Creating Community On College Campuses

Creating Community on College Campuses addresses the most critical and difficult issues facing higher education in the 1990s: improving the quality of teaching and learning, raising academic standards, protecting freedom of expression, and simultaneously enhancing community of the whole and community of the parts. This book offers an understanding of community as a complex concept, one that incorporates the values of a democratic society and encourages learning and participation by all citizens of the campus, and discusses topics such as race and ethnicity, the climate for women, harassment and free speech, alcohol, crime, Greek life, and interaction among faculty and students. The authors conclude with concrete recommendations to support the implementation of pluralistic learning communities on our nation's campuses.

The Advances in Service-Learning Research book series was established to initiate the publication of a set of comprehensive research volumes that would present and discuss a wide range of issues in this broad field called service-learning. Service-learning is a multifaceted pedagogy that crosses all levels of schooling, has potential relevance to all academic and professional disciplines, is connected to a range of dynamic social issues, and operates within a broad range of community contexts. In terms of research, there is much terrain to cover before a full understanding of service-learning can be achieved. This volume, the first in the annual book series, explores various themes, issues, and answers that bring us one step closer to understanding the essence of service-learning. The chapters of this volume focus on a broad range of topics that address a variety of research issues on service-learning in K-12 education, teacher education, and higher education. Through a wide-scoped research lens, the volume explores definitional foundations of service-learning, theoretical issues regarding service-learning, the impacts of service-learning, and methodological approaches to studying service-learning. Collectively, the chapters of the book provide varying and, at times, opposing perspectives on some of the critical issues regarding service-learning research and practice.

In Putting Students First, the authors argue that colleges can and should invest in holistic student development by recognizing and building on the students’ search for purpose in life, intellectually, spiritually, and morally. Based on a study conducted at ten religiously-affiliated schools, the book urges all colleges to rethink their approach to teaching and advising the increasingly diverse students of today; their critical mission should be to prepare students to become ethically responsible and active contributors to society, as well as critical thinkers and skilled professionals. Putting Students First offers perspectives and recommendations in areas of holistic student development such as Understanding millennial college students The role of faculty in defining culture The design and implementation of curriculum The impact of cocurricular involvement Fostering relationships with on-campus and off-campus communities By organizing the campus environment into “4Cs”—culture, curriculum, cocurriculum, and community—the authors create a conceptual framework for faculty, student affairs staff, and administrators to discuss, plan, and create college environments that effectively support the learning and development of students. Each chapter includes an introduction, evidence and analysis, a summary, and questions to help readers consider how to develop students holistically on their own campuses.

Understand the design factors of campus environmental theorythat impact student success and create a campus of consequence Designing for Learning is a comprehensive introduction tocampus environmental theory and practice, summarizing the influenceof collegiate environments on learning and providing practicalstrategies for facilitating student success through intentionaldesign. This second edition offers new coverage of universaldesign, learning communities, multicultural environments, onlineenvironments, social networking, and safety, and challengeseducators to evaluate the potential for change on their owncampuses. You'll learn which factors make a living-learningcommunity effective, and how to implement these factors in therenovation of campus facilities. An updated selection of vignettes,case scenarios, and institutional examples help you apply theory topractice, and end-of-chapter reflection questions allow you to testyour understanding and probe deeper into the material and how itapplies to your environment. Campus design is no longer just about grassy quads andivy-covered walls—the past decade has seen a surge in newdesigns that facilitate learning and nurture student development.This book introduces you to the many design factors that impactstudent success, and helps you develop a solid strategy forimplementing the changes that can make the biggest difference toyour campus. Learn how environments shape and influence studentbehavior Evaluate your campus and consider the potential for change Make your spaces more welcoming, inclusive, and functional Organize the design process from research to policyimplementation Colleges and universities are institutions of purpose and place,and the physical design of the facilities must be undertaken withattention to the ways in which the space's dimensions and featuresimpact the behavior and outlook of everyone from students tofaculty to staff. Designing for Learning gives you a greaterunderstanding of modern campus design, and the practicalapplication that brings theory to life.

Violence, hate crimes, theft, drug possession, sexual harassment, concealed weapons, underage drinking, rape--along with many other major and minor offenses--plague all campuses. College and university staff, administrators and policy makers are under increasing parental and legislative pressure to demonstrate they have adopted measures to prevent crime and keep students safe. This book serves as a sourcebook to enhance and evaluate safety programs, generate new solutions and interventions, comply with new legislation, and present practical steps and guidelines to establish best practices. This book pays particular attention to the factors that may give rise to crime. It considers high-risk drinking and examines the intersection between hate crimes and violence. It devotes chapters to discrimination in all its forms--whether against international students, students of color, or on the basis of ethnicity or sexual orientation. It reviews the range of issues relating to harassment and violence against women; and engages with hazing and the presence of guns on campus. The authors pay attention to the different circumstances that may apply in specific institutional types, such as community colleges and minority-serving institutions. The book offers perspectives from administrators, campus security, student affairs personnel, faculty and policy makers; as well as a review of legal considerations. The purpose is to provide readers with the context and tools to devise a comprehensive safety plan. For administrators operating with few formal support systems, advice is given on how to co-opt individuals and resources from around the campus to assist in the common goal of maintaining a safe and welcoming campus.

In the updated edition of this important volume, the editors and chapter contributors explore how diverse populations of students experience college differently and encounter group-specific barriers to success. Informed by relevant theories, each chapter focuses on engaging a different student population, including low-income students, Students of Color, international students, students with disabilities, religious minority students, student-athletes, part-time students, adult learners, military-connected students, graduate students, and others. New in this third edition is the inclusion of chapters on Indigenous students, student activists, transracial Asian American adoptee students, justice-involved students, student-parents, first-generation students, and undocumented students. The forward-thinking, practical, anti-deficit-oriented strategies offered throughout the book are based on research and the collected professional wisdom of experienced educators and scholars at a range of postsecondary institutions. Current and future faculty members, higher education administrators, and student affairs educators will undoubtedly find this book complete with fresh ideas to reverse troubling engagement trends among various college student populations.

In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.

Details how a college campus can reinforce the three fundamental components of the institution: teaching and learning, creating community, and developing responsible citizens of society and the world.

To improve community college success, we need to consider the lived realities of students. Our nation's community colleges are facing a completion crisis. The college-going experience of too many students is interrupted, lengthening their time to completing a degree—or worse, causing many to drop out altogether. In The Costs of Completion, Robin G. Isserles contextualizes this crisis by placing blame on the neoliberal policies that have shaped public community colleges over the past thirty years. The disinvestment of state funding, she explains, has created austerity conditions, leading to an overreliance on contingent labor, excessive investments in advisement technologies, and a push to performance outcomes like retention and graduation rates for measuring student and institutional success. The prevailing theory at the root of the community college completion crisis—academic momentum—suggests that students need to build momentum in their first year by becoming academically integrated, thereby increasing their chances of graduating in a timely fashion. A host of what Isserles terms "innovative disruptions" have been implemented as a way to improve on community college completion, but because disruptions are primarily driven by degree attainment, Isserles argues that they place learning and developing as afterthoughts while ignoring the complex lives that define so many community college students. Drawing on more than twenty years of teaching, advising, and researching largely first-generation community college students as well as an analysis of five years of student enrollment patterns, college experiences, and life narratives, Isserles takes pains to center students and their experiences. She proposes initiatives created in accordance with a care ethic, which strive to not only get students through college—quantifying credit accumulation and the like—but also enable our most precarious students to flourish in a college environment. Ultimately, The Costs of Completion offers a deeper, more complex understanding of who community college students are, why and how they enroll, and what higher education institutions can do to better support them.