In 2017, the Macdonald Campus Seed Library was launched at the Macdonald Campus Library of McGill University. This seed library, the first in an academic library in Quebec and the third in Canada, is an unusual, innovative program, and has generated a great deal of interest and enthusiasm from the university community. It has proven to be an…

Community college biology faculty play an important role in educating the future STEM workforce. These faculty rely on professional organizations to provide programming and networking opportunities to enhance their professional development.

Industry experience is widely viewed as an important requirement for community college teachers, as it may provide instructors with insights on how to teach important workplace "soft" skills. In this chapter, we discuss a study exploring this issue and why industry experience alone is insufficient preparation for effective skills-focused…

This chapter discusses the employment engagement efforts of Missouri's twelve community colleges to improve program development, student recruitment, program assistance, student support, and employer hiring.

Citizenship classes are often taught directly to the test. Creating meaningful dialogue within the confines of a set vocabulary list, 100 questions, and a time limit can often prove difficult. Creating not only new citizens but citizens who are connected to their community and who are leaders/advocates for the people in their community is the main…

In collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania's Netter Center for Community Partnerships, IEL's Coalition for Community Schools Research Practice Network hosted a three-day virtual convening in July 2020 to develop a national Community Schools Research Agenda. The convening, "Powerful Learning: How Community Schools Support Learning…

Despite warnings that the school schedule that has been around for more than 100 years is not optimal for serving students' needs, little has changed. The needs of kids and families look very different today than they did 50 years ago. One-size-fits-all prescriptions do not meet the needs of a diverse student population. Rethinking the school…

This dissertation explores the construction of the "mixed-heritage" category in Polish community-based heritage language education (HLE) and its effect on school purposes and school operations. As the number of heritage language speakers in the US who identify with multiple ethnicities grows (Parker et al., 2015; Alba et al., 2018), the…

The national shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, on March 13th , 2020 caused education systems to close on an unprecedented scale. Many educators were not prepared to continue instructing online then, and students continue to grapple with the new reality of navigating online modalities now. Without face-to-face interaction, learning changed as…

The purpose of this study is to research the roles that agency, collectivity, and social justice have in the professional learning experiences of teachers of color. By understanding how teachers of color make decisions regarding their professional learning outside of the confines of schools, researchers are able to shed light on what professional…

Informal learning constantly happens all around us. Informal learning approaches often stand in stark contrast to school practices and standards, receive little attention in the formal study of education, and present a great deal of untapped opportunity to support learners. Mendoso Community Library (MCL) is a particularly interesting illustration…

A rapid decline in student retention among community colleges reduces revenue and jeopardizes financial sustainability, meaning leaders of community colleges who lack strategies to retain students have lower revenue and financial sustainability. Grounded in the advocacy and participatory worldview conceptual framework, the purpose of this…

Employing Museus' (2014) Culturally Engaging Campus Environment framework, this mixed-method exploratory study sought to ascertain what prospective (proTSCC) and current transfer students from community colleges (TSCC) knew about nationally competitive awards and to identify factors that influenced their decision to apply. Beginning with…

Social media has become an integral part of human life in the 21st century. The number of social media users was estimated to be around 3.6 billion individuals in 2020. Social media platforms (e.g., Facebook) have facilitated interpersonal communication, diffusion of information, the creation of groups and communities, to name a few. As far as…

This qualitative study investigated the lived experiences of past and present African American women leaders in community colleges in the United States. The purpose of this research study is to understand common barriers and challenges faced, and strategies used for achieving and sustaining leadership as "Black" and a "woman".…