Reform initiatives have challenged community college leaders to reconsider what is right and wrong while also challenging our organizational cultures, advancing a new understanding of our mission, and forcing us to reconsider how we engage in the work of educating a public that needs us now more than ever.

This chapter provides useful tips for campus leaders and student organizations to establish a campus food pantry.

This chapter advises community college leaders how to achieve mission balance by using strategic planning to make mission-critical decisions and take decisive action.

This study provides an overview and a snapshot of new student orientation (NSO) and new student e-orientation (NSEO) programs, with a focus on the content and feature analysis of the NSEOs. It offers an overview of currently available NSO programs of 100 randomly selected community colleges from a master list of nearly 900 community colleges in…

This article encourages community college leaders to employ ethical paradigms when constructing and considering alternative courses of action in decision-making processes. The authors discuss four previously articulated paradigms (e.g., ethic of justice, ethic of critique, ethic of care, and ethic of the profession) and propose an additional…

The purpose of this article is to describe a decision-making framework developed for use by community college administrators and higher education faculty members who teach graduate courses in community college administration or leadership. The rationale for developing a decision-making approach that integrates ethics and critical thinking was…

The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to discover how six community college presidents who were undergraduate English majors construct the stories of their academic and professional journeys. Findings were synthesized using three themes--boundaries, connections, and transformations--as an interpretative framework. The selected presidents…

A peer mentoring program has been implemented to support a group of at-risk students enrolled in two sections of an elementary algebra course at an urban community college. Peer mentors were recruited from advanced mathematics classes and trained to provide individualized tutoring and mentoring support to at-risk students. The results show that…

Over 45,000 U.S. community college athletes were transported to events during 2005-2006. Transporting college athletes has been an overlooked risk management issue facing administrators. Team travel accidents have caused death, injury, liability claims, property loss, and grief. National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) member…

Community college leaders serve as linchpins for framing meaning on campus. The current pressures on institutions (given declining financial resources, demands for accountability, changing faculty ranks, and societal need for new knowledge) require presidents to juggle multiple priorities while presenting a cohesive message to campus constituents.…

Although much has been written about preparing community college leaders, little is known about how presidents believe they might have better prepared for the role. Using presidential narratives from a national study, this article describes how presidents perceive gaps in prior preparation and offers recommendations to support the professional…

Higher education and the military have been linked throughout U.S. history. Following World War II, the President's Commission on Higher Education released "Higher Education for American Democracy," popularly known as the Truman Commission Report of 1946. It called for, among other things, the establishment of a network of public community…

The development and progress of distance education through online technologies has grown over the past ten years. Though community colleges across the United States have seen the largest increase, are its faculty members prepared to teach online? The following study examines strategies administrators may use to train faculty who teach online…

In this article, the author writes from the perspective of a community college research practitioner, an institutional researcher whose daily work is intended primarily to affect policies, procedures and understanding of student learning and institutional effectiveness. The audience for this work is composed of faculty, administrators, staff,…

A framework for understanding the human side of leadership, especially wounding and leadership struggles, is described with an emphasis on stories of community college presidents. Practical advice and recommendations are offered to better equip aspiring and practicing community college presidents for leadership challenges. A key message is that…