Marilyn J. Amey

PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNITY COLLEGE LEADERSHIP: TWENTY YEARS IN THE MAKING

Findings from a national study of community college administrative careers, examining issues of position, gender, and race / ethnicity are reported. Career path data also are compared with an earlier national study, showing that paths to the presidency have changed since 1985. Implications for recruitment into senior positions and leadership diversity are discussed.

Re-Visioning Leadership in Community Colleges

The authors apply discourse analysis to the images of leadership found in the literature about community and junior colleges, in the context of organizational life cycle theory. They found: (1) the discourse of community college organizational development reinforces the ideology of a specific small group of male writers and (2) the effect of such writing systematically promotes an image of leaders as “commanders,” excluding those who do not fit that image. This favored image, they conclude, is inappropriate for community colleges at the renewal stage of organizational development.

Career Stages of Community College Faculty: A Qualitative Analysis of Their Career Paths, Roles, and Development

Twenty-two faculty at a Midwestern community college were interviewed to elicit their perceptions of their career paths, their early-stage career roles, and the role played by faculty development in their early careers. Based on the interview data, the majority did not foresee their career path and chose the community college because of its emphasis on teaching. Participants indicated that their career roles changed over time from an emphasis totally on teaching to one that included supplemental activities and that research was encouraged in their work. Many perceived faculty development activities as having a significant impact on their careers. The authors make recommendations for faculty recruitment, retention, and development.

Leadership as Learning: Conceptualizing the Process

ABSTRACT Community College leaders face new and diverse challenges, often requiring different orientations to leadership than were effective previously. Yet, focusing on leadership as a series of career stages through which particular skills and techniques are learned often leaves leaders without the capacity to do the adaptive work required of their changing organizations. Conceptualizing leadership as an on-going process of learning relinquishes the need for a specific career orientation, and focuses on developing and sharing leadership throughout the college. Taking this approach uncovers mental models that affect how administrators see the world and, therefore, act within any environment. It shifts the goal of leadership preparation to understanding the concepts (and processes) of transforming organizational reality, challenging organizational status quo, and of deep change. It also ties leadership more directly to creating learning environments for leaders and others, which is important for community colleges interested in fulfilling the role of learning colleges. A model presenting leadership as learning concepts is presented, showing changes over time reflecting cognitive development of leaders and followers.

Crossing Boundaries Creating Community College Partnerships to Promote Educational Transitions

Community college partnerships with institutions in other educational sectors (including schools and universities) are important and strategic ways of meeting the educational needs of college constituents and maximizing resources to achieve local and state economic development goals. Understanding what is required for effective partnerships is important in determining when and how to engage in these collaborative, but sometimes costly, arrangements. This article presents a model of partnership development that emphasizes the role of social and organizational capital in the formation of partnership capital that contributes to the long-term success of collaborative efforts.

Developmental Course Work and Early Placement: Success Strategies for Underprepared Community College Students.

The purpose of this study was to determine if selected input and environmental variables had an effect on the successful outcome of degree-seeking, underprepared students entering a comprehensive, public, 2‐year community college, ASSET test scores were used to identify underprepared students and placement in developmental English, math, and reading course work. Successful underprepared students differed significantly from unsuccessful underprepared students on the measured input, environmental, and output variables. Results of the study showed that completion of a developmental reading and English course was a significant variable in separating the 2 groups of underprepared students. In addition, those who completed developmental course work early in their college career fared better academically than those who did not. Findings support recommendations of mandatory placement and successful completion of developmental reading and English courses prior to or concurrent with enrollment in other college cour...

Systemic reform in undergraduate engineering education: the role of collective responsibility

Traditionally, members of a department faculty value their autonomy. But their home department has a set of collective responsibilities involving other departments in the college, the university, and external constituent groups. Consider the following scenario. In a certain department faculty are judged individually to be very well qualified. Each persons academic and other scholarly achievements can clearly be documented as meritorious. However, the collective activities and achievements of these individuals fall measurably short of their departments collective responsibilities. More specifically, an individual might bring highly innovative concepts into an existing engineering course that are highly valued by external funding agencies, by peer institutions, and by the employers of the departments graduates. Yet these innovations are lost once this person is no longer the course instructor. This paper examines the relationships among faculty autonomy, the collective responsibility of the department faculty, and systemic reform in undergraduate engineering education.

Book Review: Unrelenting change, innovation, and risk: Forging the next generation of community colleges by Phelan, D. J.

Anyone in academe can attest to the saying that change is constant. For all sectors within higher education, this reality often poses significant leadership challenges, even for community colleges that have been perceived to be the greatest agents of change in postsecondary education. The level and direction of change confronting community colleges might rival any experienced in their past, leaving many scrambling to stay ahead of the curve, to energize staff and faculty for what lies ahead, and to find ways to effectively communicate what is happening to constituents within and outside the institution. At a time when external patrons frequently question the economic value of postsecondary education, there is much to consider in Daniel Phelans commentary on the issues, challenges, and opportunities leaders face as they position the next generation of community colleges.Written to appeal to current and future leaders and board of trustee members more than to researchers, Phelan weaves together his extensive leadership experience in different college settings with contemporary leadership and management literature to explore a set of key questions for todays community colleges. What makes the text so compelling is the way that Phelan digs deeply into the issues and their consequences, and how he constantly examines these through the lenses of change, innovation, and risk. Rather than pose oppositional choices for leaders and their colleges, Phelan frames his discussion as a continuum of alternatives which may affect larger institutional goals. Again, this seems very straightforward for writing a leadership guide, but as Phelan indicates throughout the text, the complexity and murkiness of what leaders confront is often not straightforward or at least not something they can act upon in isolation.Phelan uses the extant literature and several personal experiences to illustrate the complexities and what is required of leaders (and others in the college) to work through them. For example, he shares a multi-year experience of the decision to build campus residence halls to show the preparation, seed planting, data gathering, negotiation, and space for reflection required to get buy-in to a proposal he at first thought was straightforward. This and many other examples shared in the book help show that if the goal is real change and innovation, then a good idea is only the start. Leaders must draw upon skills that reflect multi-framing, effective listening, the right balance of challenging ideas and providing support for anxiety produced by new ways of thinking, building and retaining trust when taking risks, and helping others find their roles and authority as disruptive innovations emerge. Phelan does not often refer to second order and deep change found in the organizational change literature nor does he focus only on first-order changes that do not challenge the mission, role, and vision of the college. He clearly intends, rather, to raise the readers consciousness to the realities that lie ahead for community colleges as the world changes around them.After laying out his basic arguments and context, Phelan uses the metaphor of sailing--Innovation and Change Strategy Archetype for Innovation and Leading (SAIL) (p. 53)--to set-up the latter chapters of the book which address four issues of innovation and change (or battens, in nautical terms) that include leadership and institutional preparation, assessment, planning, execution, and evaluation. When applied effectively, Phelan argues these approaches increase the likelihood of improved change outcomes. …

Center for the Study of Advanced Learning Systems: Engaging Differently with Postsecondary Education.

Abstract The long term issues involving technological change in post secondary education are the focus for ALS, the Center for the Study of Advanced Learning Systems located at Michigan State University. Dealing with five primary themes of leadership, human capacity, diversity, technologies and globalization, ALS is searching for new teaching and learning models that make the most of promises made by new technology in higher education.