and numeracy before they can take college-level courses. Typically, students have been assessed using a single placement test, such as the College Board's ACCUPLACER. Colleges--or sometimes…

Farm to school education connects learning to the real world by helping students foster a deeper appreciation for local agriculture and healthy eating habits. Students experience and understand how nature supports life and the food they eat. Farm to school can take many forms, from classroom lessons to field trips in the school garden. Many…

The pandemic created daunting challenges for higher education. The federal government provided California Community Colleges billions of dollars in aid for students and institutions. How did they use these funds? How well did their pandemic recovery activities and investments help reengage students? What will institutions do when the money runs…

During the 2016 campaign, President Trump promised to establish numerous anti-immigration policies, which heightened undocumented students' fears and anxieties. The present longitudinal qualitative study investigated seven undocumented students' socioemotional states and whether administrators and educators provided sustained positive validation…

Due to wildfires in the fall of 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, Sonoma State University lost 50 service-learning courses and, as a result, almost 900 fewer students completed a service-learning course than in the previous year. During the summer of 2020, the Center for Community Engagement began developing service-learning…

A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures…

We know that unaffiliated users access books, reference services, and databases at our libraries, but how do they experience this access? The library science literature reveals a range of ethical concerns around how we serve unaffiliated users, meaning those who are not current students, faculty, or staff. Yet this literature is often based on…

Keep it simple. Focus on the students. Those may be the most important takeaways from the experience of the partnering of two educational institutions for the past eight years to ensure that students consistently and happily graduate with bachelor's degrees. Adult students over the age of 25 juggle many priorities and have responsibilities that…

In 2016, the Office of Correctional Education in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation embarked on a process of implementing professional learning communities (PLCs) in all 35 California state prisons. The American Institutes for Research provided professional development and consulting on the PLC process. Through working to…