Transformational Learning in Community Colleges: Charting a Course for Academic and Personal Success

Transformational Learning in Community Colleges details the profound social and emotional change that nontraditional and historically underserved students undergo when they enter community college. Drawing on case study material and student interviews, the book outlines the systematic supports that two-year institutions must put in place to help students achieve their educational and professional goals.

Chad D. Hoggan and Bill Browning articulate the transformative changes that many community college students experience-or need to experience-in order to successfully navigate post-secondary education and launch professional careers. The authors provide a window into the student experience of transformation by drawing on research, theory, and the voices of students. They offer practical guidance on how a renewed focus on student transformational learning can complement the skills curriculum, accelerate current community college reforms, and help lead to higher student success rates in college and careers.

The book offers recommendations, classroom practices, and action points that can be integrated systemwide across departments and programs, and tapped by faculty, administrators, staff, and leadership eager to champion student success. These institutional changes, the authors contend, will render the community college a more robust, nimble entity, one capable of supporting students at each critical stage of their academic and emotional development.

At a time when community colleges are being called to account for the measurable success of their students-in college and in the workforce-this book is a call to change how they approach their work so that they can fulfill their mission to promote social and economic equity for all of their students.