Center-Affiliated Scholars
Through the Center-Affiliated Scholars program, the Center extends its involvement in and ability to support community college scholarship on a broader scale.
Invitation to Collaborate
The Center invites emerging and established community college scholars and scholar-practitioners to participate in the Center-Affiliated Scholars program. Through this program, Center directors and affiliated scholars collaborate to design and conduct research projects leading to institutional improvement, seek and secure grant funding, and carry out grant activities and associated scholarship.
Depending on Center-Affiliated Scholars' needs, the Center may act in an advisory capacity, actively partner in the research, and/or provide administrative services to facilitate the receipt and distribution of grant dollars. The Center-Affiliated Scholars program may be especially useful for emerging scholars, those seeking to utilize Center-owned survey instruments, and those collaborating across multiple organizations or with community college-based personnel.
Center-Affiliated Scholars
Dr. Frank Fernandez
University of Wisconsin
Dr. Josue Franco
Cuyamaca
College
Dr. Frank Fernandez, assistant professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Dr. Josue Franco, associate professor of political science at Cuyamaca College, have partnered with the Center to collaboratively plan and administer the CHicana/o Activism and Nontraditional Civic Engagement (CHANCE) Initiative. The research team will utilize the Center's previously validated Higher Education Civic Outcomes Survey (HECOS) to evaluate the impact of a new political science course at Cuyamaca College that anchors instruction in the history of Chicana/o community activism and supports civic learning and engagement, particularly among Chicana/o students.
Based on learnings from this project, the research team aims to scale the CHANCE Initiative to multiple Hispanic-serving community colleges in California and other states with large Hispanic/Latinx populations.
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Grant applications to support this work are currently under review.
Dr. Carol Cutler White
Mississippi State University
Dr. Stephanie King
Mississippi State University
Dr. Carol Cutler White is associate professor and Dr. Stephanie King is professor of community college leadership at Mississippi State University. Drs. Cutler White and King have partnered with the Center to conduct the AmeriCorps Civic Engagement among Community Colleges Project (ACECCP). The ACECCP utilizes an updated version of the Center's Civic Inventory, initially developed as a companion instrument to the Higher Education Civic Outcomes Survey (HECOS).
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In 2024 the research team administered the ACECCP survey to 128 colleges across 38 states and is currently analyzing data from this first administration to develop a landscape analysis of civic learning and engagement on community college campuses. A second administration of the ACECCP survey is planned for 2025.
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The ACECCP is generously funded by AmeriCorps through a grant to Mississippi State University (Dr. Cutler White, PI).