To truly impact sustainability practices, campuses need to influence the overall campus culture, including that which is fostered through first-year programs. Institutions of higher education have made a commitment to make a difference for sustainability, not only by changing curriculum, but by changing the entire institutional culture. This…

Data-driven planning or evidence-based decision making represents nothing new in its concept. For years, business leaders have claimed they have implemented planning informed by data that have been strategically and systematically gathered. Within higher education and student affairs, there may be less evidence of the actual practice of…

Strong financial management is a strategy for strategic planning success in student affairs. It is crucial that student affairs professionals understand the necessity of linking their strategic planning with their financial management processes. An effective strategic planner needs strong financial management skills to implement the plan over…

Philanthropy has shaped American higher education from inception. While religion earns the biggest slice of philanthropy, education runs second and well ahead of other causes. Most community college donations are earmarked for scholarships. Foundation dollars can be used strategically to meet the needs of students who cannot qualify for federal…

Frederick Community College (FCC) is a comprehensive open-door community college that serves the citizens of Frederick County, Maryland, the state's largest county by size and seventh in population (230,000). It is located in central Maryland, equidistant from Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The college's character as a learning college is…

Isothermal Community College (ICC) is located in Spindale, North Carolina. The college serves approximately 2,000 curriculum students every fall and spring semester and about 1,000 curriculum students in summer semesters. The Student Affairs department at ICC is divided into 10 functional areas. Over the last several years, student affairs staff…

Hispanics are the fastest-growing ethnic population in the United States. This chapter presents demographic projections for higher education and discusses the role of the transfer function in community colleges. Two notable transfer programs are highlighted. (Contains 1 table.)

Due to the transitory nature of students at community colleges, it is often difficult for student affairs professionals to connect with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students and even more difficult for them to provide services for this invisible population.

The numbers of Latinas who attend college, stay in college, graduate, and attend graduate school escalated in the 1990s, surpassing gains made by any other underrepresented group of students in higher education. However, their achievements come at a personal cost, as the high-achieving Latinas profiled in this chapter demonstrate.

Community colleges serve as the point of entry for the majority of Latinos in higher education, offering low-cost, smaller-scale educational opportunities in the communities where students live and providing the preparation for four-year colleges and universities that may have been lacking in their K-12 education. The challenges to community…

African American women hold a unique position as members of two groups that have been treated in a peripheral manner by postsecondary education (Moses, 1989). Membership in both marginalized groups often makes African American women invisible in colleges and universities. Given the complex intersection of race and gender, more attention should be…