Minding the Obligation Gap in Community Colleges and Beyond: Theory and Practice in Achieving Educational Equity

It is difficult to find justice-centered books geared specifically for community college practitioners interested in achieving campus wide educational equity. It is even more difficult to find a book in this vein written, exclusively, by community college practitioners. Minding the Obligation Gap in Community Colleges and Beyond is just that: a concerted effort by a cross-representational group of community college practitioners working to catalyze conversations and eventually practices that attend to the most pressing equity gaps in and on our campuses. By illuminating the constitutive parts of the ever-increasing obligation gap, this book offers both theory and practice in reforming community colleges so that they function as disruptive technologies. It is our position that equity-centered community colleges hold the potential to call out, impede, and even disrupt institutionalized polices, pedagogies, and practices that negatively impact poor, ethno-racially minoritized students of color. If you and your college is interested in striving for educational equity campus-wide please join us in this ongoing conversation on how to work for equity for all of the students that we serve.

Jeremiah J. Sims, inaugural Director of Equity for the College of San Mateo (California), is an alumnus of the University of California, Berkeley where he earned a B.A. in rhetoric, with honors, as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. in education. Jeremiah’s work, chronicled in his first book, Revolutionary STEM Education: Critical-Reality Pedagogy and Social Justice in STEM for Black Males (Lang, 2018), details his experiences as an educator working toward a revolutionary, paradigm shift in the STEM education of and for Black boys.

Jennifer Taylor-Mendoza is Vice President of Instruction at Skyline College (California), with over twenty years of higher education experience. Dr. Taylor-Mendoza is continually inspired by the brilliance, power, and endless potential of community college students. Her research focuses on the intrinsic resiliency of students of color and institutional approaches to addressing systemic, structural inequities. She holds a B.A. in psychology from California State University, Los Angeles, an M.S. in counseling from California State University, Northridge, and a Ph.D. in education from Claremont Graduate University.

Lasana O. Hotep, inaugural Dean of Student Equity and Support Programs and founding Executive Director of the Equity Institute at Skyline College (California), earned his B.A. in speech communications and history at Texas State University, San Marcos and his M.A. in history from Arizona State University. For over 15 years, he has worked at large research universities, two-year colleges, and as a consultant to educational and corporate entities in addressing issues of race, gender, and social justice and their impact on organizational success.

Jeramy Wallace, Associate Professor of English at the College of San Mateo in San Mateo, California, received his M.A. in English from Notre Dame de Namur University and his postsecondary teaching credentials from San Francisco State University. He has written and presented widely on race, educational equity, and social justice in community colleges.

Tabitha Conaway, Basic Skills Coordinator at the College of San Mateo, holds a B.A. in African American studies from University of California, Los Angeles, an M.A. in education from National University, an M.A. in history from California State University, Sacramento, and a doctorate in education from San Francisco State University. Her research interests include juvenile hall-to-college pipelines for previously incarcerated youth, counter-narratives, and creating educational equity concerns for historically underserved and underrepresented students in higher education.