The Urgency of Now: Equity and Excellence(The Futures Series on Community Colleges)

With the student body evolving quickly, and the looming challenge of the “completion agenda,” community colleges are facing circumstances like never before in serving all students and propelling them to fulfilling their education aspirations. The Urgency of Now suggests a way forward, with students and their learning at the center of what community colleges, and all of higher education, must do to generate graduates in possession of high quality degrees and credentials. Through considering comprehensive assessment, new roles for accreditation, faculty engagement strategies, and competency-based education, The Urgency of Now describes our current challenges and the ways we might meet those challenges for the 21st century institution.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction: The Urgency of Now: Equity and Excellence – Samuel Cargile Chapter 1: Making the Case – Jason Wood Chapter 2: The Accountable Institution from Compliance to Learning – Lynn Priddy Chapter 3: Competency-Based Education – Laurie Dodge Chapter 4: Integrated Outcomes Assessment – Nassim Ebrahimi Chapter 5: Engaging Faculty – Marcus Kolb Epilogue – Marcus Kolb and Samuel Cargile Index About the Authors

About the Author :
Marcus Kolb is assistant vice president for assessment and academic policy at Ivy Tech Community College where he collaborates with faculty and staff to improve student learning. Samuel Cargile is vice president and senior advisor to the CEO at Lumina Foundation, where he served as one of the architects of the initiative Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count and led its transition to an independent nonprofit organization. Lynn Priddy serves as provost and chief academic officer of National American University following 14 years of service with the Higher Learning Commission. Nassim Ebrahimi is the director for Learning Outcomes Assessment at Anne Arundel Community College, including launching several campus-wide innovations in teaching and assessment. Jason Wood is president of Southwest Wisconsin Technical College. Prior, he served as executive vice-president for student and academic services at Central Wyoming College, including oversight of daily operations and development of new programs and services. Laurie Dodge is vice chancellor of institutional assessment and planning and vice provost at Brandman University. Dr. Dodge is a national leader in competency-based education and is serving as chair of the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN)

Review :
The Urgency of Now: Equity and Excellence is an outstanding read that is recommended for anyone concerned with the plight of higher education. This book presents reasoned arguments which support the goal of reforming community colleges chiefly as a matter of sound public policy and implicitly to further the Judeo-Christian imperative which calls for social justice. The Urgency of Now assembles some of the most pressing topics facing today’s community college leaders, and it serves as a good primer for those issues…. [T]he topics are relevant, well researched, and presented clearly in a logical and substantive sequence. Because of this, the book may be useful for administrators, faculty, or board members who are new to the community college arena to become more familiar with these issues. For community college researchers, the book efficiently outlines the major elements of each of the emerging issues for community colleges, and it compiles many current, relevant references on the respective topics.... [I]t may help start meaningful conversations about change on campus or in the boardroom. The Urgency of Now provides a welcome look at the most important issues facing community colleges: the critical role that student learning, changing demographics, competency-based efforts, faculty leadership, clear academic pathways, and emerging reform efforts will have on the needs of 21st century students and the college attainment agenda. Community colleges have found themselves much more center stage in current discourse about higher education, partly because of their access mission and their focus on career education, partly because of generally weak graduation rates. Unfortunately, proposals so far to improve the connection between access and completion have been half-hearted half-measures, like structured pathways to degrees, that are doomed to fail because they are based on traditional, already-failing structures and strategies. The Urgency of Now offers instead a radical rethinking of and solution for the access-completion conundrum. By suggesting a shift from credit-based to competency-based education, with concomitant new roles for faculty, students, and administrators, it offers a new way of looking at all of higher education. This important book should be read and debated throughout higher education, for it offers a thorough rethinking of what we do and who we are, and real solutions rather than half-measures. This book is a must read. It details just how the Community College is the key to rebuilding America’s middle class. The authors focus on strategies for change as higher education must evolve in order to remain sustainable. One thing that will never change, and this book makes that clear, is the need for everyone in higher education to stay laser focus on ensuring the success of our students. Community College students are often the most complex in higher education and, as this book explains, institutional innovation and improvement will be critical to success of our students. The authors of this provocative new book have cobbled together the primary issues facing the community college committed to placing learning first. Their message is fresh, and it is urgent. If you care about student success — read this book now! The Urgency of Now: Equity and Excellence is a 'must read' for community college trustees, presidents, academic leaders and especially those who teach and counsel our students. As the book well documents, the ideas advanced in this volume are not 'new' to the higher education world. What is new is the reality of declining state and federal support for all of higher education, including community colleges. As I write today, we have just learned that the State of Arizona is providing 'zero' funding or support to the state’s three largest community colleges. This draconian trend will continue, so this book makes well the case of defined and discernible learning outcomes for students in all courses. More important, the pathway to that accomplishment is well documented. The past is clearly not the prologue for higher education. This book points to a new reality for our community colleges.