Community College Education Administration Commons^™

Going The Distance: A Case Study Of One Community College's Journey Across The Digital Divide, Michael Robert Jolley

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Rural communities throughout the nation continue to lag their urban and suburban peers in access to high-speed internet service. This digital divide affects rural populations in a myriad of ways, but access to higher educational opportunities may be most problematic. While the promise of technology to level the field for rural students continues to offer hope, the scarcity of broadband service lingers. This qualitative instrumental case study explores how one exceptional rural community college in the Great Plains developed the capacity to deliver distance education programming. The study relies upon Rogers's theory of diffusion of innovations to validate the extent …

A Resource-Oriented Investigation Into The Community College Matriculation And Persistence Of U.S.-Educated English Language Learners, Naomi Mardock Uman

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this qualitative single case study with embedded units of analysis was to provide evidence of the personal, institutional, and community resources leveraged by U.S.-educated English language learners (US-ELLs) to matriculate and persist at community colleges and of how their educational experiences were shaped by community college policies and practices. By considering the experiences of multiple students through in-depth interviews and drawing on additional insight provided by interviews with institutional agents, this resource-oriented investigation into US-ELLs’ matriculation and persistence was designed to counter the prevailing deficit orientation that may limit educational opportunity for US-ELLs at community colleges. The …

Critical College Experiences Of The Middle Third Of The High School Graduating Class, Nathan Kaoru Keikiokamakua Hanamaikai

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Seven recent graduates from a large, open access university in the Western United States who also graduated from high school in the middle third of their graduating class were interviewed to examine what they considered critical decisions during college and what effect those decisions had on their progress towards graduation. More than 45 critical incidents were identified by the participants. All incidents involved interaction with another person to some degree. All but 11 of the incidents were with people outside of institutional employees. Of the 11 incidents, the majority involved faculty members in either positive or negative situations. Upon further …

Increasing Access To Post-Secondary Education: A Mixed Methods Study Of The Charleston Clemente Program, Mariane A. Doyle

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There is an economic gap that favors adults who have higher levels of educational attainment (United States Department of Labor, 2010). With more than 9.3 million Americans over the age of 25 facing unemployment as of June 2012 and over 79% or 7.4 million of those unemployed Americans having attained less than a Bachelor’s degree (U.S. Department of Labor, 2012), the current need for college access measures and programs that address the adult population is an imperative one.

The Charleston Clemente Program provides a tuition-free course in the Humanities to economically-disadvantaged adult students for a total of two-semesters. Along with …