Community Colleges As Incubators Of Innovation

While community colleges have traditionally focused on providing students with opportunities to gain credentials for employment, the increasingly important question is: Are they preparing students for the looming dynamic, disruptive, and entrepreneurial environments ahead? This book addresses the urgent need for community colleges to prioritize entrepreneurship education both to remain relevant in a changing economy and to give graduate students the flexible and interdisciplinary mindsets needed for the future of society. It argues that entrepreneurial education should be offered broadly to a wide range of students, and across all disciplines; defines the key constructs for achieving this objective; and describes how to create entrepreneurial learning environments.The expert contributors, with the support of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE), start from the premise that community colleges are uniquely positioned to lead entrepreneurial initiatives through both internally-generated curriculum design and through collaboration with the local entrepreneurial community to build bridges between the classroom to the community which in turn can offer models of implementation and constitute a network or support system for students. Community colleges can become incubators of innovation, a magnet for talent, and provide the impetus for development strategies that their communities have not begun to realize. As the chapters make clear, developing an entrepreneurial program itself requires an entrepreneurial mindset that transcends any lack of resources, requiring a spirit of imagination and resourcefulness. This book takes the reader on a journey through the steps needed to build a meaningful, relevant, and sustainable entrepreneurship program, covering program development, curriculum design, appropriate pedagogical approaches, and community engagement.

Arguably, the nation’s community colleges have experienced more change in the last several years than they have over the prior 115 years of their existence. Rapid changes in technology, external pressures for accountability and student completion, aggressive competition from other higher education institutions (i.e., public, for-profit, and private), changes in enrollment demographics, as well as new economic, market, and operational models stand to completely disrupt this relatively young enterprise. Unrelenting Change provides useful, practical examples for community college leaders as they seek to thoughtfully and strategically align their organization for the new dynamic in higher education. Furthermore, Unrelenting Change offers insights into the change process, including institutional assessment and readiness, consideration of cultural implications, strategic intentions toward innovation, as well as risk, failure, and success. Rather than perceiving change and disruptive innovation as merely happenstance, or luck, the author provides discernment into the topic so as to give community college leaders solid, guidance, if not improved odds, in undertaking this important, competitive edge for the future of their intuitions, and by extension, their students.

Leveraging existing community college assets to rebuild a more equitable economy

America’s community colleges are experiencing the most creative and substantive period of transformation in their 118-year history. There has never been so much research, so much support from foundations, and so much commitment from national leaders to reimagine community colleges for today and for the future. 13 Ideas that Are Transforming the Community College World, edited by Terry U. O’Banion, is the seminal work that captures the major ideas faced by community college leaders in this period of transformation. The book includes 23 authors representing 12 national organizations, perhaps the most significant and substantive list of individuals ever to participate in an edited book on the community college. Each author is a nationally-recognized authority on his or her chapter, and all have played major roles as leaders of national organizations.

Enhancing Performance: A Best Practices Guide for Innovations in Community Colleges is a collection of essays from community college leaders across the country addressing challenges facing today’s community colleges and providing practical, successful solutions their institutions have implemented. Some of the essays address foundational issues, including the role of innovation, strategic enrollment management, and campus safety strategies on the future of community colleges. In the essays, leaders suggest ways campuses can create opportunities for intentional student-faculty connections, provide revitalized advising services, and support the needs of marginalized student populations. The essays also address the role of community colleges in promoting civic engagement, responding to community crises, and addressing critical need. Each essay challenges us to delve deeper into the issues and find workable solutions. The essay authors are community college leaders who are alumni, faculty, or advisory board members in the doctoral program in Community College Leadership (DCCL Program) at Ferris State University (Michigan).

In this book, Carrie B. Kisker illustrates how community colleges can utilize design thinking to identify and evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities, and experiment with the internal changes necessary to optimize outcomes for stakeholders. Kisker outlines a process whereby college leaders can empower faculty and staff to think creatively about how to reduce their institution's dependence on state allocations in ways that are not only consistent with the college's mission and values, but also provide the greatest likelihood for institutional and student success. The book presents evidence drawn from case studies at four community colleges along with in-depth qualitative interviews with leaders, faculty, and staff who have been involved in their institution's entrepreneurial efforts. The featured colleges--Maricopa County Community Colleges (AZ), Tarrant County College (TX), North Iowa Community College, and Valencia College (FL)--all have long histories of engaging in entrepreneurial initiatives. By telling the stories of several influential community college leaders' experiences with entrepreneurialism--using design thinking as a framework for understanding their successes and failures--Kisker provides a roadmap for colleges to move beyond their historical pattern of incremental responses to external pressures, and instead begin to innovate in a creative, mission-oriented approach.

A renaissance of innovation is taking place in America's community colleges. This book documents and analyzes stimulating changes that have marked the 1980s and points the way to new practices and structures that will continue to invigorate the community colleges during the 1990s. The 13 chapters offer a rich selection of possibilities for the future of the community college. Here are tested ideas and programs that make the community college such an important force in our changing society--the practices that serve students more fully, support faculty more effectively, and reach the community more extensively.

Develop an entrepreneurial culture with the best practices discussed inside this resource. Declining public resources, coupled with the demand that we do more with less, make it more of an imperative that entrepreneurism, flexibility, and adaptability thrive in the community college environment. Seeing how other community colleges have brought entrepreneurship and creativity to life in their programs and services will inspire your own ideas for increasing revenue and reducing costs. You will also discover how strong leaders can become collaborators, facilitators, consensus makers, and incentive providers.

Re-visioning Community Colleges has the foresight into the shape that community colleges will likely take in the future. Their predictions are based on an analysis of the growth and innovation trajectory in community colleges as they respond to the dramatic changes in the field.