INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOR AND THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSON

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between department/division chairpersons' interpersonal behavior and their perceived leadership effectiveness. The Departmental Evaluation of Chairperson Activities for Development (DECAD) system was used to determine the department chairpersons' administrative effectiveness. Element B, developed by Will Schutz, was used to assess the chairpersons' interpersonal behavioral characteristics. The participants were department/division chairpersons and full-time faculty members from 15 of the 17 public and private community colleges in a southern state. Survey packets were mailed to faculty members and department/ division chairpersons in the humanities and social sciences divisions. Sixty-seven percent of the faculty responded and 93% of the chairpersons responded. Statistical analyses revealed significant differences in the dependent variables of received inclusion, perceived inclusion, and wanted inclusion interpersonal behaviors between the ineffective and effective chairs. These findings suggest that effective department chairpersons possess a need to maintain and establish interaction with others. Also, effective chairpersons were perceived to be, and want to be, included by others.     

SST (Successful Strategic Teaching): Enhancing Adult Learners’ Motivation and Achievement

Enhancing motivation in adult learners is often a difficult task in today’s college classroom. Significant reforms in America’s educational system have directed the initiative to adopt Common Core Standards in Language Arts by all 50 states. With the focus on increased rigor and depth of understanding in learning, the hope is to prepare students throughout the K–12 sequence for college and careers. This new instructional model requires moving students from passive recipients to active learners. Although the arrival of an expanding population is encouraging for college communities, the issue of underprepared college students must be addressed. Instructional methods designed to cultivate active learning and critical thinking through more contextualized, hands-on teaching activities produced initial evidence of improved reading achievement.     

PEER AND STUDENT-FACULTY RELATIONS IN COMMUNITY COLLEGES

This study investigated differences in peer and student?faculty relationships of male and female community college students. Men reported more frequent participation in college activities, whereas women reported more frequent involvement in less formal activities such as studying with other students. Women had less difficulty than men meeting and making friends. For both men and women, little student?faculty interaction outside the classroom was reported.     

C Problem: Climb or Catastrophe

While community colleges serve as a postsecondary entry point for many “at-risk” students, not many who enroll will be ready or able to participate in college level courses on entry. Statistically, large numbers of community college students require college remediation, and only a handful are able to successfully emerge from the remediation pipeline. Many students find mathematics the most challenging course sequence and frequently report high levels of math anxiety and lower completion rates. Using population data from a large urban district in a western state, this study examined the impact of course grades on subsequent grades within math courses.     

Transfer Between Community Colleges and 4-Year Colleges: The All-American Game

ABSTRACT

In this article, the authors introduce a novel way, using the metaphor of a baseball game, to evaluate and measure community college student progress for those whose stated goal is to transfer to a 4-year institution and, ultimately, earn a bachelor's degree. The proposed framework of “the Transfer Game” is an outgrowth of the Transfer and Retention of Urban Community College Students (TRUCCS) project, which is a longitudinal study of 5,000 community college students from the 9-campuses of the Los Angeles Community College District. The goal of the project is to explain how the “all-American game” provides a method to measure, comprehend, and visualize student progression, and identify the factors that predict both success and barriers. The framework provides a scholarly comparison of the all-American game of baseball to the All-American invention of the community college.     

Counteracting Summer Slide: Social Capital Resources Within Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Families

Research on summer learning has shown that children from a higher socioeconomic status (SES) continue to learn during the summer months of elementary school, but lower-SES students tend to stagnate or lose ground. However, not all low-SES students experience summer learning loss. Drawing on the Beginning School Study (BSS), a longitudinal study of a random sample of Baltimore public school students who began first grade in 1982, this article identifies a small sample of low-SES students who gained as much as their higher-SES peers in reading or math during at least three of the four summers of elementary school. Drawing on Coleman and Hoffer's (1987 Coleman , J. S. , & Hoffer , T. ( 1987 ). Public and private high schools: The impact of communities . New York : Basic Books . [Google Scholar]) theory of within-family social capital, we identify parental characteristics and practices that set these low-SES exceptional summer learners (ESLs) apart from their low-SES peers, who evidence the more typical pattern of summer slide.