Walden Addresses the Community College Leadership Crisis

New program is preparing the next generation to lead.

 

May 2008

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With 109 two-year colleges scattered throughout 72 community college districts, California boasts the largest number of community colleges of any state in the country. It also holds claim to a critical shortage of community college leaders at a time of unprecedented demand for higher education in the state.

 

In summer 2007, nearly half of California community colleges were without presidents. By that fall, 28 community colleges began the semester with a new president, while 22 colleges continue to fill their presidential vacancies. The leadership crisis in California is just one example of the looming leadership challenge facing the nation’s community college system.

 

Enter Walden University. Through its doctoral program in Community College Leadership, Walden is giving community college administrators and senior faculty nationwide the knowledge, insight, and perspective needed to lead community colleges and their students into the future. Created by a panel of eight nationally recognized community college leaders, the Community College Leadership program offers a curriculum and a distance-learning model that enable students to continue to manage their responsibilities in full-time administrative or teaching positions while pursuing their degrees.

 

More than 130 students from more than 75 community and technical colleges around the nation are currently enrolled in the program. The faculty includes some 20 community college leaders and experts who serve as mentors for individual doctoral students. “Other programs are lucky if one person on staff has a community college background,” notes Terry O’Banion, director of Walden’s Community College Leadership program and former president of the League for Innovation in the Community College.

 

Dr. Terry O'Banion

Walden’s Community College Leadership students focus on how individuals, particularly adults, learn most effectively; the best tools and strategies to promote learning; and how educational systems and policies can better promote the academic mission of the community college. Five Knowledge Area Modules (KAMs) allow students to explore professional or academic topics that relate to their own interests.

 

“This approach is totally different from any kind of model; it is what makes the program different, substantive and creative,” says John Cooper, who brings more than 25 years of experience in executive and administrative positions in higher education to his role as a faculty mentor. Cooper sees the program’s online and interactive format as one of its biggest assets as Walden doctoral students experience new learning strategies that will be particularly appealing and applicable to community college students.

 

As a mentor, Cooper says, “I never tell a student what to research or write, but how their work can be woven together in a better way. Ultimately, a big part of my role is to keep students moving forward. As independent learners, it can be challenging to stay on track with family and community demands.”

 

Still, Cooper believes the program will tap hidden potential in many current community college faculty and staff members. “One of the most important elements of the program is to develop leaders who have long-term vision and have the practical sense to implement that vision.”

 

Within 10 years, O’Banion attests, Walden will be graduating the largest number of leaders annually of any community college leadership program in the country and those graduates will have a major presence in the community college world. Already, the program’s first five graduates are moving up the administrative ladder.

 

The Evolving Role of Community Colleges
A stronger leadership presence cannot come soon enough as the community college role expands and the leadership pipeline continues to shrink. “Community colleges have been around for more than a century. In the beginning, they struggled for identity and primarily served as vehicles to help people transfer to four-year universities. Now they are comprehensive institutions with multiple missions and growing constituencies,” says O’Banion.

 

He describes community colleges as the last institutions in higher education “that are really serious about remedial and developmental education,” particularly for recent high school graduates who are not prepared for college. “Community colleges are repair stations for high schools, and their remedial programs are teaching basic skills for those who have not performed well and are still not at the college level,” he says. At the same time, community colleges are the premier purveyors of workforce training in the country—through associate degrees, certificate programs, and creative partnerships with business.

 

Dr. Dorsey Kendrick

Dorsey Kendrick, who earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration at Walden in 1994 and serves as the current president of Gateway Community College in New Haven, Conn., is all too familiar with the critical role community colleges play in educating the workforce of the future. “Community colleges take people wherever they are and put them on a path to learning for a lifetime,” Kendrick says.

 

She acknowledges the enormity of the community college leadership crisis at all levels from vice presidents to deans and presidents. “We have not done a good job of mentoring and finding staff that have fires in their bellies,” she admits, pointing particularly to the lack of women and minorities in the leadership pipeline.

 

“Higher education is now accessed by children of color, international students, and students with language barriers. Leadership must reflect that changing demography,” she says.

 

Kendrick believes many promising Community College Leadership program candidates may not see leadership positions as viable options for themselves. “We need to role model and help them see these jobs as real possibilities,” she says.

 

O’Banion agrees: “Sometimes it is just a matter of suggesting more opportunities than individuals realized. You have to ask the question, ‘Have you thought about a presidency or a vice presidency and how that position can allow you to have greater impact?’”

 

That is exactly what Walden’s Community College Leadership program hopes to do for its students. “The Community College Leadership program can raise awareness of community colleges and help people understand what they mean to the economy at the local, state, and regional level,” says Kendrick. She has redefined the role of her own institution by forging links between college and employers, developing partnerships with four-year schools, and teaming with high schools on new initiatives.

 

“The Community College Leadership program fits beautifully with Walden’s mission to educate students who can make a difference in the world,” says O’Banion. “Community colleges give people who never thought they could succeed a second chance. The Community College Leadership program encourages all potential students to go the distance and put their sights on top faculty and administrative positions.” 

 

 

 

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