Effective governance requires high levels of trust and mutual respect among trustees who must commit to serving as stewards of the college's resources. This chapter describes rogue trustees, their tactics, and their negative impact on the governing process and college culture. The chapter includes strategies to mitigate the disruptive and…

The chapters in this volume of "New Directions for Community Colleges" highlight the intended roles of boards of trustees and illustrate areas in which board relations often go awry. This final manuscript brings together the themes of the volume, highlights lessons learned and presents recommendations moving forward. The challenges…

This chapter provides an overview of the important work of community college trustees and includes best practices as well as the contrasting challenges of rogue trustees and activist boards. Whether a board is made up of trustees who are elected, appointed, or a combination of the two, there are things that colleges should, and could do which…

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…

As the largest sector of higher education in the US, community colleges serve a critical role in helping many students pursue and achieve their educational goals. Most community college districts are led by a team that includes a governing board of trustees and a lead administrator (often called a superintendent, president, or chancellor) who…

According to John Carver (1990), no single relationship in an organization is as important as that between the board and its chief executive officer. That relationship, well-conceived, can set the stage for effective governance and leadership. However, the line between governance and administration in community colleges is not always as clear as…

Multiple direct observations suggest that community college board governance exists today, very much as it has for many decades, often encumbered by outmoded, unchecked, ineffectual practices, and absent clarity of purpose. The absence of a routine assessment of a board's own governance style and efficacy foretells a future inability for…

This chapter reviews social and organizational theories that influence governance to contextualize new ways to think about the roles of boards of trustees. This chapter discusses how various organizational theories help define the roles of boards of trustees, the CEO, and other stakeholders with respect to governance. Using this backdrop, reforms…

Community college boards of trustees are not highly visible, but they play a vital role in college and student success through governance and oversight of the mission of open access higher education. The stakes are high as community colleges compete for scarce resources in state budgets making the local and state-level trustee/governing role as…

Pursuant to California Education Code 88922 and Assembly Bill 231, the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office and the Board of Governors for California Community Colleges are pleased to release the Guided Pathways Grant Report for Fiscal Years 2021-2023. This report includes a summary of the California community colleges' progress in…

Individual trustees are often looking for different qualities in a community college president, and it can be challenging for a diverse group of stakeholders to agree on what they want. Boards that function most effectively work together to establish a clear set of criteria at the outset of the hiring process, and they share this list with…

Highlighting the work of the Texas Success Center, Dr. Luis Ponjuán discusses how he has collaboratively engaged with boards of trustees to develop equity-minded agendas to create spaces for brave conversations and help them use an equity-minded leadership approach toward student data for organization planning and change.

This qualitative narrative inquiry study explored the lived experiences of African American boards of trustees within community colleges around race, barriers, and influencers. Research reveals an underrepresentation of racial diversity among community college boards of trustees that fails to emulate the racial and ethnic diversity of their…

This article examines the long-overlooked governmental body, the local community college governing board, through the lens of descriptive representation, to assess what variables are associated with minority representation. Higher education governing boards have long lacked diversity, let alone any type of proportional representation, but an…

This two-way, fixed effects analysis examines the relationship between local appropriations and community college state governance structures while examining governance's moderating impact on state-level factors. We find that any type of state-level organization for community colleges does not impact local appropriations, and that in states with…