The Exploring Making Through Mobile Emergent Technologies (EMMET) program sought to disrupt the trajectory from rural high school to factory floor by introducing STEM and computational thinking (STEM+C) skills through mentorship training and hands-on activities involving creative production--often referred to as "making." The program…

With a looming enrollment crisis, colleges must explore new efforts for developing strategic and sustainable partnerships that support institutional advancement. As such, Kent State University (KSU) partnered with three regional, two-year institutions developing high-impact pathways to expand upon the transfer student experience and success rates.…

This is the third data note on the project "Scaling Community College Baccalaureate Degrees: The Equity Imperative." The goal of this research is to examine degree-granting policies, institutional adoption, and program implementation related to community college baccalaureate (CCB) degrees in the United States. Given the changing policy…

The findings from this multiple case study research project on the use of cooperative learning (specifically affinity groups) among developmental college students demonstrate that students benefited from from building community and becoming interdependent. Four themes that emerged from this study, (a) accountability, (b) building…

This chapter discusses the importance and common challenges of evaluating community college student success efforts; it includes a broad-based framework for carrying out effective evaluations.

Since the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) launched the Voluntary Framework of Accountability (VFA) in 2011, accountability measures have sprung up in just about every corner of higher education. There is the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the National Governors Association's Complete to Compete program,…

Over the past decade, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) and Madison Area Technical College (Madison College) partnered to create an internship pathway for graduate students pursuing careers as future science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) faculty members. Since 2003, 10 doctoral students from the university completed…

Community colleges are expected to contribute to economic development efforts by implementing new programs that respond to the needs of business and industry. Program development is complex, especially for community colleges in rural areas where business and industry are scarce. This qualitative study explores the factors that influence successful…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of developmental math, English, and reading courses by evaluating the success of students in the corresponding college-level math, English, and reading course. This study analyzed select student characteristics (sex, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status) or student developmental education status as predictors…

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a growing student support service used to offer students peer-guided activities to improve course learning. The current research was conducted to answer two research questions: 1) Do those who participate in SI perform better in their courses than those who do not attend SI? 2) Are those who participate in SI more…

Background/Context: Community colleges are central to the United States' college completion goals. A popular strategy pushed by a number of influential policy organizations and foundations is a policy of tying state funding to community college completions, otherwise known simply as performance funding. This is happening despite little to no…

As lifelong learning and workforce education grow increasingly more important in American life, the mission of community colleges is shifting more and more toward continuing education, certificate training, and workforce training. The lack of a standard set of indicators has led to a variety of approaches to the assessment of noncredit workforce…

For southern New England, the middle-skills gap is projected to become acute by 2020, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Historically and currently, the middle-skills labor pool in Massachusetts has been significantly below national rates and has been recently experiencing a decline. Closing the middle-skills gap depends on improving…

We offered four annual professional development workshops called STAR (for Scientific Teaching, Assessment, and Resources) modeled after the National Academies Summer Institute (SI) on Undergraduate Education in Biology. In contrast to the SI focus on training faculty from research universities, STAR's target was faculty from community colleges,…

In 2007, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) funded 22 colleges to establish developmental summer bridge programs. Aimed at providing an alternative to traditional developmental education, these programs involve intensive remedial instruction in math, reading, and/or writing and college preparation content for students entering…