Innovations
Arapahoe Community College (ACC) celebrated the completion of Phase 1 of its Health Innovation Center in October 2024 with healthcare and education partners, state and county officials, donors, civic leaders, and ACC students and employees. The Center’s simulated education spaces are used across ACC’s healthcare programs to improve functional collaboration between disciplines while preparing students to better serve patients. This expansion of healthcare programming, which began as a vision in 2017 before finally commencing in May 2023 with the renovation of ACC’s existing two-level annex...
Moraine Valley Community College is committed to providing students with the resources they need to be successful. Understanding that students cannot accomplish their educational goals if they face challenges in meeting their basic needs, the college developed the Project Care initiative, which offers an array of wraparound services and resources to help them meet those needs, ultimately allowing them to better focus on their education.
According to Teresa Hannon, a counselor at the college’s Counseling and Career Development Center (CCDC), the initial focus of Project Care was the campus...
In fall 2024, Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) began offering its first bachelor’s degree: a Bachelor of Applied Science in integrated digital manufacturing (IDM) engineering technology. To understand why Tri-C developed a four-year IDM degree, we need to look at some historic and recent economic data about Northeast Ohio.
Ohio has held a notable position in the manufacturing sector, typically ranked number three in the U.S. with over 14,000 manufacturing companies (IndustrySelect, 2024). More importantly, Northeast Ohio is a crucial player within the state, with over 6,000 manufacturers in...
The Seattle Promise Initiative, a pioneering program launched by the City of Seattle, aims to ensure that all public high school graduates in Seattle have access to higher education without the financial burden of tuition. An innovative component of this initiative is the Path to UW program, a collaboration between the Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning, Seattle Colleges, and University of Washington (UW). The program provides targeted support to Seattle Promise students as they transfer from community colleges to one of the most competitive universities in the nation....
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In a new spin on the challenge of meeting students where they are, Santa Fe College is serving one student a time, at scale. The SF Achieve initiative offers a unique take on a Promise Program by providing not just financial help, but direct college coaching and mentoring to students in their high schools. College specialists, embedded at local schools everyday throughout the school year, meet with students regularly, get to know them, and help them understand how a college education can serve as a launching pad for their goals and dreams. SF Achieve is literally meeting students where they...
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When St. Louis resident Bobbie Simmons enrolled at St. Louis Community College (STLCC) to study medical coding, it seemed like she was finally on the path to a rewarding career in a high-demand field. Then a serious health issue set her back, threatening her ability to maintain a dependable source of income for rent. “It was hard focusing on my schoolwork when I didn’t know if I’d have a roof over my head,” said Simmons. Her story is not unique; many students at STLCC face similar challenges.
Thanks to a new STLCC program, students like Simmons, who face housing insecurity, now have a...
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When I was young, I used to look up at the night sky and dream. I lived in Atlanta, a location filled with light pollution, so it was rare that I saw more than a few weak pinpoints of light scattered around the moon. Still, I pondered. Where did the stars come from? Did everyone see the same sky? How did the moon change shape?
Since the dawn of humanity, people just like me have looked up to the sky and wondered. Cultures across the globe have developed mythologies about the cosmos, from stories of the creation of the sun and moon to depictions of constellations. Egyptians built the pyramids...
Incoming first-year students at Moraine Valley Community College who are interested in pursuing a degree in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have an opportunity to participate in the Greer Scholars Program, which seeks to diversify STEM careers by funding and supporting students who are underrepresented in these fields.
The Greer Foundation, which champions organizations committed to helping people improve their lives, chose Moraine Valley as the first Chicago-area community college grantee to support a cohort of students as Greer Scholars. The foundation has been...
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Chandler-Gilbert Community College’s (CGCC) Title V and Enrollment Services teams offered a career exploration curriculum for ICAN youth in summer 2024. ICAN is a free, local program that provides K-12 students in Phoenix, Arizona’s East Valley with programs for educational development.
The relationship between CGCC and ICAN began in fall 2023 when the college was invited to participate in a parent information event hosted by a local school district. During this event, parents raised numerous questions about attending college, including affordability, accessibility, and admissions criteria....
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Noncredit workforce education has long been an important function of community colleges. These programs typically prepare students for industry-sponsored certifications, licensures, and/or college-bestowed certificates. They have traditionally been siloed away from credit programs, and, thus, do not have to match credit hour requirements and semester schedules. Yet, in recent years, the landscape of noncredit workforce education—in terms of funding availability, program offerings, and its stature and location within colleges—has shifted dramatically (Van Noy & Hughes, 2022).
Changes to...
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Transfer students represent approximately 35 percent of Delta College’s student population (Delta College, n.d.). According to the college’s Institutional Research department (Kevin Hobart, August 14, 2024, personal communication), from 2014 to 2019, 2,796 Delta College students completed an associate’s degree program; 1,851 of those students transferred to a four-year institution and 1,357 completed a bachelor’s degree at their transfer institution.
As part of our efforts to strengthen transfer student success and Delta’s work with postsecondary partners, one of the college’s strategic...
Transform_ED is a year-long Austin Community College District (ACC) research initiative and plan to anticipate and address future changes in higher education. The purpose of the research is to “analyze how external factors may impact future programmatic growth and student success at ACC to inform strategic positioning and decision-making" (Austin Community College District, n.d., Mission). The program brings together representatives from ACC’s Instruction Division, Student Affairs Division, and Teaching & Learning Excellence Division (TLED) to:
Anticipate changes in higher education and...
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Predicting the future may be a fool’s errand, but as technology evolves and societal changes occur, it is necessary for higher education leaders to consider the next phase of curriculum offerings. For the purposes of this article, the next phase will be viewed through the lens of new courses that institutions may offer as soon as 2030, if not before. A common phrase touted by college leaders and administrators for several years now is, “We are preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist.” Thankfully, there are thinktanks, advisory boards, datasets, and other tools offering predictive...
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The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OMHAS) found a 353 percent increase in demand for behavioral health treatment between 2013 and 2019 (Hernandez & Lampl, 2021). Additionally, 2.4 million Ohioans live in communities that lack adequate behavioral health professionals (Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addition Services, 2023). In response to this crisis, a collaboration was formed between OMHAS and the Ohio Departments of Higher Education and Medicaid. The mission of the resulting Ohio Wellness Workforce Great Minds Fellowship is to increase the number of...
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Community colleges are complicated environments impacted by precarious funding models, population shifts, burgeoning enrollments of students with nonacademic barriers to success, and more. An institutional climate can easily become volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). In 1985, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus’s Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, “emphasized the need for leaders to be adaptable, comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, and capable of navigating complex environments” (VUCA-WORLD, n.d., para. 3). In 1987, the U.S. military coined the term VUCA (Wright, 2023),...
In November 2021, 16 unemployed or underemployed individuals began their journey toward bettering their lives and those of their families by becoming the first cohort to participate in Santa Fe College’s (SF) new Achieve, Conquer, Believe and Excel (ACB Excel) program. ACB Excel’s mission is to empower members of the SF community who want to break the cycle of poverty, but need the financial and emotional support to do so. The concept for this program stemmed from conversations that the college’s president, Dr. Paul Broadie II, had with community leaders regarding local economic needs and...
Literature has pinpointed metrics such as credits earned and course success as important measures to best determine academic momentum for community college students (Attewell, Heil, & Reisel, 2012; Jenkins & Bailey, 2017). In fall 2020, Anne Arundel Community College’s (AACC) average course success rate was 72 percent. However, success rates at the section level often varied widely for the same course. Equity gaps existed among student groups with different demographic characteristics and based on course and section designs, such as modality and section length. To address the issue,...
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Valuing faculty and staff development as an essential component to enhancing student success, Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) has developed a twofold approach to supporting pedagogical inquiry and learning. First, the college founded an academic journal, Teaching and Learning Excellence through Scholarship (TALES), as a mechanism to encourage faculty engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Second, CCBC established a journal club for faculty to foster a culture of curiosity and lifelong learning in pedagogy. Both of these initiatives are low-cost and high-...
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Congratulations to the 2023-2024 Innovation of the Year Award winners from 28 participating League member colleges! The League initiated the Innovation of the Year Award over 35 years ago to recognize local community college programs and initiatives that reflect the spirit of innovation and experimentation on which our organization was founded. The award provides an opportunity for colleges to showcase their innovative efforts; celebrate the dedicated educators, staff, and administrators who are responsible for this exceptional work; and promote a culture of innovation at their institutions....
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Dallas College, originally Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD), opened in 1965 and evolved into seven independent colleges positioned to meet the rapidly growing needs of the now second most populous county in the U.S. In 2020, DCCCD consolidated its individual colleges into a one-college system, with each campus location embracing the opportunities and challenges that manifest in a thriving metropolitan area.
At most higher education institutions, technology enables students to interact with a system in real time, 24/7, throughout the year. However, Hanover Research (2024)...
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