Learning Environments
Delta College serves the Great Lakes Bay region of mid-Michigan, with its primary district including Bay (24 percent), Midland (16 percent), and Saginaw (42 percent) counties (Delta College, 2023). These counties, in addition to the surrounding ones for which Delta is the community college of choice, combine to form a markedly diverse service area. The counties include urban, suburban, and rural communities, collectively representing a tremendous variance in median household incomes, proximity to major employers, access to high-speed Internet, and ease of access to affordable postsecondary...
Community colleges are places for learning and reinvention, but what happens when potential students are unable to attend college because they are incarcerated? Incarcerated individuals face an extraordinary amount of discrimination when it comes to post-incarceration job searches, and many did not enjoy an uninterrupted educational path prior to incarceration, which leaves them with few opportunities to rise above their circumstances.
Education is directly correlated to incarceration; according to Literacy Mid-South (2023), “high school dropouts are 3.5 times more likely than high school...
There’s an old saying: What a difference a day makes. But what could a forward-looking institution do with 730 of them that could make a unique, positive difference in their students’ classroom experiences? That was the challenge faced by the leadership team at Johnson County Community College (JCCC) in 2020. In a meeting with newly hired President Andy Bowne, the team discussed the college’s next steps on a key initiative started by the previous president: demonstrating the college’s commitment to undergraduate research and STEM preparation for its students.
JCCC’s highly credentialed...
As apprenticeships gain momentum in higher education across the U.S., students are finding that these opportunities are the perfect springboard into a career they love while businesses are receiving qualified employees who can make a quick transition into their workforce after graduation. And community colleges are the vehicles that bring everyone together, making apprenticeships a win-win-win for everyone involved.
Moraine Valley Community College offers students in its Automotive Technology Program an apprenticeship opportunity through a unique partnership with Nissan North America, Inc. In...
It is no secret that opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to participate in research and innovation are more prominent in university settings than in community colleges in the United States (Arnaud, 2019; Wladis & Mesa, n.d.; Wladis & Mesa, 2019). On a recent study abroad visit to three community colleges, or technical schools as they are called in Denmark, the author discovered that there had been focused research and innovation departments in these institutions for many years. She realized then that the U.S. had some catching up to do.
Inspiration
A few years ago, a team...
Virtual student exchange programs have been implemented by higher education institutions across the globe. The Stevens Initiative (2021) found that 214 colleges and universities offered 3,073 virtual exchange programs from fall 2020 to summer 2021 and that 62 of the responding institutions had more than five years of experience with virtual exchanges. These programs, which offer platforms for students to communicate, collaborate, cooperate, and achieve their learning objectives by building learner communities, have been coined by scholars as Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL...
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Community college libraries must keep pace with 21st century needs. Gone are the days when librarians shushed students and one could hear a pin drop in library spaces. Gone are the days when print periodicals and books were the only resources available. Today’s students come from all backgrounds and have diverse needs. Librarians are continually evaluating those needs and evolving library services and programs to meet them. Academic libraries—especially those at community colleges—need to meet the students where they are. A crucial element of the Library of Tomorrow is creating space for all...
Mesa Community College (MCC) and the Family Involvement Center (FIC) are collaborating to offer the Parent Peer Support Social Work Scholarship Stipend Program, an innovative program bolstering support for families overcoming past adversity and crisis while building careers in the profession of social work. Specifically, FIC and the MCC Social Work programs are piloting an education, training, and career pathway for parents with opioid/substance use disorder (OUD/SUD) and lived experience having a child involved with the Department of Child Safety (DCS).
The social work stipend program was...
Mesa Community College (MCC) launched its second Z Degree program, an Associate in Arts with an emphasis in communication, beginning in the spring 2022 semester. The college’s first Z Degree, an Arizona General Education Curriculum certificate and general associate’s degree, was introduced in 2019. A Z Degree is offered completely online with zero textbook costs, saving students time and money.
“The Z Degree offers students greater flexibility, enabling them to take classes that fit their schedule. We built this program for the students who want flexibility, less distraction, and less cost...
Students are drawn to the arts through their desire to create, perform, express, and interact with other people. In March 2020, the give and take, central to creating art, was gone. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many students in the visual and performing arts to create in boxes on computer screens with spotty picture resolutions and sound distortions, depending on Internet speed, the weather, devices, and countless other factors.
Kirkwood Community College, like numerous other institutions, scrambled to figure out how to get art materials, microphones, speakers, and Internet access to students...
In the December 2020 issue of Innovation Showcase, Diane Janes and Lorraine Carter (2020a) described educational institutions’ pivot to “remote operations, quarantine, and technology-enabled strategies for working and learning” in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic (para. 1). In particular, the article described how Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) ensured the techno-resiliency of instructors. In response to the shift to fully online teaching and learning, the Centre for Academic Development and Innovation (CADI) created several initiatives, including the Teaching Online at...
This summer, dozens of middle school students in Pittsburgh, including those from underserved communities, discovered that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is fun, that it’s ok to be smart, and that education can offer a path to a brighter future. Through a partnership with Verizon and the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship, the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) hosted the Verizon Innovation Learning STEM enrichment program. The initiative is part of Citizen Verizon, the company’s responsible business plan for economic, environmental, and...
Ground broke on Dallas College’s state-of-the-art Construction Sciences Building in 2019, and the need for the new training facility could not be more urgent. Before the design for the new building began, the National Center for Construction Education and Research (2019) had already predicted a shortage of one million craft professionals in the construction industry by 2023. In Dallas, the shortage is critical. From August 2018 to August 2019 alone, the Dallas-Plano-Irving area added 12,400 construction jobs and labor shortages have become a major contributor to rapidly rising new home costs...
For decades, Jackson College (JC) has been a U.S. leader in providing higher education access and opportunity to incarcerated students. The town of Jackson, Michigan, has long been known as a “prison city,” and three large correctional facilities are located less than 15 miles from JC’s Central Campus. In 1967, the college offered its first class “inside the walls.” In 1969-1970, a pilot prison education program for the Southern Michigan Prison was launched to provide qualifying inmates an opportunity to further their education.
Jackson Community College (as it was then called) was one of 26...
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The Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) Office of Online Learning developed a Boot Camp for hybrid course design meant to help faculty with little to no experience in an online setting to rapidly design hybrid courses. KCTCS Online shared an open access version of this training for use at other institutions for the first time at the department’s “Free PD: Come for the Free, Stay for the Why” session at the 2021 Innovations Conference.
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed many faculty members into a new teaching reality. Designed to help faculty quickly acclimate to online and...
Rio Salado College is one of 67 postsecondary institutions to be included in an expansion of the U.S. Department of Education’s Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative. One-hundred and thirty colleges in 42 states and the District of Columbia will now be involved in this initiative, which provides need-based Pell grants for people incarcerated in state and federal prisons to pursue higher learning. The majority of incarcerated individuals are Pell-eligible, but they have been banned from applying for assistance since 1994 as a result of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law...
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Sacramento City College student and entrepreneur Christian Espinoza’s personal essay was published in Makerspace Impact: Implementation Strategies & Stores of Transformation: “At the time, it was all I ever wanted—to create things that were unbelievable and out of this world,” wrote Espinoza, who exemplifies thousands of students whose lives have been transformed by the CCC Maker initiative. He continued,
But as I grew up, those dreams felt more and more unachievable. I thought I could only work a standard job with a fixed pay and maybe benefits, which didn’t sound half bad. I assumed...
The Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) Honors Council is offering a new pilot program called Give Honors A Try! The program permits non-honors students who meet certain criteria to take honors courses and engage in honors-related activities. Each year, CCAC’s Honors Program provides a myriad of opportunities for scholastically minded students to develop leadership skills and to participate in a variety of conferences and community service projects that foster academic and personal enrichment. These include opportunities to hear from guest speakers, field trips, real-world...
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Somewhere in the United States today, six-year-old Shelby musters enough courage to report physical abuse to a school counselor. The counselor, who has good intentions but is not well trained in best practices for responding to child maltreatment, calls Shelby’s parents to talk about the allegations. The parents promptly deny the child’s assertions and explain away Shelby’s bruises as a fall down the stairs. No investigation is initiated and Shelby, disheartened after working up the nerve to ask for help, will never tell anyone else about this incident or those still to come. If an...
The Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) team at Sinclair Community College is dedicated to creating one of the most comprehensive and pioneering facilities in the nation for the advancement of the UAS industry. Since 2008, Sinclair has been at the forefront of UAS innovation, creating partnerships, developing leading curriculum, and investing significantly to establish a nationally prominent program dedicated to meeting workforce needs. The team members never dreamed they would be called upon to respond to one of the most devastating storms to ever to affect the Greater Miami Valley in southwest...
