Community colleges face serious challenges arising from decreased budgets, greater pressures on faculty, and an increasingly heterogeneous student population. To cope with these challenges community colleges need to develop innovative instructional strategies to ensure the fulfillment of their missions. Five conditions may be identified under which teaching innovation can best occur: an administrative structure set up specifically to facilitate change; a reward system established for faculty who explore educational alternatives; the allocation of appropriate resources to make change possible; faculty and administrative agreement on the definition of problems and the types of instructional innovations which might address them; and agreement that the problems are difficult, that failures will occur, but that new techniques will be tried. Using this framework, LaGuardia Community College has implemented two innovative programs. The first project sought a systematic way to integrate what was taught in the classroom with student experiences in 12-week cooperative education internships. Now recognized as a national model for cooperative education, this program operates through classroom instruction, application of knowledge on internship sites, and ongoing reinforcement through seminars. The second project resulted in a faculty development program which taught instructors to reinforce basic skills while providing subject area instruction. (HB)