Adrienne Provost was recognized as the inaugural recipient of the 2024 Terry O’Banion Legacy Award at the League for Innovation in the Community College’s (League) Innovations Conference on Sunday, March 17, 2024, in Anaheim, California.

The award supports preparation of a paper that presents an innovative and thought-provoking examination of and response to a major issue or challenge facing community and technical colleges. For Provost, that issue is the conversation about community colleges and how it influences not only education professionals, but also the wider public.

In her award monograph, Social Media Public Scholars: Reframing the Narrative From the Inside Out, Provost charges community college practitioners to take the lead in telling the community college story through social media public scholarship.

She argues that traditional academic journals are dominated by university scholars, while social media allows community college voices to be widely heard and to reframe the narrative. She acknowledges social media’s flaws, but concludes that it has useful benefits for public scholarship.

The League created the Terry O’Banion Legacy Award in recognition of O’Banion’s six decades in community college education. Throughout his career, O’Banion has been a thought leader and self-described provocateur who challenges the status quo to improve and expand teaching, learning, and the entire education enterprise.

League President and CEO Rufus Glasper said, “Adrienne Provost has prepared a thought-provoking monograph and her call to action has the potential to influence others’ perceptions of community colleges. I encourage community college practitioners to read and share this paper with colleagues and to join the conversation.”

Provost, who served as Director/Manager of TRIO and College Achievement programs at Santa Fe College and is currently Director of Student Strategic Initiatives for the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Florida, described O’Banion’s influence by noting that, “He has inspired and challenged countless scholar-practitioners like me to ask hard questions and push bureaucratic boundaries to meet the needs of students and communities.”

She explained that in writing the monograph, she “strove to mirror O’Banion’s provocative pursuits” and hopes it will “encourage others to ‘Live like Terry,’ whose life’s work has furthered and reflected the democratic spirit of the People’s College.”

O’Banion called the monograph “a scholarly work on a special topic that needs to be spread throughout the community college world—to both scholars and practitioners” and said he will be “proud” to share it with colleagues.

O’Banion also noted that as the inaugural paper for the award, it “sets a high standard for the next round of the award in 2025.”

Social Media Public Scholars: Reframing the Narrative From the Inside Out is available at www.league.org/node/1430816.

Lead image: Adrienne Provost honored by League for Innovation's Rufus Glasper and Cynthia Wilson as inaugural Terry O'Banion Legacy Award recipient