The Exploring Engagement Fund was established with the belief that arts provide a distinct, powerful public benefit that helps create a vibrant, inclusive, and compassionate society. From 2012 to 2018, the Exploring Engagement Fund supported new approaches that these nonprofit arts organizations used to actively engage more diverse participants.…

From 2012 to 2018, the Exploring Engagement Fund of The James Irvine Foundation provided risk capital for more than 100 engagement projects conducted by California arts nonprofits. These organizations had innovative ideas and a readiness to take bold steps to engage groups often underrepresented among mainstream arts participants--specifically…

Community schools are an evidence-based strategy to advance a "whole child" approach to education by offering integrated student supports (e.g., health care or housing assistance), expanded and enriched learning time, family and community engagement, and collaborative leadership and practices. This brief examines how local government and…

Community Partnership Schools™ are designed to serve as a positive resource center in their community, staffed with dedicated professionals committed to student success and community well-being (Coalition for Community Schools, n.d.; Ellis, 2016). Following the education model created at the University of Central Florida (UCF), the first…

This chapter addresses key assessment issues that influence the success of assessment programs at community colleges. Suggestions for advancing general education assessment are included.

In spring 2023, The Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges (The RP Group) partnered with the CEO Affordability, Food & Housing Access Taskforce of the Community College League of California (CCLC) to assist in survey data collection efforts and provide updated data trends regarding California Community College (CCC)…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how non-traditional online undergraduate students describe the influence of support communities on their academic engagement while attending four-year universities in the United States. This study included 46 non-traditional online undergraduate students from a university in the…

How can two-year colleges ensure that all students can access quality career navigation opportunities that inform their studies and position them for meaningful, family-sustaining work? That is the challenge being addressed at Boston's Bunker Hill Community College through a college-wide initiative known as Ethnographies of Work (EoW). The…

Parenting students work hard every day to pursue their goals, often juggling work, classes, and caregiving responsibilities. Public systems and programs can provide critical support, but frequently create additional hurdles for parenting students and their families--especially those with low incomes. In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social…

Providing coaching to participants in inquiry-based online discussions contributes to developing cognitive presence (CP) and higher-order thinking. However, a primary issue limiting quality and timely coaching is instructors' lack of tools to efficiently identify CP phases in massive discussion transcripts and effectively assess learners'…

Mentoring is widely cited as a strategy to increase the representation of Latinx in technology, but the role of informal relationships with adults outside their family remains unclear. This study explores how natural mentoring is utilized by Latinx youth at a community-based organization, including the perspectives of both mentors and mentees,…

Civic engagement is an individual's active participation that is intended to improve a community's socioeconomic status or help shape its future. Undergraduates who engage with a community during formal course work are more likely to participate civically later in life. This outcome is important for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)…

Community college presidents must understand the phenomenon of campus safety. For this mixed-methods study, community college presidents in one state were surveyed, and three presidents from the same community college system participated in in-depth interviews. Descriptive statistics measured the levels community college presidents' knowledge and…

This paper explores women's experiences in academia through collective biography from a feminist, transdisciplinary, intersectional frame. Crosscutting disciplines, classifications, and subject positions, we use dialogue to explore the nuances of what it is to be a woman in academia, and the experiences of building and developing community as…

In England, a new model of apprenticeship was initiated in whose stated intention was to 'put employers in the driving seat'. Regulation of the new model was focused on the mandatory 20% of apprentices' work time allocated to off-the-job training offered by colleges and other training providers. Based on case studies of employers and training…