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…

"Transformative Critical Service-Learning" offers hands-on tools for implementing, reflecting on, and assessing critical service-learning in classrooms and community spaces. Answering a need from practitioners for a practical tool for making sense of critical service-learning, the authors introduce the Critical Service-Learning…

Online course persistence at community colleges is a serious issue, with students being between 3 and 15 percentage points more likely to withdraw than those taking the on-campus equivalent (Xu et al., 2019). Despite the continued growth in distance education, quality online course design is a concern throughout the literature. This quantitative,…

This study aimed to examine the relationship between student engagement and student retention of adult learners at community colleges. The relationship between student retention and the five Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) student engagement benchmarks (active and collaborative learning, student effort, academic challenge,…

Coaches are trusted advisors, information conduits, sounding boards, and advocates who facilitate institutional change. This report summarizes findings from the first five years of the Student Success Center Network's Coaching Program, focusing particularly on the most recent phase that engaged directly with Centers in four states (California,…

This study developed an equity-minded and trauma-informed model for improving community college student success rates. Since up to 94% of community college students have experienced trauma, it was imperative to establish a comprehensive approach to overcoming the resulting non-academic barriers and low completion rates. Since there is no existing…

A practice that dates back centuries, apprenticeship is a workforce development model that has gained recent attention in the American higher education system. The researcher conducted a review of existing literature that included apprenticeships in higher education and other models of community college workforce development. Existing literature…

Community colleges in the United States, which serve a disproportionate number of students from low-income backgrounds, can provide a valuable pathway toward well-paying careers. However, graduation rates at community colleges are very low--among first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students who enter public two-year schools, only 29 percent…

Proper institutional planning requires accurate enrollment forecasts. This is especially true in the community college context given open enrollment policies and reliance on public funds. Despite the importance of this task, enrollment forecasts are relatively disconnected from theoretical advances in the study of retention and enrollment. In this…

California Community Colleges are not producing enough educated graduates to meet future workforce needs; to address the issue, goals and initiatives have been developed in an effort to increase completion (Foundation for California Community Colleges, 2017). In this study, the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analytic framework was used to understand…

Community colleges play a significant role in the higher education landscape. Open access missions and diverse student bodies are often used to indicate that community colleges are democratizing higher education. This study begins broad questions about what it means to do the work of democracy at a community college. De Anza College in Cupertino,…

Background/Context: The Holistic Oasis for Parents' Education (HOPE) Program is an on-campus summer program designed to serve the whole student with a three-dimensional support model. Low-income, Black, and Hispanic parents experienced some of the most egregious effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which reflects the demographics of one in three…

This three-article format dissertation presents a comprehensive examination of the 2017 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), focusing on its measurement properties across diverse community college student populations. Study 1 centered on the validity of the internal structure of CCSSE. Exploratory and confirmatory factor…

During declining revenue, community college leaders may be unable to balance their budgets effectively. Community college managers who fail to balance budgets negatively impact a college's financial sustainability. Grounded in Burn's transactional leadership theory, the purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore strategies…

The reasons for success and well-being, and therefore of inequality, are numerous. A large number of systemic factors influence who succeeds or fails, who is healthy or sick. These factors, many of which are hard to understand or measure, interact in important and surprising ways. In contrast, humans tend to choose simple explanations of the…