Troubling Leadership: Recrafting the Future of Community Colleges

• In Event: 14.045 - Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: 14.045-8 - Neoliberalism and Its Impact on Community Colleges

Abstract

Community colleges are in the spotlight as the nation’s policy agenda focuses on increasing graduation rates and shortening the timeline for career ready employees. Yet, this current era also is one of opposing paradoxes—completion versus access; contradictions in mission foci; funding decreases versus heightened accountability. Complicating this scenario are pending retirements throughout the colleges, from presidents to mid-level deans to faculty members. New leaders face a different environment than their predecessors and one that requires that we trouble traditional conceptions of leadership. A narrow range of leadership approaches will not serve today’s colleges, instead we need to recraft what it means to be an inclusive, entrepreneurial leader.

Authors

• Regina L. Garza Mitchell, Western Michigan University

• Pamela L. Eddy, College of William and Mary