California Community Colleges are not producing enough educated graduates to meet future workforce needs; to address the issue, goals and initiatives have been developed in an effort to increase completion (Foundation for California Community Colleges, 2017). In this study, the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analytic framework was used to understand…

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET) are the primary instrument used to measure teaching effectiveness by colleges and universities nationwide (Wallace, Lewis, & Allen, 2019). Many colleges and universities use the SET for personnel decisions regarding tenure, promotion, and termination. Yet, the possibility of implicit bias impacting the SET…

In Spring 2020, colleges across the nation swiftly transitioned their operations--including both classes and student support services--to remote delivery on an emergency basis in response to the crisis posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. While prior research has documented that the transition was associated with decrements in student outcomes, there…

Increased and targeted counseling and advising may be an effective way to support English learner students enrolled in programs for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). This study examines ESOL student outcomes after an embedded counseling intervention in which college counselors repeatedly visited ESOL course sections to discuss…

The nation's community colleges play a key role in addressing the need to expand and diversify the STEM technological workforce. However, significant barriers must be overcome for the programs to meet the increasing demand for skilled employees. The programs are expensive to establish and maintain; community colleges are generally underfunded;…

Postsecondary institutions have a number of decisions to make in designing Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) offerings, including the specific assessment options they make available to students, how assessments of prior learning are administered, what to charge for CPL, how to maintain high academic standards, and so on. States, systems, and private…

The "Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education" report establishes a set of five core concepts that students should build an understanding of throughout college biology programs. While student conceptual understanding is well studied in 4-year contexts, there are minimal studies in community college contexts. Community…

The Higher Education in Prison (HEP) Act, enacted on January 1, 2024, requires higher education public institutions to collect and report annually specified demographics and select outcomes and correctional facility to the ICCB for students in higher education in prison (HEP) programs. The intent of the reporting requirements is to provide…

This article illustrates how collaborative artistic creation in a world language class can offer multiple cognitive, social, cultural and professional benefits for language learners. An interdisciplinary mural project undertaken in a community college serves as a case study to examine these ideas. The class was co-taught by the authors, a teaching…

The high cost of textbooks creates barriers for students, especially those from underserved backgrounds, such as Black and Hispanic/Latinx/e students. This action research study aimed to reveal how Open Educational Resources (OER), or free, openly licensed materials, could mitigate barriers to success for Black and Hispanic/Latinx/e students. The…

Rural Community Colleges serve as community hubs for their regions and often times provide the only access to higher education for miles around. Like community colleges around the country, rural community colleges also provide access to Students of Color at greater rates than their 4-year university peers. Yet, equity-driven practices in rural…

College students make repeated course enrollment decisions, which are informed by their beliefs and preferences about course and institutional characteristics. Cross-enrollment, an enrollment pattern in which community college students simultaneously take a class at a 4-year college or university while still enrolled in classes at their community…

Digital engagement as a tool for communication offers a variety of formats for reaching and potentially attracting prospective college students. While printed materials were once the primary means for colleges to communicate with and subsequently influence student's choice, the internet has created a virtual world for digitally engaging with…

As community colleges emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic there may be a tendency to rely on technology to facilitate more online coursework. Online education has been a fixture of higher education since the mid-1990s, but there's always been a question as to whether it is effective as traditional, face-to-face coursework. This is especially…

We explored the impacts of a mathematics prerequisite on student success in Introductory Biology, focusing on students historically underserved in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Specifically, we studied Introductory Biology student outcomes 5 years before and 6 years after adding the prerequisite. Students who had not…