If community colleges are to remain relevant, they must be future-oriented, and responsive to demographic and labor force shifts. The Get Skilled, Get a Job, Give Back initiative (G3) was implemented during the 2021-22 academic year to retain economically disadvantaged students, improve community college completion, and help students graduate into…

This article presents research on the role of educators at a Hispanic Serving community college in the civic development--the capacity to be socially and/or politically civically engaged--of Latinx students. The article presents educators' perceptions of, and pedagogies used to promote, the civic development of Latinx students and communities at a…

As educators reconsider higher education's public good mission, community colleges face a monumental task. These colleges still serve a student population that includes many low-income, traditionally underrepresented, first-generation college students with family and job responsibilities that demand their attention. For community colleges, the…

Numerous stereotypes of the veteran population miss the diverse backgrounds of veterans as a group, particularly that one quarter of known veterans are living in rural communities across the United States (VA, 2022). Despite the Federal focus on veteran rural health, there needs to be more literature available on veteran success in community…

This article proposes a new way of thinking about shared governance, focusing on the informal and sometimes unintentional interactions among faculty, staff, and even students. We argue that an operational place to start reconceptualizing shared governance is to look at the everyday interactions that collectively make up the hidden experiences of…

Student retention and persistence tracking have become more prominent at community colleges. While it is known that community colleges have low completion rates, these institutions need help finding ways to retain and persist their students. This study explored the faculty perspective of retention and persistence strategies. Using a…

Community colleges, or 2-year associate-degree granting institutions, tend to enroll large numbers of students deemed misprepared for college-level coursework. Such students may also not be as likely to seek help, a self-regulated activity that is challenging and fraught with social stigma. A key component of active learning and the help-seeking…

The Turtle Mountains are an abundant, forested enclave, standing out from the miles and miles of flat surrounding farmland. At Turtle Mountain, an Anhishinaabe nation in north-central North Dakota near the Canadian border, paved roads run along rolling hills, and the ground brims with multicolored wildflowers and tall, swaying grasses. The woods…

Higher education increasingly relies on remedial coursework to bridge knowledge gaps among incoming students (Chen, 2016). Students assessed as below college level enroll in remediation to review secondary concepts, especially in mathematics (Kane et al., 2020). However, pressures over funding, student persistence, and completion rates exacerbate…

Undergraduate research experiences can have a positive impact on student retention and success in STEM, but are not widely available to community college students. Yet, the role of community colleges in producing STEM graduates, especially Latinx students, is overlooked and likely underestimated. A program designed to attract and retain Latinx…

This paper will describe the promise Hispanic-serving Community Colleges (HSCCs) have for creating a culture of servingness, including curricular and co-curricular supports, transfer infrastructure, engineering identity development, and other mechanisms that can positively impact Latinx engineering learners. We will outline current research and…

As colleges and universities continue to navigate the longer-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, a wealth of knowledge and insights exists within many community colleges to inform how to best prepare students for the fast-changing demands of learning, work, and life. Using a strengths-based approach and interviews with students from three large…

Community colleges face many challenges post-pandemic in fulfilling their open-access mission while weathering increasing complexities, resource limitations, and overall declining confidence in higher education. Ethical leadership is required for community college leaders seeking to successfully address these challenges. Ethical leadership…

Short-term certificate (STC) programs at community colleges represent a long-standing policy priority to align accelerated postsecondary credentials with job opportunities in local labor markets. Despite large investments in developing STCs, little evidence exists about where and when STCs are opened and whether community colleges open new…

Community colleges are an important entry point and pathway for students to obtain a postsecondary degree in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. To broaden STEM participation and increase STEM persistence, it is important to support community college students' college-level course completion and academic performance. This…