As data science and instrumentation become key practices in common careers ranging from medicine to agriscience, chemistry as a core introductory course must introduce such topics to students early and at an accessible level. Advanced data acquisition and data science generally require expensive precision instrumentation and massive computation,…

This chapter describes examples of Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training-funded innovations that resulted in statewide systemic change, including approaches to accelerate adult credential attainment, new approaches to data collection and analysis, enhanced individualized student support, and stronger industry alignment.

Across the nation, community colleges have expanded dual enrollment programs to increase college enrollment and completion, particularly among historically underserved populations. The California Community College system--the largest system in the nation--is no different and recently expanded its dual enrollment programming to include College and…

A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures…

The education science (or pedagogy based on scientific principles) of the learning of spectroscopy analysis in terms of critical thinking was examined in a community college setting with high school outreach and senor college transfer students enrolling in courses and/or projects. The most important discovery of science in the 20th Century was the…

Higher education institutions in the United States are under intense scrutiny to engage in data-driven decision-making to address systemic deficiencies. An innovative strategy to increase the use of data in higher education is through interactive data visualization whereby users are more involved in the creation of knowledge. The problem that was…

Objective: The purpose of this paper was to examine variables associated with food insecurity among community college caregivers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We used data from a multi-institutional survey of 15,051 caregivers enrolled at 130 community colleges in 42 states in fall 2020. We used a logistic regression to examine whether…

This article describes the step-by-step process of how data science, marketing and communications, and higher education improved access and success for students. Over the last three years, strategic planning efforts helped develop a data-informed culture on campus. The work described within the playbook required time, energy, and a lot of…

Each year hundreds of institutions will administer national surveys to measure the engagement of their students. However, stakeholders on college campuses, such as educators (faculty, instructors, student affairs educators, and disability services administrators) and institutional research staff who work with this information are often unaware of…

In 2019, Nebraska Indian Community College (NICC) joined the National Student Clearinghouse Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP). This technical brief will discuss an approach to prepare Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP) data collections that consist of the development of both term cohort files and course files. The process utilized course and…

Mandatory community college student fees have risen steadily over the past 20 years, outpacing the growth of tuition by a substantial margin. To date, research on postsecondary fees has been limited to public four-year colleges and universities, even as community college fees are growing faster and affecting students who are likely more price…

Adjunct faculty have become the new majority faculty on campuses across the country. There are two theories why adjunct faculty are so relied upon: cost or contingency. Some institutions may employ adjunct faculty for cost-savings reasons. In contrast, other institutions may depend on the contingent, temporary nature of the employment contracts to…

Noncredit enrollment at community colleges has grown significantly over the past two decades. However, unlike credit bearing programs, noncredit programs are seldomly empirically examined and evaluated, particularly those that are not grant funded. The lack of data results in a gap in knowledge about program effectiveness, as well as the students…

The first step to addressing equity gaps is to identify them. How can community colleges determine, with some degree of certainty, whether one or more student groups on a campus is in need of assistance in order to succeed? This paper tackles this question by delving into the three methods typically used to identify equity gaps, comparing and…

In the fall of 2019, Nebraska Indian Community College [NICC] became the first tribal college to participate in a new data service of the National Student Clearinghouse called the Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP). A small college with high aspirations for its students, NICC was in the process of building data capacity and adopting data-driven…