The purpose of this case study was to understand external stakeholder perceptions regarding factors related to effective community college civic engagement. The theory guiding this study was empowerment theory, as it allowed for exploring community-academic partnerships through a lens focused on community psychology, linking individual well-being…

Anchor institutions play a vital role in their local communities and economies and have increasingly been expected to become active civic participants in improving health and well-being in their surrounding neighborhoods. This multicase study was conducted to understand how an urban, faith-based university's on-campus health care clinics engage…

Rural Canada is in decline, and as such has begun recruiting immigrants to rural areas to fill crucial labour gaps. This study explores the ways in which rural community colleges can best support immigrant women in Canada. Using narrative inquiry, it captures the voices of women who successfully completed programs in a rural community college in…

Adult students comprise a significant percentage of community college enrollments. However, these students have consistently completed college programs at lower rates than traditional-aged students. Community college structures, including student advisement, often align primarily with the needs of traditional-aged students. This has resulted in a…

The current trend among conservative politicians to erase Black history and ban books by Black authors from public schools and libraries in states like Florida and Texas is the latest in a long history of assaults on the civil rights and education of Black people. Laws like Florida's Individual Freedom Act, (H.R. 7/S.B. 148, 2022), commonly known…

Civic engagement has become an important part of the educational landscape at institutions of higher education in the United States. The development of mutually-beneficial community-university partnerships has become a common interest for practitioners and researchers as the rise in civic engagement across higher education has grown. Institutions…

The low academic learning outcomes and persistence rates among students starting in developmental mathematics at community colleges are concerning. Improving the teaching and learning of developmental mathematics is imperative. This Action Research study aimed to investigate and improve developmental mathematics students' low retention rate and…

John Dewey (1916) asserted that deliberate and systematic educational systems provide capacity to all members of society in order to solve problems and is the foundation for participatory democratic education (Harbour, 2015). Learning is also a social process that allows people to live purposefully. The goal of this qualitative, narrative inquiry…

This dissertation explores how the political economy particular to southern Dallas, Texas impacts a community-based college-readiness program for high school students in a Latino community. A community-based educational space (CBES) operated by a civil rights organization serving Latino youth who would be the first-generation to attend university,…

Community colleges are institutions that provide access to higher education to anyone with a high school diploma or GED (Kim & Dolan, 2015). The student body is highly diverse and may not be prepared for academic coursework (Cohen et al., 2014). These challenges may be supplemented through embedding services directly into college courses. The…

There is limited understanding of the connections between community engagement and racial DEI at colleges and universities working to institutionalize engagement. Community engagement is not being institutionalized within an educational system that is a blank slate, nor does it operate within a vacuum. Community engagement operates within a…

This study explores how community-based digital archive projects are collaboratively designed by universities and community stakeholders, specifically examining practices that may be associated with archive sustainability. My study builds upon existing knowledge in both digital archive studies and the Digital Humanities (DH) by investigating the…

This research targets retired singers from the university choral ensemble, offering an in-depth examination of the older adults' choir experiences, with a focus on their experiences and reflections. Prior studies have highlighted the benefits of musical involvement for retirees, including extending life expectancy, enhancing quality of life, and…

The community college serves both a role and a purpose within the higher educational and social landscape of America. As access to and through these institutions remains increasingly important in our ever-changing society, the purpose of this research was to shift the lens to not only include but to center the communities to which it serves. This…

This study aimed to explore the connections between student persistence and retention and students who participated in a First Year Seminar (FYS) called the First-Year Experience Course at a Mississippi community college during the 2022 fall semester and students who were enrolled at the college in the fall of 2018 and took the traditional…