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Purpose: The purpose of this article is to use Victor Ray's theory of racialized organizations (TRO), and multiple applied exemplars, as a framework and call to action for community college researchers and policymakers. In doing so, we provide a meso-level analytic view on how and why the most accessible postsecondary pathway for minoritized students is also the most chronically under-resourced sector of higher education in the United States.

Argument: Understanding community colleges as a type of racialized organization opposes traditional meritocratic perspectives that view these institutions as culturally neutral spaces, guided by open access and unrestricted credential choice. Decades of research suggest that egalitarian principles attached to community colleges do not necessarily translate into equitable student experiences and outcomes. Responses to these inequitable outcomes, however, primarily assign blame to individual dispositions. Without deep consideration of contextual conditions that shape organizational policies and practices, outcome disparities are viewed as a condition of cultural deficits rather than structured impotence.

Conclusions: This paper advances our collective attunement, as community college scholars, to organizational arrangements that perpetuate and weaken white supremacy. In short, we use a racialized organizational lens to think in new ways about how community colleges, as an institutional type, are often as marginalized as the students they serve.

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This study examined how Texas community college artist-educators balance artistic productivity with their teaching responsibilities. The 98 survey respondents represented 76.6 per cent of a stratified random sample of the full-time instructors in visual arts departments within the 50 Texas public community college districts. Access to studio space and equipment, peer support, and new avenues for artistic expression and creative stimulation were seen as promoting or enhancing artistic production. Lack of studio time for producing one’s artwork was cited as a barrier to artistic production, as were the demands of teaching and related responsibilities. In addition, those who saw themselves more as artists than as educators or who saw themselves equally as artists and educators were more likely to balance art with teaching and service than were those who saw themselves more as educators than as artists.

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Purpose: The purpose of this article is to synthesize the literature around Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), community colleges, and Latina/o/x community college students to propose practices specifically for community colleges that are officially designated HSIs or want to be more Latinx-serving. Argument: Utilizing the conceptual framework for servingness in HSIs by Garcia et al., this essay makes the case for ways that Latinx-serving, research-based practices can be implemented in Hispanic-serving community colleges.

Conclusions: As more 2-year colleges reach the threshold for the HSI designation, they may look for ways to implement policies and practices that boost the access and attainment of Latina/o/x students and enhance practices that may benefit students from other minoritized groups as well.

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Considerable research has been conducted in the past two decades on race and ethnic relations among community college students. The atheoretical underpinnings of this research have led to vague and conflicting findings regarding such concepts as campus climate, discrimination, and the benefits of campus diversity. This article briefly reviews potentially relevant theories and research methods and offers many specific suggestions for future research on student diversity.

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Objective: International reverse transfer students are international students who begin their postsecondary journey at a four-year institution but subsequently transfer to a community college. In this qualitative study, we examine the lived experiences of international reverse transfers to understand the reasons for reverse-transfer and to understand the students' learning experiences. Methods: Using a phenomenological approach, we recruited 10 international reverse transfer students attending one four-year university or one of the two community colleges. We conducted individual interviews with all participants and analyzed transcript data through Bourdieu's sociological theory of field, habitus, and social and cultural capital.

Results: We identified three types of international reverse transfer students: undergraduate reverse transfers, temporary reverse transfers, and postbaccalaureate reverse transfers. Each type reported different reasons for reverse transfer but shared similar influential factors of the reverse transfer process as well as the learning experiences while enrolled at the community colleges. Contributions: This study helps to fill an information and research gap regarding international reverse transfer students. We present the academic, social, and cultural challenges faced by international students and offer practical implications for higher education practitioners for improved understandings and better processes to serve international students from diverse cultural backgrounds.

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Objective: Traditional-age students attending a rural community college in Kentucky's Appalachian region were interviewed, along with faculty members and administrators, to identify phenomena serving as sources of encouragement or as barriers to retention from the point of entry to the point of transfer. Method: Students' perspectives were collected in a qualitative study and were analyzed using a theoretical foundation of Tinto's integration theory, enhanced with Kegan's cognitive development theory and Bourdieu's concepts of capital, habitus, and field. Results: Findings revealed three major factors affecting decision-making processes about persistence: (a) community's and family's values of education provide the essential push to attend and complete college, (b) students are challenged with overcoming the pull of family obligations, and (c) students struggle to make the cognitive leap necessary to master college-level coursework. Contributions: The results emphasize the importance of each college investing resources to understand the specific needs of that institution's students, students shaped by their region's culture and other defining traits, and customizing retention practices and programs to meet those unique needs. This study also adds to the limited research on persistence in Appalachian community colleges.

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This article discusses the influence of the Rural Community College Initiative (RCCI) on the development of civic capacity in distressed rural communities. RCCI was a demonstration project funded by the Ford Foundation to explore the way that rural community colleges can act as catalysts for economic and educational opportunity in persistently poor regions. Among other factors, a qualitative assessment of the project conducted by the American Association of Community Colleges concluded that, although economic and educational progress was hard to measure, there was clear evidence of increased energy for community development. RCCI was distinctive from other community-based initiatives in that it included a nationwide network of institutions and used third-part intervention to facilitate the development of collaboration between college and community rather than relying on the resources of the college alone. Examples from Appalachian colleges participating in the initiative illustrate that this process of intervention and networking resulted in increased confidence in civic involvement by both college staff and community members.

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Interviews with 17 African American students and 19 white students were employed to examine interracial relations at a predominantly white community college campus. Seen through the lens of Granovetter’s strength of ties theory, the interview findings revealed that strong intraracial ties and the absence of weak interracial ties inhibited communication between white and African American students, perpetuating the feelings of racial discomfort that students brought with them to the college campus. These findings illuminate the need for higher education to intentionally deconstruct racial discomfort through an analysis of the social structures that perpetuate the status quo of uncomfortable race relations.

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While there has been increased scholarship in recent years on diversity in higher education, most of this research has failed to include two-year institutions in its analyses. This study examined whether the racial composition of the community college student body is correlated with an institution's normative climate toward three diversity outcomes: student conversations with racially different peers, student conversations with peers holding different beliefs, and student understanding of racially different others. The results indicate that having a more diverse student body had a positive, statistically significant relationship with each outcome. This finding suggests that community colleges, like four-year institutions, can be positively influenced by enrolling a more racially heterogeneous student body.

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Purpose: Community and technical college student employability is a pressing concern in the United States and China. Policy makers focus on developing students' human capital in the form of credentials and cognitive skills. However, the focus on completion overlooks the role that noncognitive skills and contextual factors may play in student employability. Method: In this exploratory study, conducted among educators and employers in the manufacturing and biotechnology fields in a large eastern Chinese city, we use a cultural capital framework to address the following questions: (a) What forms of cultural capital are valued by educators and employers? (b) How are these forms of capital being cultivated in the classroom? (c) How do considerations of cultural capital influence hiring and workplace training? and (d) What contextual factors influence these phenomena? Inductive thematic analyses of interviews, classroom observation, and notes from factory tours with eight educators and two employers were completed.

Results: This study revealed a shared view that both cognitive and noncognitive skills are essential. Results also reveal a cultural predisposition within Chinese classrooms to lecturing but also a growing use of active learning techniques, a commitment to general education, the importance of 'cultural fit' during the hiring process, and job quality and the cultural devaluation of the skilled trades as salient contextual factors. Conclusion: Implications for research, policy, and practice are considered, particularly the need for all students to acquire both cognitive and noncognitive skills as well as a more nuanced and culturally informed perspective on student employability.

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