Upcoming Presentations

Community Colleges and Center for Climate Futures Webinar

Changing climate and shifting climate policy pose unprecedented challenges to communities across the nation. Community, technical, and tribal colleges are uniquely positioned to lead in addressing these challenges at a local level.

This webinar series will delve into critical questions shaping our future:

  • How can we prepare students to contribute meaningfully to sustainable local economies?
  • What role can colleges play in strengthening partnerships with businesses to foster climate adaptation?
  • How can education empower communities to build resilience and seize opportunities in a climate-resilient economy?

Through compelling case studies and engaging discussions, this series will spotlight initiatives already driving local impact, connecting students, colleges, and community businesses to shape a sustainable future together.

Presenters

Jeff Clary, Senior Director, Climate Strategies, Foundation for California Community Colleges

Carla Grandy, Senior Advisor to the Chancellor and Senior Climate Fellow, California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office

Bret Eynon, Strategic Learning and Teaching Coach, Achieving the Dream

Sue Bickerstaff, Senior Research Associate, Community College Research Center

2025 Innovations Conference

March 9–12, 2025
San Antonio, TX

Beyond Engagement: Evidence-Based Strategies for Improving Learning Online

March 11, 2025 | 10:15–11:15 AM CT
Grand Hyatt San Antonio Riverwalk; Republic A-C, Fourth Floor

Students and faculty both encounter challenges in the online environment. These challenges frequently manifest and are understood in terms of low student engagement. In this session, researchers and community college faculty will present a specific and actionable framework to bolster students’ abilities to remain motivated and manage their learning processes in online courses. The presenters refer to these mutually reinforcing mindsets and behaviors as self-directed learning (SDL) skills and they include motivational processes (e.g., self-efficacy), metacognitive processes (e.g., planning), and applied learning processes (e.g., help seeking). Presenters will describe a set of evidence-based instructional strategies to support SDL developed in collaboration with instructors at broad-access institutions. Speakers will share research findings on how the strategies have been implemented in postsecondary online STEM courses and their effect on student outcomes. A community college faculty member will share their experience implementing the strategies in an online biology course.

Presenters

Ellen Wasserman, Research Associate, CCRC

Allystair Jones, Department Chair, Science & Professor of Biology, Odessa College

Hannah Cheever, Technical Assistance Provider and Education Researcher, SRI Education

2025 COABE National Conference

March 30–April 2, 2025
Dallas, TX

The Opportunities and Challenges of Community Colleges as Providers of Adult Education ESL

April 1, Time TBD

This session explores national research and practices in adult education (AE) English as a Second Language (ESL). Researchers from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and the Community College Research Center (CCRC) will discuss the impact of federal and state AE policies on community colleges providing AE ESL. Drawing from new CCRC research, attendees will learn about opportunities, challenges, and innovative programming strategies that support multilingual learners’ academic and career success within current federal policy constraints.

Presenters

Julia Raufman, Research Associate, CCRC

Jacob Hofstetter, Research Analyst, Migration Policy Institute's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy

RP Conference 2025

April 2–4, 2025
Burlingame, CA

Understanding the Support Networks of First-Generation College Students: Research Findings and Implications for Institutional Research

April 3, 10:00–11:00 AM

In this session, presenters will share findings from a four-year mixed methods social network analysis of the personal support networks of first-generation college students in their first year at two California community colleges and two universities in the California State system. The session will be structured and designed to inform efforts of institutional research professionals in gathering data about first-generation college students on their respective campuses that can inform the design and delivery of services intended to improve outcomes among this subgroup of students. Attendees can expect to take away lessons learned about who first-generation college students turn to for support and how these relationships shape their postsecondary pathway. Attendees can also expect to take away survey questions that they can modify and use at their institutions to collect more precise information about first-generation students and, in doing so, better position their colleagues to serve these students.

Presenters

Hoori Kalamkarian, Senior Research Associate, CCRC

Alex Adams, Senior Director, Institutional Research, Planning, and Effectiveness, Student Learning Support Services, Fresno City College

AAC&U's Conference on Learning and Student Success (CLASS)

Bringing SDL Theories Into Postsecondary Online Learning Contexts

Date & Time TBA | Puerto Rico Convention Center

Self-directed learning (SDL) refers to 3 mutually reinforcing cognitive and behavioral processes (motivation, metacognition, applied learning) that are shown to improve postsecondary outcomes. But faculty report uncertainty about how to foster them in content area courses, especially online. Presenters will share research underpinning the framework and describe an ongoing empirical study of SDL support in online courses at community colleges and broad-access universities, including teaching strategies to improve self-efficacy and belonging (motivation), reflection (metacognition), and help-seeking (applied learning). Participants will explore how to implement teaching practices in online/hybrid courses aligned with an evidence-based, self-directed learning framework and will engage in interactive activities to identify opportunities to bolster SDL support across course types.

Presenters

Amy E. Brown, Research Associate, CCRC

Ellen Wasserman, Research Associate, CCRC

Meghan McIntyre, Senior Professor of Mathematics, Wake Technical Community College

2025 AERA Annual Meeting

April 23–27, 2025
Denver, CO

Adult Learners: Policy and Practice

April 24, 9:50–11:20 AM | Four Seasons Ballroom 1

As part of a roundtable discussion, the authors will present on a paper that presents findings on federal and state adult education English as a second language (AE ESL) policies, including the opportunities and challenges that these policies present for the delivery of AE ESL services within community colleges (CCs). CCs provide access to free or low-cost AE ESL courses and supportive services and have transformative potential for creating pathways to postsecondary education and occupational training for a wide range of multilingual learners (MLs). However, like other providers, CCs can struggle to fully meet this population’s needs, due to structural constraints, including limitations within the policies governing AE programming.

Presenters

Julia Raufman, Research Associate, CCRC

Nikki Edgecombe, Senior Research Scholar, CCRC

George C. Bunch, Professor of Education and Department Chair, UC Santa Cruz

Measuring (and Improving) the Impacts of Guided Pathways Reforms

February 21, 2018
Nashville, TN

This session showed how colleges can measure impacts of their guided pathways reforms using early momentum key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs are useful as leading indicators of longer term outcomes like completion, but they are measurable in one year and show if early gains from reforms are experienced equitably, a prerequisite for equitable longer term outcomes.

Attendees learned how to run baseline analyses using these KPIs and heard from practitioners on how they have used the KPIs to drive continuous improvement efforts as their college implemented guided pathways reforms. They also learned how the Voluntary Framework of Accountability (VFA) is working with colleges to report on these early momentum KPIs. Presenters shared a tool for using the KPIs to make simple projections on how increases in the early momentum KPIs could result in increases in completion rates, which can be useful for estimating the range of possible improvements to inform institutional goal setting.

Presenters shared definitions and instructions for colleges to derive and track the early momentum KPIs in order to measure the impact of guided pathways reforms and assess if improvements are observed equitably. In addition to presenting the early momentum KPIs, the workshop demonstrated how disaggregation of these measures by student characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, income, and age, can provide leading indicators as to whether a college’s reforms are closing achievement gaps.

Presenters also shared a procedure and Excel tool for estimating longer term student outcomes using the KPIs, and a practitioner from an AACC Pathways Project college described how his college used data to inform successful efforts at the college to improve early momentum KPIs.

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Participants

Senior Research Scholar
Community College Research Center
Senior Research Associate and Program Lead
Community College Research Center
Mike Flores
President
Palo Alto College

Associated Project(s)