Roueche Center Forum: Diverse Students Need Diverse Faculty

Community colleges serve the most diverse students in all of higher education. For Fall 2021, the College of the Desert’s (COD) student headcount included 8,213 Hispanic students, 1,657 white students, 395 Asian students, 252 Black students, 28 American Indian/Alaska Native students, and seven Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Island students. Also, in the fall of 2021, the employee headcount at COD included 440 white employees, 333 Hispanic employees, 34 Asian employees, 30 Black employees, six American Indian/Alaska Native employees, and three Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Island employees.

Dr. Jessica EndersCOD's leaders support staff development to ensure its faculty, administrators, and staff are up-to-date on issues and teaching and learning strategies. In May 2018, COD’s board of trustees approved a $1 million investment to support a diverse group of 23 faculty and administrators to participate in Kansas State University’s (KSU) doctoral Community College Leadership Program (CCLP), the first cohort known colloquially as the CCLP Roadrunner cohort. The KSU-CCLP is a unique program that prioritizes recruiting women and minorities as future leaders that reflect the demographics of community colleges. Some distinct program features include:

1. A fully designed doctoral curriculum in which all courses focus on the community college.

2. Community college leaders with extensive experience in and knowledge of the community college serve as one of the most diverse faculties in a national university leadership program.

3. The program is offered in a cohort model to encourage collaborative learning and networking.

4. The local community college hosting the cohort serves as a learning laboratory with real-life issues providing much of the content.

5. The dissertation in this program is a major applied research project that is the culmination of a rigorous program of study leading to the Ed. D. in community college leadership.