School-community partnerships enhance school districts' capacity to provide effective educational services to their students. In under-resourced schools - such as small-to-mid-sized urban school districts - these partnerships play a crucial role, as resource limitations often inhibit the availability of services traditionally provided by public…

Over the past fifty years, school districts have consolidated in an effort to achieve economies of scale. While the determinants and effects of district mergers on operations have been studied (Gordon and Knight 2006; Duncombe and Yinger 2007; Jones et al 2008), the impact on communities has not. In small towns, schools not only educate, but also…

Despite the growing body of literature investigating education abroad programs, there remains very limited empirical research examining the perspectives of local community members who interact with visiting students. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to explore the varying perspectives of residents within a community in Costa Rica that…

University students often share that studying abroad was a life-changing experience. We explored how one short-term, faculty-led study abroad, Tanzania Study Abroad Program (TSAP), contributed to the participants' lives after their experience. Through a web-based survey, we collected responses from 82 former TSAP participants. We used corpus and…

Universities seek tools that provide a clear vision and expectations for community engagement at the institutional level. This study focused on the development of the Community Engagement Institutional Assessment (CEIA) rubric to evaluate four key criteria and its application in a pilot study of course-based community engagement. The results…

The Community of Practice framework has been used theoretically and empirically to describe the diverse ways people learn from one another through social interaction in a variety of specific contexts. To date, most research of this genre has favored investigating the community and domain constructs of the theory over the authentic practice…

The business/management problem addressed in this study is that as a result of the lacking organizational approach to service, the community college student experience in pre-learning service are inconsistent, contributing to the decade-long enrollment decline, resulting in fiscal challenges. The purpose of this qualitative systematic review is…

The reification of community colleges as symbolic gateways for access to higher education for historically underrepresented groups belies fundamental structural inequities these ostensibly democratic institutions exhibit, most notably the alarming overrepresentation of White faculty relative to Students of Color. Grounded in this structural…

Texas consistently has one of the highest high school graduation percentages across the nation yet falls below the national average for adults passing high school equivalency tests (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017). In 2019, there were 300,401 adults in Tarrant County eligible for a high school credential. This opportunity for high school equivalency…

This quantitative research study sought to determine the impact social media advertising had on 15 community college courses. The enrollment data was collected from these 15 courses after they had been advertised using social media, and it was compared to the enrollment data for these same courses when they were offered in 2020. The social media…

Schools are frequently seen as the hubs of the community, providing resources and a gathering place for members of the community. The process of surveying the community in order to identify unique needs within the community, and then intentionally forging partnerships capable of ameliorating the specific needs, are strategies used by community…

Increasing equity in higher education has been embedded in community colleges' mission since their founding, yet, for nearly as long, these institutions have faced criticism and attendant reform efforts for a failure to deliver on this promise. Particularly in recent years, such critiques often suggest that equity is best understood by measuring…

"My Progress is Our Progress" is a qualitative study that examines how first-generation Latinx students navigate their experiences at three North Carolina community colleges. The Latinx population has significantly increased in North Carolina but that has not translated into an increase in Latinx student enrollment in higher education.…

A recent independent evaluation by WestEd of Learning Forward's What Matters Now Network looked at the ways in which a structured, facilitated network provided support for state-level coalitions working with districts, schools, and educators to improve instruction and make progress toward achieving content standards. The network was facilitated by…

Little research has examined the full-range of participation among adults on the autism spectrum. The current study addresses this knowledge gap by comparing the frequency, importance, breadth, and sufficiency of participation between autistic adults and adults in the general population. Autistic adults participated less, had fewer areas that were…