This chapter describes research on a four-year National Science Foundation grant project that supported instructional, organizational, and professional change made by geoscience faculty change agents. The faculty change agents participated in sustained professional development, led regional workshops, and engaged in college-, program-, and…

Calls for a crisis in community college leadership have been replete over the past 15 years. Now, the impact of the changing of the guard in leadership positions is gaining momentum. Coupled with the exodus of long-serving leaders is a reticence among mid-level leaders in seeking advancement. This paper reports on interviews with cabinet level…

Community college leaders serve as linchpins for framing meaning on campus. The current pressures on institutions (given declining financial resources, demands for accountability, changing faculty ranks, and societal need for new knowledge) require presidents to juggle multiple priorities while presenting a cohesive message to campus constituents.…

College leaders serve important roles as guides for campus understanding during times of change. Within multicollege districts, campus members deal with several levels of leadership, ranging from department chairs, to the college president, to the system chancellor. These leaders may send conflicting messages regarding change, or have competing…

This study detailed how two community college presidents framed issues and events of change on their campuses based on their thinking, and it outlined the sources of power they used during the application of their plans for change. Both presidents were relatively new at their jobs; both had come from out of state to assume their new roles. A total…

As organizational change at community colleges becomes the norm, presidents leading these campuses play a heightened role in guiding successful initiatives. The research reported here investigated the relationship between leader cognition and power levers of two presidents as they framed change for campus members. These leaders' underlying…

This paper presents a study that analyzed the ways in which community college presidents define and disseminate information on institutional and organizational change. It identifies three courses of change on community college campuses: presidential initiatives, internal pressures, and external pressures. The study centered on the presidents'…

Describes the ways in which two community college presidents used framing to aid campus sense-making. Defines framing as the choice of one set of meanings over another, and sense-making as the process by which individuals interpret changes around them. Reports that the presidents chose frames that drove campus goals and subsequent strategies to…

Summarizes the theoretical foundations, data collection procedures, and findings from a study designed to examine the linkage between presidential cognition and the ultimate framing of organizational change on a community college campus. The data analyzed in this study was gathered at two community college sites intentionally selected based on the…