Since the 1947 Truman Commission's recommendation to establish local colleges in communities, the multiple mission community colleges have provided access and affordable education for millions. In the early years of the new millennium, community colleges garnered increased attention as engines of credential completion as the need for a college…

Despite declines in the number of liberal arts bachelor's degrees awarded by four-year colleges, the growth in liberal arts at community colleges has made up the difference, countering a national narrative that the field is in crisis. As designated by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, the liberal arts cover a range of…

Lack of clear, coherent pathways to transfer or to workforce goals is a common impediment to community college student success and completion. Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) set the ambitious goal of achieving curricular coherence across its 10 colleges, developing shared pathways that clearly delineate employment and/or…

LaGuardia Community College is pursuing a sustained, multi-layered strategy to place learning, teaching, and cohesive curriculum at the center of a guided learning pathway. Implemented in both general education and disciplinary majors collegewide, our Learning Matters core competencies offer faculty powerful tools they use to design, enact,…

Interstate Passport is a program that serves a national network of member institutions and states to facilitate block transfer of lower-division general education attainment based on student learning outcomes rather than on specific courses and credits. A student who is awarded a Passport for completing the general education courses specified by…

This protocol guides the review of research that informs What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) intervention reports in the Supporting Postsecondary Success topic area. The protocol is used in conjunction with the WWC Procedures and Standards Handbooks (version 4.0). This protocol focuses broadly on academic and nonacademic interventions that aim to…

During the economic recession of the past decade, an increasing number of traditional-age students opted to begin their studies at less expensive local community colleges rather than four-year universities. At the same time, forced by corporate downsizing to develop new career interests, non-traditional students turned to community colleges for…

In the 1960s, general education was at the forefront of innovative programs in American community colleges. Every community college designed a program of a common core of courses for the common person. General education was so popular it was included as one of the required components of a comprehensive community college along with university…

This brief article describes how Alamance Community College, a mid-sized community college sandwiched between two of North Carolina's largest metropolitan markets in Raleigh-Durham and Greensboro-Winston-Salem, has developed several new study programs and initiatives to better service business and industry. Among other things, Almanac has…

As community colleges increasingly embrace their vocational role at the expense of their general education mission, the author of this chapter argues that a curriculum centered on a "Great Books" canon as developed by Mortimer Adler in the 1920s would revitalize liberal education at community colleges and serve both the general education…

Employers currently struggle to find workers who possess the necessary skills to fill job openings, and this skills gap is projected to grow. By 2025, 30 percent of all job openings in California--or a total of 1.9 million jobs--will require some form of postsecondary education short of a four-year degree. California's education pipeline is not…

Founded in 1964 and housed within the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Education, the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) is one of the nation's oldest and most highly regarded education research and development centers. While there is notable diversity in the focus areas and methodological approaches of WCER scholars whose…

After a considerable amount of research and experimentation, cat dissection was replaced with rat dissection and clay modeling in the human anatomy and physiology laboratory curricula at La Guardia Community College (LAGCC), a large urban community college of the City University of New York (CUNY). This article describes the challenges faculty…

This brief focuses on the efforts of the nursing programs at Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas (PCCUA) to reduce time to completion, increase achievement, and enhance student support. To accomplish these goals, PCCUA involved healthcare providers, faculty, students, college curriculum committees, the Accreditation Commission…

Teaching in a diverse, urban community college, it has become apparent that students spend most of their free (and classroom) time participating in social media. In response, we decided to incorporate social media, blogs specifically, as a way to increase student engagement, retention and achievement. The learning objective was for our students to…