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…

This dissertation in practice (DiP) was conducted to address the absence of a district-coordinated effort aligning Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and real-world project-based learning (PBL) with intentional community partnerships in Anaya Independent School District (ISD). The study aimed to develop a community outreach framework that can be…

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,…

The New Normal is rooted in adult learning theory, which explains how adults learn and why they learn in these aspects. This foundation is then supported by two pillars: cultural capital and the career pathways model. According to Bourdieu, cultural capital is the non-fiscal aspect of a person's education, social status, and language. Career…

This study seeks to identify Knowledge Communities (KC) in the field of International Education (IE). Kuhn's concept of research paradigms (2012), Crane's theory of scientific communities (1988), and Linkvist's theory of knowledge communities (2005) provide theoretical basis of this study. Using a novel, mixed methodology -- bibliometrics and…

Many school districts, particularly in inner-city communities, face numerous barriers to students' academic success. Unfortunately, the school paradigm is not constructed to address the glaring social/emotional conditions affecting millions of children (Anderson-Butcher et al., 2017). As a result, educators and social reformers have urged school…

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…

This dissertation project designed, implemented, and measured the efficacy of Transformative Experience teaching methods in Community-Engaged contexts to help students connect with and apply their scientific knowledge in their daily lives. The Transformative Experience framework connects class ideas to everyday experiences by scaffolding students'…

This dissertation project designed, implemented, and measured the efficacy of Transformative Experience teaching methods in Community-Engaged contexts to help students connect with and apply their scientific knowledge in their daily lives. The Transformative Experience framework connects class ideas to everyday experiences by scaffolding students'…

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,…

This study provides an overview of the literature of Florida's only Community Partnership Schools™ model, as a strategy to enhance family and community engagement in low performing high poverty elementary schools. More specifically, the focus of this study was to determine to what degree parents perceived the effectiveness of family and community…

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…