Located in the fifth-poorest city in Connecticut with sizable gaps in wealth and educational achievement, Capital Community College in Hartford sees itself as a social justice and equity institution, says Duncan Harris, interim CEO, who has served on the AACC Commission for Diversity, Inclusion and Equity. For example, the college hosted a recent dialogue about […]
Leaders and Training Articles
AACC engages with faculty
The American Association of Community Colleges recognizes that faculty are the lynchpin of the student success agenda. The association has created the Faculty Ambassador program to ensure that its faculty-specific communications reach those individuals responsible for teaching and learning. AACC seeks one faculty ambassador from each member college who will serve as the association’s conduit […]
Catalysts for success
Ohio’s Clark State Community College has launched a new leadership series that brings outside voices onto campus. The Clark State Catalysts series features three sitting college presidents sharing their expertise with the wider college communities. “The purpose is to highlight different leadership styles and show the diversity and excellence of leadership at community colleges across […]
Exposing grad students to higher ed leadership
This summer, Lone Star College-Tomball (Texas) launched a 12-week Executive Internship Program (EIP) designed to expose graduate students interested in higher education leadership to the many opportunities that exist at the community college. While there are several graduate-level community college leadership programs, we recognized that there needed to be an additional pathway that helped graduate students […]
Turning queries into published research
Research and publishing are no longer the exclusive domain of faculty and students at four-year universities. Just look at the College of Davidson and Davie Counties (DCCC) in North Carolina, which over the past academic year had the research of four instructors from different disciplines published. Often, ideas for research are rooted in local queries. […]
Good governance in a digital world
Governance has struggled to keep pace with today’s public education landscape. The world we live in is switched on, digital and decentralized. Cyberattacks can originate from anywhere in the world. Social media amplifies the voice of every citizen and staff member. In a world where nanoseconds count, old governance practices aren’t just out of date; […]
Stronger bonds and new services
Over three intense days during Mentor-Connect’s 2019 Technical Assistance and Grant Writing Workshop, faculty, administrators and grant writers on teams from 22 community colleges began as strangers — sometimes people from the same campus who barely knew each other prior — and emerged as colleagues who cheered for each others’ elevator speeches and divided the […]
Creating a cyber-secure campus
When it comes to protecting data on campus, the college president needs to set the tone, but ultimately, the entire campus community needs to be proactive in preventing cyber attacks. Community colleges need to take cybersecurity as seriously as they take physical security issues, says Lee Petry, director of the Workspace One SET Team, government, […]
Growing its own leaders
Rachel Benavides is getting a look behind the community college curtain. What she sees is an industry going through tectonic change. “In the past, community colleges have been more enrollment-based than outcome-based,” said Benavides, director of Del Mar College’s adult education and literacy program and a member of its inaugural Next Generation Leadership Academy (NGLA). […]
Cultivating diverse leaders
Community colleges are looking for a few good men — and women, and people of color and any well-qualified leader looking for a robust career in higher education. That was the message Walter Bumphus, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), conveyed at a meeting of college and university chief diversity […]