Research Projects
January 2023 – December 2024
This project explores the backgrounds and goals of adult education ESL students and the barriers they face navigating long ESL course sequences and complicated performance requirements. It will also examine how City College Chicago campuses are reforming ESL, how federal and state policy related to ESL courses is helping or hindering student outcomes, and the perspectives of adult education ESL instructors.
January 2023 - December 2025
Using surveys and interviews with students, faculty, and staff, as well as
administrative data, this project will explore students’ decision-making about programs of study and what perceptions they have about these programs over the course of their college careers.
June 2023 - September 2024
This study will identify what topics colleges most want to learn about and what they see as their most pressing challenges. The findings will be used to make recommendations regarding what applied research organizations, intermediaries, technical assistance providers, and funders can do to design and implement applied learning activities that will do a better job of attracting and addressing the needs of underserved colleges.
September 2022-August 2024
In this project, CCRC will partner with the Aspen Institute and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) to update two influential publications on transfer but with a more central focus on improving equity in bachelor’s degree attainment among community college transfer students.
September 2022–August 2025
CCRC is partnering with the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) and the University of Pennsylvania to examine and improve Get A Skill, Get A Job, Get Ahead (G3), VCCS’s pandemic workforce recovery initiative.
September 2022–August 2025
The Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges Network (ARCC Network) is studying strategies that community colleges are using to combat enrollment drops, learning loss, and other negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the three years of the project, the network will work closely with community colleges and college systems to identify and evaluate programs and policies designed to bring students back to college and accelerate their academic progress.
June 2022–November 2025
In this project, CCRC and the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program will collaborate with 10 community colleges or districts to improve their students’ post-college outcomes.
January 2022–January 2027
The Regional Education Laboratory (REL) Northwest, led by WestEd, is creating a toolkit to facilitate the adoption of the recommendations in a practice guide on technology and postsecondary instruction from the Institute of Education Sciences at the Department of Education. In this project, CCRC will evaluate a professional learning component of the toolkit.
January 2022–December 2023
In this two-year project, CCRC will develop additional guidance for state policymakers on how they can support the scaling of dual enrollment equity pathways (DEEP) practices across their states.
August 2021–December 2024
This project will examine community college funding policy and institutional resources allocation in Texas, California, and Ohio.
July 2021–June 2026
The Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative works with students, faculty, technology developers, and other researchers to improve our knowledge of how college and university instructors can effectively use technology to help students develop self-directed learning skills in online courses.
September 2021–May 2024
In this project, CCRC will work in Florida and Texas to expand efforts by community colleges and their K-12 partners to extend equity-focused guided pathways practices to dual enrollment students from underserved groups.
July 2021–June 2024
In this mixed-methods project, researchers will describe the support networks and help-seeking preferences and behaviors of first-generation students at four public colleges in California.
November 2020–October 2022
This project will address the need for targeted efforts to support Black, Latinx, and low-income students and close achievement gaps.
January 2021–December 2022
In this project, CCRC is using a mixed-methods design to examine how community colleges promote and facilitate enrollment, persistence, and transfer in humanities fields.
June 2019–July 2020
CCRC is developing two tools to help colleges identify equity gaps at the program level and to reflect on current policies and practices that may be contributing to inequitable outcomes and seek to change them.
September 2020–July 2023
To support colleges' efforts to implement guided pathways reforms, CCRC is developing a set of resources that includes workshop curricula and materials as well as summer data institutes.
January 2020–December 2021
As part of the next frontier of guided pathways work, CCRC and WestEd are studying how community colleges are partnering with local employers, universities, and K-12 schools to build cross-sector educational pathways to good jobs in their communities.
December 2019–December 2022
CCRC is evaluating the Caring Campus Initiative, a project designed to create a positive, supportive campus culture and to increase students’ sense of connectedness to the college through the development of student-centered behaviors and activities among faculty and staff.
July 2019–July 2021
The CCRC–City University of New York (CUNY) policy lab is developing broader and more nuanced measures of post-college success; studying what factors predict successful transitions from college into the labor force; and identifying and evaluating programs and policies that strive to promote successful transitions, particularly for disadvantaged groups.
