Dr. Vanessa Smith Morest has been researching community colleges at the Community College Research Center (CCRC) since 1997. Her primary research with the Center is focused on organizational change in community colleges.  This includes their evolving missions and roles, which is the topic of one of the chapters she authored in Defending the Community College Equity Agenda.

While at CCRC, Dr. Morest has been responsible for much of the Center’s field research on community colleges. Dr. Morest coordinated the case studies of the fifteen community colleges analyzed in Defending the Community College Equity Agenda.  In addition to this research, Dr. Morest studied the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. Morest is currently studying the implementation of the Achieving the Dream initiative.  In this capacity, she has analyzed the state of institutional research at the nation’s community colleges and organizational change around data-based decision making.  She has also carried out evaluations and small scale research at community colleges and has conducted several implementation evaluations looking at the adoption of educational reforms and grant-funded projects.  

Dr. Morest received her doctorate in Sociology of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University in 2002.