Community colleges are important settings for the development of social capital as well as institutions of higher learning. The democratic mission, geographic dispersion, and close relationship with multiple stakeholders throughout their service regions allow community colleges to be well-suited to act as liaisons and social architects…

A significant amount of recent research and media coverage has focused on the challenges related to K-12 teacher shortages, particularly in rural regions of the United States. Far less research, however, has been conducted on the challenges faced by rural community colleges related to recruiting and retaining both academic and professional…

Rural community colleges are uniquely situated to physically and subtly embed educational imprints into the everyday lives of local people. This reflective article explores how the everyday characteristics of American college towns offer a potential road map for rural community colleges to structure educational imprints into the lifeblood of local…

eSports is an increasingly visible part of our popular culture and is becoming both a financial and technological force. In higher education, community colleges are rapidly developing eSports programs for a variety of reasons, including increasing student engagement to developing alumni relationships. Although some discussion exists in sports…

An incongruence exists between the growing job opportunities in rural areas and the educational opportunities provided to rural students, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Positive change is possible, however. As one means to tackle this complex issue, this study sought to understand the perceptions and…

The purpose of this Action Research study was to investigate and improve career development for rural college students in Western New York State. An initial research cycle utilized semi-structured interviews to identify rural college students' perceptions about their career development and the career-related institutional supports and experiences…

There is limited experience with innovation policies in rural areas, often based on a one-size-fits-all approach. However, rural businesses have diverse needs and there is difficulty in applying smart specialisation approaches for the use of European Union Cohesion funding in rural areas. A key resource in rural areas is the local university, and…

The problem to be addressed is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the graduating class of 2020 in a rural South Georgia community. This qualitative study explores the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic had on student mental wellbeing, relationships, education, and post-secondary decisions. The study is framed by the rural environment where the…

Absent a formal definition or measure, it has not been possible to comprehensively identify rural-serving institutions (RSIs) for the purpose of research and policy making. The Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC) spent a year working to resolve the absence of standards for identifying RSIs. The RSI Metric components are: (1) Percent…

Despite the fact that Career and Technical Education (CTE) prepares students for high-wage careers and in-demand jobs (Gordon & Schultz, 2020), it silences the voices it aims to empower by focusing on career alignment rather than community. This dissertation examines perceptions in rural communities in Wyoming to determine how CTE programs can…

This academic inquiry examines the efficacy of virtual reality (VR)-based pedagogy for higher learning, specifically analyzing immersive digital instruction for rural agriculture undergraduates studying soil science in Colombia. The investigation tests two hypotheses: first, simulated learning situations improve academic achievement and student…

This study investigated the transfer pathway between a rural university and a community college to understand what procedural barriers exist for student degree attainment within existing structures. Process mapping was used as the intervention to examine the influence of enrollment and student services processes and investigate the perceptions of…

The purpose of this qualitative single-case study was to investigate how a partnership between a rural community college in New Jersey and a manufacturer of emerging optics equipment reflected the regional networked innovation system, a type of regional innovation system. This single case study provided a comprehensive overview of the perceptions…

In the wake of recent political events, rural people and places experience unfiltered and uncensored criticism. For the approximately 20% of America's children who are growing up in rural places, these stereotyped narratives are damaging and dehumanizing. To ensure the wellbeing of rural children across the United States, teacher education…

This paper focuses on the potential, challenges, and limits of participatory, narrative and multimodal research methods as contributions to decolonising research on understanding student experiences of teaching and learning in higher education. Drawing on Fraser's social justice concepts of participatory parity, redistribution, recognition, and…