Leadership Development
The ability to lead with empathy, sensitivity, and insight has great potential to propel organizations, and the individuals within them, to success. Dallas College, one of the largest community colleges in Texas, serving more than 125,000 students and 6,000 employees, experienced significant change and change management as it unified seven distinct colleges into one unique institution. With this complex system transformation came the critical need for empathetic, insightful leaders to guide both student and employee communities toward achievement of the college’s mission of transforming lives...
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Community colleges are complicated environments impacted by precarious funding models, population shifts, burgeoning enrollments of students with nonacademic barriers to success, and more. An institutional climate can easily become volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). In 1985, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus’s Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, “emphasized the need for leaders to be adaptable, comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, and capable of navigating complex environments” (VUCA-WORLD, n.d., para. 3). In 1987, the U.S. military coined the term VUCA (Wright, 2023),...
According to Inc. magazine (Curtain, 2017), the number one skill that high paying employers want in employees is the ability to solve complex problems. At Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina, we are striving to help students develop problem-solving skills with the support of staff and faculty across the college through Student Applied Benchmarking (SAB). Students in this program design solutions to problems with the help of college employees. The culmination of this collaborative effort is the SAB Showcase, an event that provides students with the opportunity to...
The academic success outcomes of men of color remain deficient in community colleges compared to other student groups (Valliani, 2015). While many men begin their educational journey at community colleges, most African American and Latino men do not reach degree completion (Center for Community College Student Engagement, 2014). Men of color often report that they feel unwelcome in college environments because of negative stereotypes associated with their physical appearance and challenged by academic unpreparedness and financial stress (Gardenhire-Cooks, Collado, Martin, & Castro, 2010;...
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In 2014, Sierra College, located in Rocklin, CA, was one of the first community colleges in the nation to establish a public/private partnership with Hacker Lab, a Sacramento community-based makerspace, to enhance students’ education through maker experiences. Through a competitive process, Sierra College was awarded a $350,000 CCC Maker Grant in July 2017, renewable for a second year, from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO), Workforce and Economic Development Division, under the Doing What MATTERS for Jobs and the Economy framework. Sierra College is one of 24 CCC...
Snead State Community College began its Presidential Scholars program in 2009 as a leadership development opportunity for incoming students who demonstrated academic excellence. Including the 2015-2016 group, 62 students have received the distinction of Presidential Scholars, and the graduation rate among those completing courses at SSCC is 97 percent.
Presidential Scholars represent Snead State at a variety of events, including donor recognition and alumni functions. The students participate in two signature activities each year—completion of the BOLD team building ropes course at Berry...
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