Urban community colleges have been studied primarily from a case study perspective, often highlighted by doctoral students conducting research at their institutions. Little of this scholarship, however, has been translated into the base of literature, as less than 5% of the citations in the largest search engines are focused on urban community…

Community colleges navigate a policy landscape or "policyscape" that was not created for them but that affects them in numerous ways. The concluding article introduces the idea of the "policyscape" in the community college context, and provides examples from the volume of when and how policies can be updated (what Mettler calls…

Since the 1947 Truman Commission's recommendation to establish local colleges in communities, the multiple mission community colleges have provided access and affordable education for millions. In the early years of the new millennium, community colleges garnered increased attention as engines of credential completion as the need for a college…

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…

The number of federally designated Hispanic serving institutions (HSIs) has almost doubled over the last 10 years. This shift has led researchers and policy makers alike to increasingly scrutinize what it means to be Hispanic serving, and not just Hispanic enrolling. In this study, we present perspectives from five Hispanic community college…

In this chapter, the authors discuss the role community colleges play in alleviating poverty and how this role is reflected in institutional mission statements.

Community college leadership, including governing and foundation board members, must have an ethical framework while using philanthropic fundraising to increase revenues available for community colleges to realize their heroic mission.

This chapter highlights key ideas about multiple and competing community college missions and the leadership required to address them.

This chapter discusses an often neglected aspect of the community college mission: noncredit courses that address local service area needs.

This chapter describes the historical context of community college mission statements and proposes that these texts serve three functions: public relations, management, and sensemaking.

This chapter describes the community college challenge to support all learners to succeed in college and enter the middle class as citizens, parents, and workers.

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 addresses how dual enrollment programs support the community college mission, specifically related to access and completion.

This chapter explores the changing nature of how students experience postsecondary education that results in a considerable amount of "swirl" between institutions. Although the traditional notion of "vertical" transfer from a community college to a university continues to be an important aspect of the community college mission,…