Community colleges and minority serving institutions play important roles in the U.S. higher education system. These open and predominantly broad access institutions serve more first-generation, low-income, post-traditional, and racially and ethnically diverse student populations than any other sector. Institutional leaders will increasingly need…

This study examined three institutional researchers from three different Hispanic-serving community colleges in southern California to examine how they would use data to act as agents of organizational learning and raise awareness of Hispanic students' educational outcomes within their respective institutions. This study was of a qualitative…

The origins of institutional effectiveness are traced, its evolution within community colleges is described, the use of the term "institutional effectiveness" is analyzed, and a practical, operational definition of the term is presented. The author hopes that this definition and the discussion in this article prove useful to community college…

This document is intended for leaders and decision makers who work with community colleges at the classroom, college, and system level. Readers will find an overview of the purpose, activities, findings, and recommendations from a three-year project involving 11 California community colleges, undertaken as a partnership between The Carnegie…

Action research can play an important role in institutional research endeavors to improve the quality of organizational performance in higher education. This article outlines how the action research perspective informed a research design that integrated fragmented and isolated student success initiatives at a large urban two-year institution where…

This report presents findings from a study conducted by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) on how well prepared today's community colleges are in moving toward the greater use of data and research to improve student success. Data for the study were drawn from two major sources: first, an e-mail survey of college administrators…

The NEAIR 2006 Conference Proceedings is a compilation of papers presented at the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania conference. Topics include: Policy Analysis, Grading Policy, State Higher Education Accountability Program, Performance Assessment, Freshmen Transfer Risk, Assessment, Degree Completion, First-Year Academic Success, Effectiveness in…