During the American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Annual Business Meeting held in conjunction with the association's convention, the President and CEO presents a report on chief executive officer (CEO) leadership transitions. CEO leadership transitions, as defined by AACC, include retirements, CEO movement from one college to another,…

Many community colleges have an opening for the position of president and need to choose the best candidates to lead their organizations successfully in a dynamic and diverse higher education landscape. A review of existing literature revealed studies that have looked at programs preparing community college presidents, perspectives from community…

Increasingly, community colleges recognize the need to center transformational change on equity. This chapter presents findings from a multi-site qualitative case study on how community college presidents and chancellors can keep equity at the forefront of the transformational change process. The three community college presidents and chancellors…

This chapter explores the ways in which critical community college leaders leveraged their leadership position in order to promote civic discourse and engagement in their institutions and respective communities. Five community college presidents from diverse communities across the United States were interviewed using a narrative inquiry approach…

The nation's community colleges play a key role in addressing the need to expand and diversify the STEM technological workforce. However, significant barriers must be overcome for the programs to meet the increasing demand for skilled employees. The programs are expensive to establish and maintain; community colleges are generally underfunded;…

Higher education is going through a significant period of change following the COVID-19 pandemic. The increased technological capacity and desire for online modalities are both a great opportunity and a potentially challenging burden. Although they serve the most marginalized students, community colleges are often vastly under-resourced, leaving…

Equity in action starts with a leader's critical consciousness in relation to their identities, ideologies, and positionalities. In this essay, the following factors: ideologies, identities, and positionalities are explained and emphasized as they are essential factors that impact equity work. Leaders who center equity must explore their own…

Votes of no confidence have increasingly been used, particularly by internal campus constituents, to indicate severe discontent with and distrust of higher education presidents. No national benchmarking institution or educational agency collects data on votes of no confidence or sets standards for what is considered a normal number of votes of no…

This chapter reflects on how the Michigan Center for Student Success (MCSS) has leveraged its position within a membership organization for community college presidents and trustees to engage in statewide student success efforts in a state with a unique higher education governance structure. With no formal higher education governing body to set…

Research has identified a clear underrepresentation of race and gender diversity in the community college presidency and scant progress in diversification. This phenomenological study used critical race theory (CRT) and glass ceiling theory (GCT) lenses to examine the lived experiences of minority community college presidents, including those who…

Building from Freire's ideas of liberatory education in the "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," Carter G. Woodson's "The Mis-Education of the Negro," and Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth," we outline a new and audacious approach in this chapter, in hopes that it will better position a more transformative and…

This qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of first-at-institution female community college presidents in the United States, focusing on the social influences they encountered. Despite community colleges serving a large number of female, underrepresented, and low-socioeconomic students, leadership roles are…

Latinx students constitute the fastest and largest growing segment of the population in California community colleges (CCCs), with roughly 45% of students identified as Latinx. Yet Latinx representation among faculty and administrators lags behind, with very modest gains in representation in the faculty and academic administrator ranks (Bates et…

The American democracy is experiencing strain from the erosion of democratic norms and its political, judicial, social, and economic institutions. In short, the American democracy shows signs of democratic deconsolidation. Community colleges are higher education institutions that help consolidate the U.S. democracy by representing democratic…

Through an open-door admissions policy, affordable tuition rates, and pulse on regional workforce needs, community colleges keep the dream of higher education and career preparation alive for all Americans, regardless of socio-economic status. Although public enterprises partially funded through tax-payer dollars, community colleges have not been…