Many college students experience mental and behavioral health challenges that can impede them from achieving their education and career attainment goals, especially if they lack access to appropriate care and resources. Responses to the HMS survey highlight a critical need for readily accessible mental health services at community colleges. While…

This chapter offers strategies for creating support resources for students who face nonacademic barriers such as housing insecurity, food insecurity, lack of transportation and dependable childcare, and the need for mental health care and illness. These strategies should be viewed as ideas to help retain students and create lasting partnerships…

With state funding and student enrollment on the decline, community colleges are looking for creative ways to grow revenue. To meet this challenge, community colleges are becoming more entrepreneurial in nature. Successful colleges understand their strengths, recognize the needs of their community and develop programs that marry these for…

Service learning is one of the most effective teaching methods for engaging and retaining community college students, but it comes with its challenges. For many students, the added requirements of a service learning experience can become one more responsibility in an already too-long list. In addition to being responsible for children, holding…

This chapter explores elements that should be included in a service learning style internship program in urban community colleges. It provides theoretical background and descriptions of best practices for forming community partnerships, collaboratively developing learning outcomes, and aligning program design with institutional general education…

This article provides the reader with information regarding forming a community emergency response team (CERT) at a community college. College public safety departments are efficient entities in ordinary times. However, recent events at community colleges across the country have shown that there have been situations where their capabilities have…

When the deepwater horizon offshore oil drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, 11 crewmen were killed; the accident led to the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Forty workers on the rig managed to escape the catastrophe, thanks largely to a safety-training program they had taken at community colleges in the Louisiana Community…

Introduces the AmeriCorps/Campus Corps program which is designed to integrate service learning into Maryland community colleges. Uses a model that can be replicated on a local level with all of the outside classroom legwork associated with service learning provided by the members of AmeriCorps. Describes the struggles regarding faculty recruitment…

This is the final progress report for the American Association of Community College's (AACC's) Learn and Serve America Program. It covers the time period between September 1, 1994 and August 31, 1997. The goal of the program is to develop an infrastructure for service learning at America's community colleges. Outcomes show that all 10 colleges…

This digest discusses service learning programs on community college campuses. Service learning integrates community service with academic instruction as it focuses on critical, reflective thinking and civic responsibility. Projects can range from brief, one-time-only experiences to a student commitment of 15 or more hours during a semester.…

This report outlines the development and implementation of a service-learning program at the Community College of Vermont (CCV). The author describes some of CCV's unique characteristics, all of which heightened the challenge of implementing a service-learning program: (1) CCV has no campus-there are 12 sites of the college scattered throughout…

Explores the Community Resource Center (CRC), a model for community college leadership in community development. Describes the community projects and activities of six community colleges which have established CRCs. Emphasizes that the CRC's main purposes are to facilitate citizen involvement in community decision making and to improve community…

Describes the author's psychology class, in which she required students to do service work with a resident in a nursing home. Reports that students met for a minimum of eight hours with the resident and wrote both a history of the person and a reflection on the project. States that half of the students decided to continue volunteering after the…

The document discusses a project that sought to create sustainable service learning programs in community colleges. In 1997, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) (District of Columbia) began a 3-year grant project to increase the number, quality, and sustainability of service learning programs in community colleges nationwide.…

This study examines how 11 community colleges present and promote their service learning courses via the Internet. Of particular interest to this study are the following features of online presentations: (1) how detailed and developed the Web site is and the extent of the information provided; (2) whether the Web site provides student and faculty…