Working with Students in Community Colleges: Contemporary Strategies for Bridging Theory, Research, and Practice

Co-published with 
This timely volume addresses the urgent need for new strategies and better ways to serve community colleges’ present and future students at a time of rapid diversification, not just racially and ethnically, but including such groups as the undocumented, international students, older adult learners and veterans, all of whom come with varied levels of academic and technical skills

The contributing researchers, higher education faculty, college presidents, and community college administrators provide thorough understanding of student groups who have received scant attention in the higher education literature. They address the often unconscious barriers to access our institutions have erected and describe emerging strategies, frameworks, and pilot projects that can ease students’ transition into college and through the maze of the college experience to completion.

They offer advice on organizational culture, on defining institutional outcomes, on aligning shifting demographics with the multiple missions of the community college, on strengthening the collaboration of student and academic affairs to leverage their respective roles and resources, and on engaging with the opportunities afforded by technology.

Divided into three parts – understanding today’s community college campuses; supporting today’s community college learners; and specialized populations and communities – this book offers a vision and solutions that should inform the work of faculty, administrators, presidents, and board members.

Lisa S. Kelsay is the Assistant Dean of Liberal Arts/Director of Academic Arts at Moraine Valley Community College (IL). In addition, she is also a part-time instructor in education at Moraine Valley Community College and an adjunct professor in the Graduate School at Kaplan University. She holds a Ph.D. in higher education from Loyola University Chicago (IL), an M.A. in student personnel administration in higher education from Ball State University (IN), and a B.S. in education from the University of Akron (OH). Through the past 15+ years, Dr. Kelsay has worked in both student and academic affairs, private and public, and at two-year and four-year colleges. Her research has been published in The Journal of College Admission. She served as the 2009-2012 Chair of the ACPA Commission for Student Development in the Two-Year College.

Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher is an affiliate of the Office of Community College Leadership and Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Education Policy Organization Leadership (EPOL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Formerly she served as Professor and Coordinator of the Community College Leadership Program in the Department of Leadership and Counseling at Eastern Michigan University. She held prior appointments at West Virginia University, ACT Inc., and Mathematica Policy Research (MPR), Inc. She holds a B.S. in Psychology and M.S. in General Experimental Psychology from Western Illinois University. She earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration with a specialization in Community College Leadership and Evaluation from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Zamani-Gallaher’s teaching, research, and consulting activities largely include psychosocial adjustment and transition of marginalized collegians, transfer, access policies, and women in leadership. Her work includes coauthoring The Case for Affirmative Action on Campus: Concepts of Equity, Considerations for Practice (Sterling, VA: Stylus), coediting African American Females: Addressing Challenges and Nurturing the Future (Michigan State University Press) and The State of the African American Male: A Courageous Conversation (Michigan State University Press). She is coeditor of the ASHE Reader on Organization & Governance in Higher Education, 6th edition and ASHE Reader on Community Colleges, 4th edition (Pearson Publications). Zamani-Gallaher previously served as president of the Council for the Study of Community Colleges, an affiliate of the American Association of Community Colleges and on the ACPA Commission for Student Development in Two-year Institutions.