Delivering Promise

An invigorating take on how community and technical colleges can center equity in fostering institutional transformation.

In Delivering Promise, award-winning scholar of higher education Xueli Wang tells a story of educational change and innovation that has and continues to occur at countless campuses of community and technical colleges. Wang weaves together a careful account of how faculty, staff, administrators, institutional researchers, and college leaders rapidly adjusted to crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic, while grappling with a new or renewed commitment to centering equity in their work. Her rich analysis of their successes and struggles is based on interviews with more than a hundred college stakeholders across several states, site visits, and reviews of voluminous media sources and internal documents.

In this inspiring and insightful work, Wang highlights compelling examples of equity-driven innovation in community and technical colleges across a wide range of areas, including classroom instruction, student supports, institutional research, external partnerships, leadership, and policymaking. She discusses ways to remove long-existing barriers to access so that these colleges may increase enrollment and better serve minoritized student populations. She also illustrates how to ground humanity in institutional practices, structures, and policies to serve the whole student and holistically support faculty and staff.

Culminating with a path forward toward equity-driven innovation for community and technical college education, Xueli Wang brings to the forefront optimal strategies for change that center equity as both a process and outcome, both in times of dire need and into the far future.