RURAL COMMUNITY
COLLEGE EXCELLENCE:
A GUIDE TO DELIVERING STRONG
OPPORTUNITY FOR STUDENTS
AND COMMUNITIES
SPRING 2023
Rural Community College Excellence | ii
Authors
Ben Barrett, David Bevevino, Anne Larkin, Josh Wyner
Acknowledgments
The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program is grateful for Ascendium Education Philanthropy’s funding of and
partnership on the development of this guide. We would also like to especially thank Désirée Jones-Smith, Tania
LaViolet, Linda Perlstein, and Rachel Rush-Marlowe for their early research support and leadership on the project.
We appreciate the institutions that hosted our team for site visits to gain a deeper understanding of the particular
ways rural community colleges achieve success on behalf of students in their particular contexts. See a list of
colleges in the appendix.
We also would like to recognize all of our site visit research partners, who helped inform the practices highlighted
in this guide:
Cheryl Crazy Bull, American Indian College Fund
Devin Deaton, Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group
Galen DeHay, Tri-County Technical College, Pendleton, South Carolina
John Enamait, Stanly Community College, Albemarle, North Carolina
Rebecca Lavinson, Aspen Institute College Excellence Program
Tania LaViolet, Aspen Institute College Excellence Program
Konrad Mugglestone, Aspen Institute College Excellence Program
Mary Rittling, Aspen Institute College Excellence Program
Bonita Robertson-Hardy, Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group
Lenore Rodicio, Aspen Institute College Excellence Program
Rachel Rush-Marlowe, ResearchED
Pamela Senegal, Piedmont Community College, Roxboro, North Carolina
The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program
The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program supports colleges and universities in their quest to achieve
a higher standard of excellence, delivering credentials that unlock life-changing careers and strengthen our
economy, society, and democracy.
We know it takes visionary college leaders to achieve this higher standard, and we make it our mission to equip
them with the knowledge, skills, and research-backed tools to inspire change, shift practice, and advance the
capacity of colleges to deliver excellent and equitable student outcomes.
Since our founding in 2010, we have used data to elevate excellence in practice; conducted extensive research
to deeply understand what improves student success and equity; equipped the eld with tools and guidance to
replicate what works; and developed diverse, transformational leaders advancing student success.
Cover Photo
Patrick & Henry Community College | Martinsville, Virginia
Rural Community College Excellence | iii
Contents
Introduction 1
Strengths and Challenges 3
Four Approaches to Promote Rural College Success 9
Create Pathways to Economic Mobility 10
Make Connections Between Programs and Existing Workforce Needs 10
Envision a Larger Service Area to Expand Opportunity 12
Combine Workforce and Transfer Pathways to Meet Regional Needs 12
Generate New Industries and Employment Opportunities for Students 13
Convince Students to Enroll and Stay in College 17
Overcome Misperceptions about Careers and Institutions 17
Evolve Outreach as Demographics Change 18
Start the College-Going Pathway in High School 19
Address K-12 School Resource Needs and Student Financial Barriers 21
Remove the Earn-or-Learn Dilemma for Low-Income Students 21
Advance Retention with Equity in Mind 22
Build Strategic Partnerships to Resource Student Success 24
Partner with Local Employers and Community Organizations
to Generate Mission-Aligned Resources 24
Leverage Institutional Consortia to Enhance Mission-Aligned Functions 26
Partner to Expand Bachelor’s Attainment 27
Utilize Small Size as a Strength 29
Combine Functions That Align Initiatives and Enhance Student Success Strategy 29
Strengthen Relationship-Driven Advising with Intentional Strategy 31
Conclusion 34
Research Design 35
Community Colleges Featured in this Guide 36
Rural Community College Excellence | 1
Introduction
Rural community colleges occupy a unique and important place in higher education. Of 332 million
Americans, 46 million live in rural communities, and more than 1.5 million attend one of 444 rural
community colleges. These institutions are more than education providers; they are essential hubs in
their regions, generating opportunities for economic mobility, driving talent development, and often
supporting their region’s health and education systems.
1
Successful rural colleges understand and lean into their unique strengths, including a deep
connection to place and the strong relationships among faculty, staff, and students that often
accompany small size. Leaders at great rural colleges describe an internal agility that allows people
at their institutions to think creatively about how to solve challenges, often by creating regional
connections: between new employers and members of the community who need jobs, between social
service agencies and people in need, between K-12 and higher education. These accomplishments
often happen notwithstanding substantial resource constraints: Nationally, rural community colleges
receive fewer nancial resources than other, often larger, community colleges.
2
1
For further discussion of the essential roles of community colleges, see, Koricich, Andrew, Vanessa Sansone, Alisa Hicklin
Fryar, Cecilia Orphan, and Kevin McClure. n.d. “Introducing Our Nation’s Rural-Serving Postsecondary Institutions
Moving toward Greater Visibility and Appreciation.” Accessed November 9, 2022. https://assets.website-les.
com/5fd3cd8b31d72c5133b17425/61f49f1f91e41a6effe3006f_ARRC_Introducing%20Our%20Nation%E2%80%99s%20
Rural-Serving%20Postsecondary%20Institutions_Jan2022.pdf.
2
Ibid.
|
Introduction
Catawba Valley Community College | Hickory, North Carolina
Rural Community College Excellence | 2
But while excellent rural community colleges offer many examples—and lessons—on how to improve
student success and strengthen communities, they tend to receive less attention than their urban
and suburban counterparts from policymakers, industry leaders, the media, and researchers. One
consequence: less information about how excellence in student outcomes can be achieved for
students in similar contexts. For this reason, the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program (Aspen),
supported by a grant from Ascendium, has developed this guide to share examples from high-
achieving rural colleges that, we hope, can help other community colleges deliver stronger and more
equitable results for the students and communities they serve.
The guide draws from several sources: data analyses of student outcomes, interviews with college
leaders, virtual site visits to high-performing rural colleges, in-person site visits to rural colleges as
part of the Aspen Prize process, and convenings of leaders of rural colleges.
3
Guiding our research is
Aspen’s framework for student success: strong learning and completion while in college; success in
transfer and employment after college; and equitable access and success for students of color and
students from lower-income backgrounds.
We are inspired by the examples of community colleges in this guide, and we hope other rural
colleges will use them to ensure that more of our nation’s diverse rural residents enjoy fullling careers
and develop their talents in ways that strengthen rural communities and economies.
|
Introduction
3
An explanation of the research methodology is at the end of the report, on page 35.
Northwest Iowa Community College | Sheldon, Iowa
Rural Community College Excellence | 3
Strengths and Challenges
To contextualize the strategies excellent rural colleges use to advance student success, we begin this
guide with a brief summary of the (often unique) strengths of and challenges within rural communities
and community colleges.
Common Strengths
Often, the conversation about rural communities and their colleges focuses on decits, with too little
attention paid to their strengths and assets. Excellent rural community colleges and their leaders
understand and build strategies around these strengths to expand opportunities for economic mobility
and to develop regional talent.
1. Economic Opportunity
Rural communities and their colleges benet from varied economic bases that include legacy and
emerging industries. While the economic drivers in rural areas differ signicantly across the country,
they generally fall into three categories. First are industries that relate to the large amount of available
open space: most notably agriculture, tourism/recreation (such as ski towns or areas around national
parks), and energy and mineral production.
4
Second are essential services, including jobs related to
public safety, teaching, accounting, and (especially in areas with a regional hospital) health care. Third,
community colleges in rural areas often sit at the forefront of new and evolving industries, including
advanced manufacturing, which often replaces legacy, traditional manufacturing industries.
5
Excellent
colleges strategically generate opportunity for graduates in each of these three areas.
2. Demographic Diversity
As is the case throughout the United States, rural communities are becoming more racially and
ethnically diverse. More than 30 percent of students at rural-serving public two-year colleges
nationally are people of color, with the number of Hispanic students growing fastest.
6
In many rural
communities, in-migration by people of color is resulting in overall population growth.
7
From 2016
to 2018, roughly half of rural counties grew in population, and some rural areas in every state have
seen population growth.
8
4
Kerlin, Mike, Neil O’Farrell, Rachel Riley, and Rachel Schaff. “Rural Economic Development Strategies for Local Leaders.”
McKinsey & Company. March 30, 2022. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/rural-
rising-economic-development-strategies-for-americas-heartland.
5
“Rural-Grown, Local-Owned Manufacturing.” Aspen Institute. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/rural-manufacturing/
6
Koricich, Sansone, Fryar, Orphan, and McClure, “Introducing our Nation’s Rural-Serving Postsecondary Institutions”;
Hillman, Nicholas, Jared Colston, Joshua Bach-Hanson, and Audrey Peek. 2021. “Mapping Rural Colleges and Their
Communities.” https://mappingruralcolleges.wisc.edu/documents/sstar_mapping_rural_colleges_2021.pdf.
7
Pohl, Kelly. 2017. “Minority Populations Driving County Growth in the Rural West.” Headwaters Economics. August 1, 2017.
https://headwaterseconomics.org/economic-development/minority-populations-driving-county-growth/.
8
“A Few Things to Know about Rural America.” Aspen Institute. 2020. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/
uploads/2020/05/A-Few-Things-To-Know-CSG-Brief-Update.pdf.
|
Introduction
Rural Community College Excellence | 4
While college leaders interviewed for this guide often cited political challenges associated with
changing demographics, they viewed the inux of immigrants and diverse populations as a net
positive: an opportunity for their colleges to enroll and educate new residents, to provide them
paths to family-sustaining jobs, and to help develop talent needed by their communities.
3. Community Standing
Rural community colleges are often among the most important institutions in their communities,
serving not only as educators but as major regional employers, conveners, and economic
development engines.
9
As a result, rural community college leaders are often very inuential
community members, serving as a recruiters of prospective new industries and developers of
regional partnerships. Often these partnerships are with other educational institutions: universities
where rural college students transfer and K-12 systems from which students enroll, including through
dual enrollment programs. Because of the importance of these regional connections, rural college
leaders have an outsized opportunity to combine resources in ways that strengthen not just their
colleges but other institutions in the community, which can make the community more attractive to
new industries and residents.
10
4. Community Resilience
Leaders of excellent rural community colleges
often cited the resilient, innovative, and adaptive
spirit in their communities, which, at their
colleges, translates into a pervasive desire to
improve outcomes for both students and, more
broadly, residents of their communities. Many
rural communities have weathered changing
economic conditions, public health crises,
and population declines. As this research
demonstrates, excellent rural community colleges
have achieved success for students despite
having fewer and more dispersed resources
than most urban colleges. Through employer,
university, and other community partnerships, as
well as creative human capital strategies, these
colleges strategically utilize the resources of their
communities to advance their missions.
9
Miller, Michael T., and Daniel B. Kissinger. 2007. Connecting Rural Community Colleges to Their Communities.” New
Directions for Community Colleges 2007 (137): 27–34. https://doi.org/10.1002/cc.267; Ajilore, Olugbenga and Caius Z.
Willingham, “Adversity and Assets: Identifying Rural Opportunities.” Center for American Progress. October 17, 2019.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/adversity-assets-identifying-rural-opportunities/.
10
Peters, D.J. 2019, “Community Resiliency in Declining Small Towns: Impact of Population Loss on Quality of Life over 20
Years.” Rural Sociology, 84: 635-668. ht tps://doi.org/10.1111/r uso.12261; Ajilore and Willingham, “Adversity and Assets:
Identifying Rural Opportunities.”
|
Introduction
Northwest Iowa Community College | Sheldon, Iowa
Rural Community College Excellence | 5
Challenges
In addition to maximizing their strengths, leaders of excellent rural community colleges understand
the challenges their colleges and communities face and use that knowledge to develop strategies to
overcome them.
1. Limited Educational Opportunity
In rural communities, fewer adults hold a bachelor’s degree than in urban communities: 19 percent,
compared to 33 percent.
11
Part of the reason: Rural communities tend to have fewer nearby
postsecondary institutions and are more likely to rely on a community college as the entry point to
higher education.
12
With fewer university partners nearby, it’s harder for community college students
to transfer and attain a bachelor’s degree. And because many good jobs require a bachelor’s
degree, limited access to four-year colleges and universities translates into limited economic
opportunity for many rural residents.
13
On the other end of the education system, rural K-12 schools
are often under-resourced and spread over a large geographical area, making collaboration on dual
enrollment and college preparation more difcult.
14
Finally, with relatively few employers nearby,
community college students can struggle
to access internships and other work-based
learning opportunities that can help them apply
classroom learning. In response, leaders of
exceptional rural community colleges proled
in this report have developed innovative
partnerships and program delivery methods
to ensure that students have access to
comprehensive educational pathways with other
educational institutions and employers.
11
“A Few Things to Know about Rural America.” Aspen Institute. 2020. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/
uploads/2020/05/A-Few-Things-To-Know-CSG-Brief-Update.pdf.
12
“Unequal and Uneven: The Geography of Higher Education.” Jain Family Institute. December 2019. Accessed November
10, 2022. https://hef.jresearch.org/geography-of-higher-education/.
13
Carnevale, Anthony, Jeff Strohl, Neil Ridley, and Artem Gulish. 2018. “Three Educational Pathways to Good Jobs.”
https://1gyhoq479ufd3yna29x7ubjn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/3ways-FR.pdf.
14
Gutierrez, David. “Little School on the Prairie: The Overlooked Plight of Rural Education.” The Institute of Politics at
Harvard University. https://iop.harvard.edu/get-involved/harvard-political-review/little-school-prairie-overlooked-plight-
rural-education
|
Introduction
Rural Community College Excellence | 6
2. Geography-Driven Enrollment Challenges
Recruiting students is harder in less densely populated areas. With many prospective students
at a greater distance from campus, securing enrollment requires greater effort by recruiters and
advisors of rural community colleges. While about half of rural areas have seen some population
growth in recent years, other non-metro areas have lost population since 2010, and birth rate
declines suggest this trend will continue.
15
But the challenge goes beyond smaller potential
applicant pools. Prospective students in rural service areas—where college degree attainment rates
are low—are less likely to know someone with a college degree, someone who can inspire them or
guide them through the college application process.
16
Additionally, many rural areas lack critical
infrastructure for students to access information, including reliable broadband internet and public
transportation.
17
Excellent rural community colleges respond by directly lling these community
resource gaps where they can: building the needed infrastructure or bringing education to where
students are.
3. Skepticism About Higher Education
In rural communities where manufacturing, energy, and agriculture jobs were once prevalent, many
residents once earned good wages without a college degree. Many interviewed for this report noted
that, in their communities, the idea that a college education is unnecessary lingers, despite the
changing economy.
18
Another challenge is the recent political narrative questioning the value of higher
education.
19
Some rural community college leaders interviewed for this guide believe that as politicians
have increasingly voiced concerns about higher education, this view has had an outsized impact on
student recruitment in their relatively conservative communities.
20
Skepticism about the value of community college also likely comes from the calculations by prospective
students about the opportunity cost associated with enrolling. Multiple factors contribute to these
calculations: First, prospective rural community college students may not believe they can afford to lose
wages to come to college and complete a credential. Because a higher proportion of people in rural
15
Cromartie, John. “Rural Areas Show Overall Population Decline and Shifting Regional Patterns of Population Change”
Economic Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture. September 5, 2017. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-
waves/2017/september/rural-areas-show-overall-population-decline-and-shifting-regional-patterns-of-population-change/
16
S. Sowl, “View of a Systematic Review of Research on Rural College Access since 2000.” 2021. https://journals.library.
msstate.edu/index.php/ruraled/article/view/1239/921; Pappano, Laura. 2017. “Colleges Discover the Rural Student.”
The New York Times, January 31, 2017, sec. Education. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/education/edlife/colleges-
discover-rural-student.html.
17
Rush-Marlowe, Rachel. “Strengthening Rural Community Colleges.” Association of Community College Trustees. 2022.
https://www.acct.org/les/ACCT8169%20%28Strengthening%20Rural%20Community%20Colleges%20Update%29.pdf;
Hillman, Colston, Bach-Hanson, and Peek, “Mapping Rural Colleges and Their Communities.”
18
Carnevale, Strohl, Ridley, and Gulish, “Three Educational Pathways to Good Jobs.”
19
Parker, Kim. “The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education.” Pew Research Center. August 2019. https://www.
pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/08/19/the-growing-partisan-divide-in-views-of-higher-education-2/
20
Keily, Tom and Meghan McCann. “Perceptions of Postsecondary Education and Training in Rural Areas.” Education
Commission of the States. June 2021. https://www.ecs.org/wp-content/uploads/Perceptions-of-Postsecondary-Education-
and-Training-in-Rural-Areas.pdf
|
Introduction
Rural Community College Excellence | 7
areas live in poverty (over 14 percent, compared
to 11 percent in metropolitan areas), the pull to
choose employment over higher education may
affect a higher proportion of potential students
in rural communities.
21
Second, completing
a credential of value is far from certain. Most
community college starters (60 percent) do not
earn any credential in six years, and outcomes for
students of color are lower.
22
Finally, outcomes
for those who do complete may discourage
some prospective students. According to the
Community College Research Center (CCRC), only about a quarter (23 percent) of associate degree
graduates and a little more than a third (37 percent) of occupational certicate holders completed
programs associated with earnings of at least $35,000 two years after completion.
23
Rural colleges included in this guide strive to deliver better results, to improve completion rates,
and partner with employers and K-12 schools to build efcient pathways that result in good jobs
or efcient transfer to a four-year university. They then strategically tout those results to overcome
skepticism and enroll more students.
4. Constrained Resources
The higher rate of poverty in rural communities means many students struggle to afford tuition and
other costs associated with attaining a degree, such as transportation, childcare, and textbooks.
Rural community colleges tend to have fewer resources available to ll those gaps. They have, on
average, fewer students than other community colleges (about 2,500 versus a national average
of over 8,000) and receive thousands less in total revenue per student than the average for all
institutions.
24
Particularly in rural communities with declining populations and relatively low salaries,
social service providers have access to less tax revenue, compounding the effects of poverty.
25
21
Shrider, Emily, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega. “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020 Current
Population Reports.” U.S. Census Bureau. September 2021. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/
publications/2021/demo/p60-273.pdf.; https://journals.library.msstate.edu/index.php/ruraled/article/view/1239/921
22
Community College Research Center analysis of data from the National Student Clearinghouse’s Completing College
2020, https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/Completions_Report_2020.pdf
23
Fink, John and Davis Jenkins. “How Much Are Community College Graduates Earning Two Years Later?” Community
College Research Center. January 13, 2022. https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/easyblog/how-much-are-community-college-
graduates-earning.html; Carnevale, Anthony, Jeff Strohl, Ban Cheah, and Neil Ridley. “Good Jobs that Pay Without a BA.”
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. 2017. https://goodjobsdata.org/wp-content/uploads/
Good-Jobs-wo-BA-nal.pdf.
24
Hillman, Colston, Bach-Hanson, and Peek, “Mapping Rural Colleges and Their Communities”; McClure, Kevin, Cecilia
Orphan, Alisa Hicklin Fryar, and Andrew Koricich. “Strengthening Rural Anchor Institutions: Federal Policy Solutions for
Rural Public Colleges and the Communities They Serve.” Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges. January 2021. Page
8. https://assets.website-les.com/5fd3cd8b31d72c5133b17425/600f69daa492f04dedc7f691_ARRC_Strengthening%20
Rural%20Anchor%20Institutions_Full%20Report.pdf
25
Ajilore and Willingham, “Adversity and Assets.”
|
Introduction
Imperial Valley College | Imperial, California
Rural Community College Excellence | 8
Rural communities also generally have fewer regional actors with substantial assets with
which community colleges can partner to advance student success, such as large employers,
philanthropies, and sizable nonprot organizations. Finally, due largely to their remote locations,
rural colleges face relatively high costs for some services.
26
This means rural colleges have less
funding for support services, equipment for technical programs, and personnel critical to advancing
student success. To overcome funding limitations, strong community colleges work creatively
to identify and build mutually benecial partnerships with employers, universities, and other
organizations that can contribute resources to advance student success.
5. Faculty and Staff Hiring and Retention
Rural community colleges often have challenges recruiting and retaining staff and faculty. Many
community colleges researched for this guide cited particular challenges hiring for positions that
require technical skills in high demand, such as faculty and staff with information technology or
institutional research expertise. As noted earlier, part of the challenge is that rural colleges don’t have
equal nancial resources to compete with other colleges for essential personnel. Another factor:
Rural college leaders we interviewed reported hesitancy among candidates to move to a rural area
unless they have a prior connection to the place. Finally, limited housing availability—either because
of rising costs in rural communities with tourist attractions or low supply—makes faculty and staff
recruitment even more difcult. These recruitment challenges mean rural community colleges must
devise creative solutions, such as building housing for faculty and staff, sharing services with other
community colleges, and combining roles in ways that increase efciency and effectiveness.
26
Rush-Marlowe, Rachel. “Strengthening Rural Community Colleges.” In areas with fewer community resources, rural
colleges have both higher student services and instructional costs. They often provide more basic needs directly to
students, like transportation support and internet access, and without nearby hands-on learning opportunities provided
by industry, rural colleges must invest in expensive, high-tech equipment like medical simulation dummies to ensure
student learning when there is no neighboring partner hospital for nursing students.
|
Introduction
Catawba Valley Community College | Hickory, North Carolina
Rural Community College Excellence | 9
|
Four Approaches to Promote Rural College Success
Four Approaches to Promote
Rural College Success
In this report, we identify these four approaches that enable excellent rural community colleges to
capitalize on the strengths and overcome the challenges outlined in the previous section.
1.
2.
3.
Create Pathways to Economic Mobility
Convince Students to Enroll
and Stay in College
Build Strategic Partnerships to Resource
Student Success
4.
Utilize Small Size as a Strength
To enable these approaches to work, the rural community colleges proled in this publication are all
guided by a strong set of student success reform priorities. Presidents of these colleges put forth a
specic, actionable reform agenda rooted in a deep understanding of their community and aimed
at improving the success of students, advancing their economic mobility, and developing talent in
the region. With that reform agenda in place, the colleges and leaders proled in this guide used the
following four approaches to overcome doubts about higher education, attract new resources, and
deliver credentials that strengthen the lives of rural students and their communities.
Rural Community College Excellence | 10
1. Create Pathways to Economic Mobility
In a survey conducted by the Education Commission of the States, only half of rural respondents said
they believed additional education would advance their career, and only 40 percent saw enrolling in
higher education as a means to secure a stable job in times of economic uncertainty.
27
Data show that
this perception is inaccurate: Compared to rural residents with only a high school diploma, bachelor’s
degree holders in rural communities earn nearly $15,000 more a year,
and rural residents with some
college or an associate degree earn an additional $4,000 annually.
28
Despite these facts, the perception that higher education is not worth the investment creates enrollment
and student success challenges. Leaders of exceptional colleges understand that building trust with
potential students and community members starts with delivering programs with strong outcomes.
They work to understand their regional labor markets and ensure that programs of study align with real
opportunity, whether that means graduating directly into a good job or transferring and attaining a
bachelor’s degree that leads to a good job.
Excellent rural colleges also make the value of strong programs clear to students. They incorporate
hands-on learning that helps students see the value of their education while they are in college,
increasing the chances they will persist to graduation. They communicate that value to prospective
students and to others in the community who inuence them—including friends or family members who
might otherwise encourage prospective students to forgo college for a job.
29
Make Connections Between Programs
and Existing Workforce Needs
Part of delivering valuable credentials starts with
an understanding of where the best workforce
opportunities are (and are not). Leaders of
excellent community colleges do this through
a combination of data analysis on workforce
trends and conversations with employers about
future workforce needs.
At Lake Area Technical College in Watertown,
South Dakota, senior leaders and program
directors regularly conduct such analyses. New
programs are approved by senior leaders only
if there is enough labor market demand for
graduates to secure good jobs. Sometimes,
leaders must make the hard decision to turn
down potential partners if the payoff isn’t there
for students. For example, when the college
was approached by livestock farmers in need of
large-animal veterinary technicians, the college
declined to establish a program because labor
market data revealed that too few jobs with
strong wages would be available to graduates.
27
Keily and McCann, “Perceptions of Postsecondary Education and Training in Rural Areas.”
28
“Rural Education.” Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. April 23, 2021. https://www.ers.usda.gov/
topics/rural-economy-population/employment-education/rural-education
29
Schaidle, Allen. “Does Being Rural Matter? The Economic & Social Concerns of Rural Graduates,” The Evolllution. April
8, 2020. https://evolllution.com/revenue-streams/extending_lifelong_learning/does-being-rural-matter-the-economic-
social-concerns-of-rural-graduates/; Carr, Patrick J, and Maria Kefalas. 2011. Hollowing out the Middle the Rural Brain
Drain and What It Means for America. Boston, Mass. Beacon Press.
|
Create Pathways to Economic Mobility
Rural Community College Excellence | 11
In contrast, when data suggested a dramatic
need for more nurses and diesel technicians
in their region, Lake Area leaders seized the
opportunity. The college partnered with a
healthcare provider to build the Prairie Lakes
Healthcare Center of Learning for their nursing
students (complete with a classrooms, medical
labs, and a state-of-the-art simulation lab). The
partnership enabled the college to hire more
faculty, support remote learning sites, and cover
costs associated with more clinical hours. These
strategic investments paid off: The college saw a
28 percent increase in program enrollment over
ve years, and the students who graduate from
these programs go on to provide much-needed
health care in the region.
In the eld of diesel technology, market demand
pushed college leaders to work within funding
constraints to expand their program by 7 percent
between 2018 and 2022. Recognizing that
this level of growth will still not meet growing
demand, college leaders are in discussion with an
industry leader to substantially expand training,
using the nursing partnership as a model.
In both programs, Lake Area struggled to hire
faculty away from industries that offered better
salaries, a challenge that has increased due
to recent worker shortages. So, the college
received state support to increase faculty
salaries, which are now competitive with
industry. Lake Area leaders believe they secured
those resources partly because of the college’s
track record of developing and implementing
clear plans to meet specic labor market needs.
Once programs are built, Lake Area conducts
a rigorous annual program review process to
ensure that every program continues to deliver
value. Every year, program leaders assess data
on employer satisfaction, student satisfaction,
graduation rates, wages of college graduates,
and other information (see an example one
page data report below). These data reports
keep program leaders attuned to changes in the
labor markets so they can continue to deliver
strong outcomes and make adjustments when
weaknesses emerge.
KeyPerformanceIndicator sandTr endsAcademicYear2018‐2019
RowLabels C ap acity % Fu l l
DIESELTECHNOLOGY
(
DT&
DCAT)
155
113%
Accre d i tati on
NATEFthr oughOctober2020
Facu l ty an d Staf
f
Fu l l ‐ti m e Ins tru cto r 1 8
Part‐ti m e Ins tru cto r
Adjunct
Fu l l ‐ti m e Staff 1
Part‐ti m e Staff
Te m po rary Staff
Inte rn Staf
f
4.3
4.3 4.4
4.3 4.3
4.7
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4 4.4
4.2
4.4
4.2
4.3
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
StudentSatisfactionbyGradYear
(Averageofprogram‐relatedquestions. Scale1to5.Highisbetter)
D CA T DT D TB H
11
28
24
26
14
8
13 15 15 15
119
125
110
113
118
139 152
154
142
125
139
8
21
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Enrollment
DCAT DT DT BH
119
136
138
137
144
153
160
167
157
148
175
17
36
26
5
26
54
36
6
32
62 6
74
32
42
20
23
34
21
27
33
23
26
5
42
5
39
23
0%
25%
50%
75%
100%
~T2Diesel
~T2Diesel
~T2Diesel
AE D
~T2Diesel
M ACS
~T2Diesel
AE D
~T2Diesel
M ACS
AE D
M ACS
T2 Diesel
M ACS
T2 Diesel
AE D
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
Pas s F ail
$6,033
$4,115
$3,336
$26K
$40K $40K
2019 2020 2021
Travel
$85,926
$67,808
$97,444
$85K
$97K $97 K
2019 2020 2021
Supplies
$25,060
$16,137
$29,013
$35K $35 K
$32K
2019 2020 2021
Services
$77K
$90K
$306K
$80K
$95K
$309K
2019 2020 2021
Equipment
Budget byFY
Budget Spent
3.6
4.0
3.4
3.5
3.3
2012 2015 2016 2018 2020
Occupational
3.4
3.0
3.5
3.5
3.4
2012 2015 2016 2018 2020
Work Ethic
3.6
3.0
3.6 3.6 3.6
2012 2015 2016 2018 2020
Prof essionalism
3.2
4.0
3.3 3. 3
3.0
2012 2015 2016 2018 2020
Problem Solving
3.1
4.0
3.2
3.6
3.3
2012 2015 2016 2018 2020
Comm unicat ion
3.3
4.0
3.5 3. 5
3.4
2012 2015 2016 2018 2020
InfoHandling
EmployerSatisfaction
1YearafterGraduation(Scaleof1to4.High isbetter)
F
1%
M
99%
ByGenderthis
AY
94.5%
88.7%
89.8%
85.5%
97.8%
93.1%
90.8%
90.6%
93.3%
94.9%
83.7%
94.5%
90.9% 90.5% 90.5%
97.8%
93.1%
91.5% 91.8%
93.3%
96.2%
83.7%
20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 20 20 20 21
DT
Retention
%Retained inPrgm % R e tai n e d at L ATC
DieselCertifications (notincludingDCAT) byYear Tested
65
63
49
63
65
65
67
63
83
9
7
2
1
7
1
2
1
4
1
32
2
$16.86
$18.02
$18.38
$20.10
$20.58
$19.85
$20.45
$23.95
$23.15
$ ‐
$5.00
$10.00
$15.00
$20.00
$25.00
$30.00
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Placement &AverageWageafter6months
Jo b in fi e ld Co ntin ue E d /M il itar y
Job no ti nf i e ld Seeki ngJob
Not in L abor Mk t A verag e o fA vg wag e a f te r6 Mo nths
Lake Area Tech data report.
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Rural Community College Excellence | 12
Envision a Larger Service Area to
Expand Opportunity
Many rural community colleges nd there are
simply not enough good jobs in their region
for graduates. Strong leaders look further
aeld, drawing concentric circles that extend
beyond their traditional service area, looking
for unmet labor market needs that can provide
opportunities for graduates.
Such an analysis led leaders at Walla Walla
Community College in southeastern
Washington to expand its nursing program.
The regional nursing shortage was clear
from communications with the local hospital,
but an economic analysis showed a large
shortage across the entire state. Leaders saw
an opportunity to help solve that problem and
serve their students. Walla Walla developed
a plan to dramatically expand its output of
nurses and made a strong case for investment
by the state, resulting in millions of state dollars
for facilities and equipment. The end result: a
tripling of graduates from the nursing program
and closure of a critical talent gap.
Combine Workforce and Transfer
Pathways to Meet Regional Needs
Invariably, analysis of a rural community’s labor
market reveals the need for more workers with
both workforce credentials and bachelor’s
degrees. Seeing that, leaders of strong rural
colleges work to not just strengthen workforce
programs but also pathways to bachelor’s
degrees that align with in-demand jobs and
long-term career opportunities.
A strong example comes from West Kentucky
Community and Technical College, located
on the banks of the Ohio River. Many in the
college’s service area, in and around Paducah,
nd employment in the river barge industry. But
most who took entry-level jobs as deckhands
failed to earn a family-sustaining wage and
had limited opportunity for promotion.
Meanwhile, riverboat operators needed
more people with technical skills for multiple
positions, including management. In response,
the college created a certicate in diesel
technology that fully articulates into associate
degrees in marine technology and engineering,
enabling deckhands to be promoted into boat
maintenance and captain roles. Those associate
degrees articulate to University of Kentucky
bachelor’s degrees in engineering, which
can be completed on the community college
campus. Deckhands with no formal training
can go to West Kentucky for a certicate, an
associate degree, and ultimately a bachelor’s
degree that leads to harbor management
roles, all without leaving Paducah. Designed in
collaboration with the river barge industry, this
degree path has effectively closed the talent
gaps the industry was experiencing.
In Northern California, leaders at Shasta
College recognized a similar need for talent
and opportunity to generate new career-
aligned pathways. The college and its university
partners—including California State University,
Simpson University, and Columbia College—
created a program called Bachelor’s Through
Online and Local Degrees that provides
accessible pathways from community college to
bachelor’s degrees in high-demand elds such
as business, criminal justice, early childhood
education, information technology, and social
work. After completing an associate degree at
Shasta, students stay on the community college
campus, taking both upper-division coursework
online from a partner university and a series
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Create Pathways to Economic Mobility
Rural Community College Excellence | 13
of four one-credit, in-person Shasta courses
(in university navigation, career development,
job readiness, and graduate education). This
arrangement gives students taking online
courses continued access to valuable services
on the community college campus and a local
cohort of bachelor’s-seeking students.
By designing program pathways with the end
in mind—good jobs for graduates in areas of
regional workforce need—West Kentucky and
Shasta deliver economic mobility for students
and needed talent for their communities.
Generate New Industries and
Employment Opportunities for
Students
The most forward-thinking rural college
leaders consider not just how to meet existing
workforce needs, but how to develop new job
opportunities. They look for trends in labor
market data, pay attention to existing and
emerging industries in similar areas, and talk to
industry leaders and workforce development
organizations to explore what might be possible
in their communities. Understanding that most
employers won’t show up in rural communities
uninvited, leaders take responsibility for
attracting them and even developing new
industry sectors.
30
This work is typically a team
effort, with community college leaders working
alongside local government ofcials, economic
development authorities, larger existing
employers, and sometimes state agencies
to develop a forward-looking economic
development agenda. Highly effective rural
community college leaders play a key role in
driving and supporting that collaboration.
Walla Walla Community College provides an
excellent example. In the late 1990s, 17 wineries
existed in its service area. College leaders
understood that fertile land was widely available
and that area winemakers were eager to see
the industry grow—and national market analysis
revealed both an increased national demand for
high-end wine and that tourists in wine country
typically spend more than twice the amount of
tourists elsewhere.
For more information on strengthening transfer in
rural communities, see Rural Transfer Pathways:
Balancing Individual and Community Needs
30
Baldwin, Chris, Joe Schaffer, and Gretchen Schmidt “Rural Community Colleges: Challenges, Context, and Commitment
to Students.” National Center for Inquiry and Improvement. July 2021, https://ncii-improve.com/wp-content/
uploads/2021/07/NCII-Rural-Leaders-Big-Picture-2021-1.pdf
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The college initiated a collaboration with the
City of Walla Walla, the Port of Walla Walla,
Walla Walla County, and two major local
employers: Nelson Irrigation and ETS Labs
(which provided technical services to the
budding Washington State wine industry).
These partners helped the college raise
$5 million from investors to open the Center
for Enology and Viticulture in 2001.
Their strategy and hard work paid off. Within
a decade, Walla Walla had more than 170
wineries in operation and is now a wine-
tourist destination. That growth spurred
additional development in wine distribution
as well as the food and hospitality industries,
which led to new programs at the college and
new job opportunities for graduates.
Building on that success, Walla Walla College
looked for additional economic opportunities
to collaborate with regional partners, leading
to a partnership in water management
with local environmental groups, the
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation, and local farmers. This coalition
built the Water and Environmental Center,
where partners work together to solve
water shortage problems and students
earn degrees in watershed ecology, a eld
with growing demand in the region. Walla
Walla also started a wind energy program
to capitalize on the growing wind turbine
industry, collaborating with regional partners
to create new pathways to economic mobility
for students.
Sometimes, colleges step up to help ll a hole
left by employers who have relocated or shut
down. In Hickory, North Carolina, the once-
dominant furniture manufacturing industry
has all but disappeared. Understanding
that students needed new opportunities
for living-wage jobs, leaders at Catawba
Valley Community College set a bold goal:
to become a major auto mechanic hub for
the Southeastern United States. Leaders
started by raising funds to build a state-
of-the-art auto mechanic training facility in
partnership with local auto dealers, providing
an immediate path for students to good local
jobs. Next, college leaders worked with local
Toyota and Lexus dealerships— with whom
the college had already built trust and strong
partnerships by training employees—to lobby
Toyota’s national headquarters to appoint the
college as a certied Toyota training center.
Winning a bid to be the Southeastern United
States Toyota Technical Education College
Support Elite program provider, the college
now trains Toyota technicians from North
Carolina to Florida and Alabama. In this way,
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Rural Community College Excellence | 15
Catawba Valley’s efforts to deliver quality
technicians grew into a regional partnership
that benets students and the community.
When advancing these kinds of new pathways
and opportunities, leaders of excellent rural
colleges consider the historical context of the
communities they serve. At Patrick & Henry
Community College in Martinsville, Virginia,
that included the legacy of a large textile
manufacturing industry, much of which shut
down in the early 2000s, creating substantial
economic hardship.
31
When considering how
to help the community rebuild, Patrick &
Henry leaders decided to focus on building a
strong network of smaller employers to avoid,
once again, a community over-reliant on a few
large ones.
As a rst step, the college partnered
with Festo Didactic, a leader in advanced
manufacturing training, to build a state-of-
the-art mechatronics training facility that was
recognized as a center of excellence by the
National Coalition of Certication Centers.
The strong program at this facility led to other
successes: attracting Schock Industries, a
German company, to the area for the rst time
and encouraging Ten Oaks, a local hardwood
ooring manufacturer, to expand existing
operations, creating additional opportunities
for Patrick & Henry graduates.
Since 2015, Patrick & Henry has also
partnered with the Chambers of Commerce
in Henry County and Martinsville on an
entrepreneurial incubation program and an
eight-week entrepreneurial bootcamp. Thirty
million dollars have been invested, resulting
in the creation of 45 small businesses, 85
percent of which remain open two years
after founding. And more than half of these
businesses are owned by people of color,
expanding economic opportunity in a place
where a third of residents are people of color.
As in other rural communities, tribal colleges
(most of which are rural or rural-serving insti-
tutions) often have a unique and leading role
in economic development in their regions.
Such is the case with Diné College, a tribal
college headquartered in Tsaile, Arizona.
The college serves the Navajo Nation, an area
that covers 27,000 square miles, larger than
the state of West Virginia. Diné President
Charles Roessel understands the college’s role
to be one of not just economic development
but “nation-building.” Roessel has advanced
an ambitious vision for his college, including
through the creation of sustainable businesses
that can retain graduates in the Nation and
generate income in a community with extreme
economic hardship: Nearly 43 percent of the
Navajo population lives in poverty, and only 7
percent of adults have a college degree.
32
Diné does not have many large nearby
industry partners. Attracting new ones is
hard because much of the region lacks
reliable services and road access, and about
90 percent of land is owned by the federal
government, which prevents the construction
of new permanent buildings.
33
31
Gettleman, Jeffrey. “In Martinsville, Va., Fleece Has Lost Its Luster.” March 3, 2002. Baltimore Sun. Accessed November 10,
2022. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2002-03-03-0203030083-story.html.
32
“Employment by sectors of the Navajo Nation.” The Navajo Nation. Accessed November 10, 2022. http://navajobusiness.
com/fastFacts/EconomicSectors.htm
33
Wagner, Dennis and Craig Harris. “Why it’s so difcult to build homes on the Navajo Reservation.” The Arizona Republic.
December 14, 2016. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investigations/2016/12/14/why-its-difcult-build-
homes-navajo-reservation/79541556/
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Create Pathways to Economic Mobility
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Given the tribe’s history with uranium mining —
which led to contaminated water and other
widespread
health issues—there also remains
lingering skepticism of outside corporations.
34
In light of these challenges, the college chose
to start its own businesses, including a wool
business that will offer signicant employment
opportunities to graduates. In the Navajo
nation, sheep ranching has been a cultural and
economic staple for hundreds of years. Given
the long distances farmers often must travel
to sell the wool and insufcient infrastructure
to shear sheep and prepare wool in ways
that yield, Navajo people working in this area
earned only subsistence wages. In recent years,
economic development leaders and Navajo
elders have centralized the sale of wool and
attracted external buyers. For its part, Diné
College employs a grant-funded extension
agent who trains and educates ranchers on how
to efciently shear and process wool.
35
These
efforts have spurred growth in the wool market
and improved incomes for workers and the tribe.
President Roessel has strategically engaged
key community stakeholders, including local
business leaders, to ensure that programs the
college offers provide sustainable employment
opportunities to graduates while also
addressing the needs of the Navajo Nation.
The college has changed the composition
of the board from solely tribal elders to also
include local business leaders who can provide
the college with an expanded understanding
of employment trends. These new board
members help the college make employer
connections, provide mentorship and support
to students, and provide legal and accounting
expertise to the college. An example of a
program that serves Navajo needs and delivers
students to jobs: The college’s extension
programs offers a 10-week course to train
students to become water scientists so they can
identify contamination in wells from uranium
mining runoff.
36
No matter their region, colleges that deliver
excellent workforce outcomes for their
students and generate talent needed in
their communities make sure their programs
connect to existing workforce needs and
proactively cultivate new jobs and industries.
They pay close attention to their communities’
needs, building on community strengths
and learning from the past. And whenever
economic opportunities are limited, they build
new ones in partnership with others in their
region and beyond.
34
Morales, Laurel. “For The Navajo Nation, Uranium Mining’s Deadly Legacy Lingers.” NPR April 10, 2016. https://www.npr.
org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/10/473547227/for-the-navajo-nation-uranium-minings-deadly-legacy-lingers.
35
Petrovski, Leslie. “Wool on the Reservation?” https://www.interweave.com/article/knitting/navajo-wool-global-market/.
Interweave. August 9, 2018.
36
“UA, Diné College Receive $500K USDA Grant to Train Navajo Water Scientists.” Fronteras. June 4, 2021. https://
fronterasdesk.org/content/1689006/ua-din-college-receive-500k-usda-grant-train-navajo-water-scientists.
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2. Convince Students to Enroll and Stay
in College
Effective rural college leaders understand that they—and others at their colleges—must make the case to
community members about how higher education can lead to better lives for students and a stronger
community for everyone. Often, efforts to drive economic development and shape cultural perceptions
inform one another: Colleges that consistently demonstrate positive impact from their programs of
study can more readily strengthen a college-going culture.
Skepticism in rural communities about higher education’s value originates from multiple places,
according to the leaders interviewed for this guide. To some prospective students and families, higher
education is perceived as elitist or exclusionary—a view that can be especially prevalent among those
who have little exposure to college.
37
Others doubt the return on investment, especially in areas where,
historically, individuals could secure stable, family-sustaining employment in manufacturing, energy,
or agriculture with just a high school diploma. There is also a sense among potential students that they
cannot afford the opportunity cost of forgoing working hours to pursue a degree, especially when
college is far away from home or work. Regardless of what’s behind this skepticism, our research shows
that leaders at excellent rural colleges have found ways to effectively overcome it by thoughtfully
designing communications and outreach strategies that meet students where they are and, more
importantly, by providing strong, workforce-aligned educational programs that back their promises.
Overcome Misperceptions about
Careers and Institutions
Research suggests that students who feel they
belong in college and have a high degree
of trust in educational institutions and their
programs are more likely to enroll and persist
through their programs.
38
Patrick & Henry
Community College leaders realized that
if they were to meet the talent needs of new
manufacturing employers that had moved to
their area, they needed to convince students
that advanced manufacturing jobs are very
different from the unstable manufacturing jobs
that had left the community. “Manufacturing was
a dirty word in the community,” Patrick & Henry
President Greg Hodges said. “If you said it, you
had to go wash your mouth out with soap.”
In 2016, the college had only two or three
students enrolling in advanced manufacturing
courses. The college amped up outreach,
bringing students, families, and K-12 guidance
counselors onto campus to show them the
new facilities and explain potential career
pathways. The college’s messaging focused
heavily on the program’s connection to good
37
Pappano, Laura. 2017. “Voices from Rural America on Why (or Why Not) to Go to College.” The New York Times, January 31,
2017, sec. Education. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/education/edlife/voices-from-rural-america-on-why-or-why-
not-go-to-college.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer.
38
“The Trust Gap Among College Students.” Evidence-Based Improvement in Higher Education. National Survey of Student
Engagement. Accessed November 10, 2022. https://nsse.indiana.edu/research/annual-results/trust/index.html.
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Convince Students to Enroll and Stay in College
Rural Community College Excellence | 18
jobs. Students were repeatedly told they could
receive job offers—sometimes at as high as $36
an hour—and that some employers covered
tuition. After ve years of dedicated effort, the
college is seeing every course lled within two
days of registration opening.
At a time when other community colleges across
the U.S. have struggled to ll classes, Patrick &
Henry’s enrollment has remained steady. “We
haven’t had an enrollment decline so much as
we have an enrollment realignment,” Hodges
said. That comes from an understanding of what
students really want: “a J-O-B degree,” a term
Hodges uses frequently.
For tribal colleges, the work of convincing
students to enroll must be done against a
backdrop of long-standing inequities and
economic marginalization.
39
Recognizing this,
Diné College leaders focus on building trust.
The college embeds Navajo values, language,
and traditions into all its curriculum so students
can see the college’s connection to the
community, feel understood, and feel pride in
their culture. In an area where many homes lack
running water and electricity, the eight-story
building on the main college campus stands
in sharp contrast to what people are used to.
40
Understanding that this and other contextual
factors might cause residents of the Navajo
reservation to view a college as intimidating,
Diné leaders dedicate resources to making the
campus approachable.
41
The college’s main
building and its dorms are built to resemble
a hogon, the traditional home of the Navajo
people. The library is at the center of the
building and represents where the re would
be in the hogon. These design choices have
helped create a greater sense of belonging and
trust among the students and, more broadly,
the Navajo people. In an area where only 7
percent of adults have a college degree, these
strategies have contributed to an impressive
60 percent increase in degrees awarded by the
college annually since 2010.
Evolve Outreach
as Demographics Change
In communities with changing demographics,
efforts to build visibility and trust must also
evolve if they are to succeed. Leaders at
effective rural colleges pay attention to shifting
demographics in their area’s K-12 schools,
then use that information to identify what the
growing populations of students and families
value, who is best suited to reach them, and
how to convey the messages that will bring
them to campus.
Northwest Iowa Community College is
in a region with a fast-growing Hispanic
population: Between 2010 and 2020, the
Hispanic population of Sheldon, Iowa, nearly
doubled.
42
Many immigrant parents with
children moving through the K-12 system have
limited prociency in English. The college has
long held campus visits for high school juniors
and seniors, but Northwest Iowa leaders saw
that in order to reach the growing Hispanic
39
Crazy Bull, Cheryl and Justin Guillory, “Revolution in Higher Education: Identity & Cultural Beliefs Inspire Tribal Colleges
& Universities,” 2018. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. https://www.amacad.org/sites/default/les/
publication/downloads/010_Crazy-Bull-Guillory-pp095-105.pdf
40
“Life in Rural America: Part II.” May 2019. NPR, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public
Health. https://media.npr.org/documents/2019/may/NPR-RWJF-HARVARD_Rural_Poll_Part_2.pdf.
41
Bogody, Candace. September 20, 2010. “Overcoming the Hurdles to College as a Navajo Student.” The Nation.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/overcoming-hurdles-college-navajo-student/
42
Author’s calculation using data from U.S. Census Bureau
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Convince Students to Enroll and Stay in College
Rural Community College Excellence | 19
population, the college would need to modify
its approach. The solution: A series of events
called “Latino Thunder Fridays,” (named after
the college’s mascot, “Thunder”) designed
to bring students and families to campus and
show them that the college understands their
needs. The events, conducted completely
in Spanish, include a sit-down meeting with
faculty members in students’ elds of interest.
The results have been outstanding: 75 percent
of students who participate in Latino Thunder
Fridays enroll at the college.
In addition to the growing Hispanic student
population, Northwest Iowa enrolls a sizable
number of students from Kenya, Egypt, and
Uganda. The college helps these students feel
welcomed, accepted, and supported by giving
them practical guidance on how to succeed in
the small town of Sheldon, population 5,178.
Advisors and other student support staff
proactively contact students in their programs
and provide information on how to navigate
Iowa winters (including buying winter clothing)
and life in rural America.
Northwest Iowa leaders view Hispanic and
African students not just as potential regional
workers but as assets to the college and
community. The college hosts monthly events
on campus, open to all students and Sheldon
residents, that showcase different cultures.
In one recent event, “A Taste of the World,”
23 students and 10 staff prepared food,
decorations, and presentations representing
21 different countries. Multicultural leader
Samson Nyambati and nursing student Daniel
Nyanchoga led everyone in Kenyan dances
and songs, and Mexican students showcased
the popular line dance Caballo Dorado.
Over 150 attended, including staff, students,
Northwest Iowa board members, and
representatives from the multicultural clubs
at nearby four-year partners, Dordt University
and Northwestern College.
Start the College-Going Pathway
in High School
Establishing a reliable presence in K-12 schools
is a central strategy used by strong rural
community colleges working to advance trust
and belonging among potential students. But
deep engagement with K-12 schools requires
an investment of resources. Dual enrollment
programs, for example, can require signicant
staff time and money from a college, and don’t
always generate the same revenue as enrollment
of students after high school. Even so, leaders
of excellent rural colleges understand that
increasing dual enrollment helps more students
start on the path to a college credential, which
benets both the community and the college.
In the small town of Zanesville, Ohio—where Zane
State College is located—community leaders
The Dual Enrollment Playbook
Learn more at as.pn/DualEnrollmentPlaybook
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Convince Students to Enroll and Stay in College
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knew they needed to tackle their region’s
social and economic challenges head-on.
“There is some pressure to not do better than
your parents,” Doug Baker, the superintendent of
Zanesville City School District, explained. “One
of my students went to a university in Cincinnati,
hit a snag with nancial aid and had to move back
home. Her mom then started telling her, ‘You’re
from Zanesville, you’ll get a job in Zanesville,
and you’ll marry a boy from Zanesville.’” In other
words, “College is not for you.”
To build and strengthen a college-going culture,
Zane State partnered with the school district
to establish a robust dual enrollment program.
While not all dual enrollment students come
to Zane State after high school, the college’s
leaders believe that broadening exposure and
access to college courses is important for the
community, as is the condence gained when
students succeed in them. When data analysis
revealed that some dually enrolled students
never continue to college, Zane State identied
nearly 1,000 students who earned college
credit in high school but never enrolled in any
postsecondary institution after graduating, and
is now actively recruiting them, showing them
pathways to economic mobility.
Guided by the idea that students who graduate
from high school already on a college degree
path are more likely to understand the value
of continuing in college, Zane State also works
directly with high school advisors to help dually
enrolled high school students take courses
tightly aligned to degree pathways. The
college has equipped local K-12 advisors with
information about which Zane State courses t
into certain pathways and access to documents
showing continuing students how close they
are to completing a degree.
Another rural community college that has
established strong dual enrollment pathways:
Imperial Valley College in a rural part
of Southern California near the Mexico
border. The college has developed a deep
relationship with its K-12 system, providing
students dual enrollment courses alongside
robust guidance on college. Instead of waiting
until students graduate, Imperial Valley
College advising staff go into high schools
to help students complete nancial aid
applications, choose a program of study, and
understand what preparatory work they need
to complete an associate degree. As a result of
the college’s efforts, many students leave high
school with an educational plan, developed
with the help of high school advisors (rather
than solely through staff on the community
college payroll). The percentage of high
school graduates who go on to enroll at
Imperial Valley is much higher than at other
community colleges, ranging from 60 percent
to 88 percent, depending on the high school.
And those students persist: The increases
in high school advising and nancial aid
support provided to high school students
have coincided with a steadily increasing
completion rate at Imperial Valley for the area’s
high school graduates.
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Convince Students to Enroll and Stay in College
Imperial Valley College | Imperial, California
Rural Community College Excellence | 21
Address K-12 School Resource Needs
and Student Financial Barriers
Providing resources to struggling high schools
can also be a path to strong K-12 partnerships.
Colorado Mountain College leaders saw
an opportunity to do just that when, in 2012,
budget cuts forced local high schools in
Glenwood Springs, near one of the college’s
campuses, to move to a four-day week to
save $500,000 annually.
43
Recognizing the
difculties that no-school Fridays presented for
working parents, Colorado Mountain College
partnered with the school district to offer “career
academies” in programs ranging from certied
nursing assistance to welding to graphic design.
Through these programs, many high school
students have earned degrees; participating
high schools now host standing-room-only
graduation ceremonies for high school students
who also complete a college credential.
Large geographic distances and limited
transportation options often impede dual
enrollment access in rural communities. To
solve this problem, Wenatchee Valley College
strategically sited an education center to
increase access to geographically isolated
students and provides grant funding to rural
high schools to help rural and Native American
students take dual enrollment courses there.
Columbia Basin College, also in Washington,
provides gas cards for dual enrollment students
who live farther than 25 miles from the college
so they can visit the campus. The efforts of these
two colleges have helped increase college
access in their regions, especially among the
growing Hispanic population.
44
Remove the Earn-or-Learn Dilemma for
Low-Income Students
Leaders at effective community colleges
understand that students want, and often need,
to earn money right after high school. Rather
than forcing students to choose between college
and a job, effective rural colleges ensure that
students have simultaneous access to both.
There are multiple models that pay students as
they develop skills aligned to their ultimate goal:
a good job and fullling career.
In Zane State College’s Appalachian service
area, students often face pressure to earn full-time
wages after high school to support their families.
So, the college partners with regional employers
to create “earn-and-learn” opportunities. Students
attend class two days a week and, on the other
three, get on-the-job training directly related to
their coursework. Students receive wages while
progressing in a program that will benet them
after they graduate. The college started in an area
of community need, establishing partnerships
with local employers who needed bookkeepers
and accountants. Employers report beneting
immediately from the work the student-interns
provided. Due to the success of the program,
the college will soon spread this model to
engineering and medical laboratory technician
elds, where there are also regional shortages.
43
Stroud, John. March 12, 2012. “Gareld Re-2 Board OKs Four-Day Week.” Post Independent. Accessed November 10, 2022.
https://www.postindependent.com/news/gareld-re-2-board-oks-four-day-week/.
44
Mehl, Gelsey, Joshua Wyner, Elisabeth Barnett, John Fink, and Davis Jenkins. 2020. “The Dual Enrollment Playbook:
A Guide to Equitable Acceleration for Students.” The Aspen Institute. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/
uploads/2020/12/ASP-2020-Dual-Enrollment-Playbook.pdf
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Convince Students to Enroll and Stay in College
Rural Community College Excellence | 22
Advance Retention with Equity in Mind
Nationally, community colleges have failed
to retain and graduate students of color and
those from low-income families at the same
rates as other students.
45
But the conversation
around, and the strategies for, advancing
equity in student retention and graduation can
look different in rural communities, especially
as political polarization has increased and
conversations about race have become more
charged in recent years.
46
While successful
rural community colleges often use similar
strategies as urban colleges to close equity
gaps, rural leaders at times communicate about
those strategies differently, using language that
resonates in their communities.
With a student population that is almost all
Navajo, the professional development center at
Diné College trains faculty on how to advance
equity with students’ Navajo culture at the center.
Building on the sacred Navajo concept of “Sa’ah
Naaghai Bik’eh Hozhoo,” which places Navajo
life in harmony with the natural world, Diné
emphasizes social responsibility and resilience.
Students’ pathways are grounded in familiar
cultural references like the cycle of seasons, or
night and day. From entry to post-graduation
success, students learn how Nitsáhákees
(Thinking), Nahat’á (Planning), Iiná (Living) and
Sihasin (Assuring) are the key “seasons.’’ Each
of these concepts maps to key junctures in a
student’s academic path: thinking about the right
major, planning nancial aid, following a degree
plan, and preparing for life after college.
This connection to Navajo culture and
philosophy not only guides how students
progress, but also how the college expects
faculty and staff to support students. The
college’s faculty development efforts
are based in storytelling, a fundamental
component of Navajo life. For instance,
Diné faculty explored how different equity
challenges appear in a majority Native
American population by sharing stories about
their own experiences. As a result, faculty and
staff have in recent years strategized about
how to better support LGBTQ+ students,
engage with students with different tribal
backgrounds, support students dealing with
mental health issues, and better support
students living with disabilities.
47
Successful colleges also pay attention to the
specic needs of students who come from low-
income backgrounds. Rural-serving Amarillo
College in the Texas Panhandle and Patrick
& Henry Community College in southern
Virginia have both centered anti-poverty in
their student success strategies. Amarillo
College President Russell Lowery-Hart knew
that low-income students and students of
color—who make up half of Amarillo students—
completed degrees at lower rates than other
students. He investigated why, and, nding a
connection to both poverty and ethnicity, used
data and student stories to advance a solution.
45
Farrigan, Tracey. November 2, 2020. “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Educational Attainment Persist in Rural America.”
Economic Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2020/november/
racial-and-ethnic-disparities-in-educational-attainment-persist-in-rural-america/.
46
Parker, Kim, Juliana Horowitz, Anna Brown, Richard Fry, D’vera Cohn and Ruth Igielinik. “How Urban, Suburban and Rural
Residents’ View Social and Political Issues.” Pew Research Center. May 22, 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-
trends/2018/05/22/urban-suburban-and-rural-residents-views-on-key-social-and-political-issues/.
47
“Educational Philosophy.” Diné College. https://www.dinecollege.edu/about_dc/educational-philosophy/.
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Rural Community College Excellence | 23
Lowery-Hart created an archetypal student
persona, called “Maria,” and put her at the
center of his senior team’s decision-making.
The persona—constructed from the most
common traits of an Amarillo College student—is
a 27-year-old, Latina student of limited nancial
means, the rst in her family to go to college,
attending part-time, and working two jobs to
support her children. Maria, who embodies the
nancial challenges most Amarillo students
faced, helped keep college leaders and staff
focused on the student experience as they
devised reforms. Lowery-Hart employed this
persona to make the nancial barriers that
students face clear and concrete, consistently
leading and challenging his colleagues to craft
concrete solutions to address what Maria would
likely experience.
“We showcased Maria’s voice at every general
assembly, every town hall,” Lowery-Hart said.
“We had ‘no-excuses meetings’, where we
talked about Maria, listened to Maria, and we
talked about data … to explain why we had
to transform and to give voice to what that
transformation would look like.” Changes
included new and expanded provision of
basic needs: food pantries, transportation,
emergency grants, and, during the pandemic,
a school bus equipped with mobile Wi- in the
college parking lot. These measures, combined
with systemic efforts to clarify degree pathways
and strengthen advising, have helped Amarillo
improve graduation rates from 27 percent to 45
percent over ve years.
To advance his college’s goals to help every
student succeed, Patrick & Henry President
Greg Hodges made a strategic shift in how he
uses and displays data. Many colleges set a
goal of eliminating equity gaps and compare
the success rates of different student group
by race and ethnicity. Instead, Patrick & Henry
leaders set a college-wide graduation rate goal
that is higher than any single demographic
group’s current graduation rate, and they
display success rates for each subgroup in
comparison to the college-wide goal. In this
way, Hodges explained, leaders demonstrate
that the college is working to make sure all
students attain better outcomes while also
justifying some efforts targeted at those groups
furthest from the college-wide goal. College
leaders also refer to the gaps between the
overall goal and the subgroup rates as student
opportunity gaps instead of equity gaps. “We
move forward with the work but without being
mired in the language that has become so
divisive,” Hodges said.
He also emphasizes the goal of advancing
economic mobility for all students.
When faced with political questions or
opposition to college policies designed to
achieve equitable outcomes, he often says,
“These are very challenging times, but your
support of our institution enables us to lift
people out of poverty.”
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Convince Students to Enroll and Stay in College
Rural Community College Excellence | 24
3. Build Strategic Partnerships
to Resource Student Success
Rural community college leaders often develop and maintain relationships with employers, leaders from
K-12 schools and universities, and other community leaders. What distinguishes exceptional rural college
leaders is how they translate the rapport developed at business meetings, over coffee chats, and during
regular run-ins at local events into sustained, mission-driven partnerships that provide high-quality
opportunities for students, train workers for the regional economy, and deliver needed services for both.
Partner with Local Employers
and Community Organizations
to Generate Mission-Aligned Resources
Presidents of exceptional rural colleges
know the relationships they have with local
industries, political leaders, and other
organizations are key to securing more
resources and opportunities for their students
and communities. So they formalize those
relationships, establishing regular meetings
that are anchored in shared goals, rooted in
current data, and guided by clear agendas.
It’s through these structured relationships that
college leaders develop and advance mission-
oriented partnerships that contribute to long-
term advances in student success.
Rural community college presidents have
an opportunity to be especially inuential in
their communities, simply because there are
fewer people in formal leadership positions.
Northwest Iowa Community College
President John Hartog used his position to
create opportunities for collaboration among
his area’s biggest institutions. He participates in
a standing biweekly meeting of the “Big Five”:
county leadership, the Sheldon city manager,
the K-12 superintendent, and representatives
from state legislators’ and congressional staffs.
What started as informal conversations between
the city manager and President Hartog grew
as needs and topics arose. Now that all these
representatives meet on a regular basis, they
can, in their words, “take turns winning.”
Together, they’ve worked to develop solutions
to the community’s capital improvement needs
and complex challenges around housing
shortages, clean water, fentanyl abuse, and
damage from windstorms. These collaborations
provide a multitude of benets. For instance,
leaders from the college and the K-12 system
worked together to fund and build a shared
turf eld for community sporting events, which,
in addition to providing recreation space for
the community, brought more visibility to the
college, a plus for recruiting. It was also a useful
hands-on learning experience for students in
the college’s heavy machinery program, who
participated in its construction.
One important way rural community colleges
create new opportunities for students is by
securing funding and other resources from
community partners. Such was the case at
Patrick & Henry Community College, where
the welding program, which had only 16 welding
benches, was unable to keep pace with demand.
The college developed plans to expand capacity
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Rural Community College Excellence | 25
on its Martinsville campus and to partner with
K-12 schools to provide opportunities for high
school students and adults to earn welding
certicates in the more remote and mountainous
parts of the college’s service area. The question
was how to nance this expansion.
A local foundation, the Tobacco Region
Revitalization Commission, had money to
spend on expanding training, but would not
directly support K-12 school district operations,
which it considered a recurring local funding
responsibility. So, Patrick & Henry submitted
the grant application and received funding to
purchase 45 additional welding benches that
both adults and high school students could
use. It was a win for all involved. The college
doubled the number of welding credentials
it conferred each year, helped close a gap in
regional talent, and provided good-paying jobs
to dozens more students.
The college has also successfully secured
funding for its manufacturing program. By
pairing the college’s mission and the economic
development needs in the community, Patrick &
Henry secured funding from a local foundation
interested in attracting new industries to the
area. The Harvest Foundation, a local funder
created with money from the sale of a hospital,
wanted to be sure that the college was focused
on generating new industries instead of waiting
for manufacturing jobs to return. College
leaders showed the foundation its advanced
manufacturing facilities and shared their vision
for a new and better manufacturing industry
in the region. The foundation, impressed by
what they saw, provided funding to expand
advanced manufacturing programs, which
enabled the college to meet existing business
needs and attract new industries to the area.
Partnering with industry leaders can also
create opportunities and generate resources
for students. For example, Northwest Iowa
Community College partnered with SnapOn,
a major tool manufacturer, to reduce costs for
automotive technology students. Previously,
students had to buy tools at the start of the
program, which cost thousands of dollars,
an amount few could afford. Now, SnapOn
provides tools to students for a minimal
fee each term, which is then credited to
students’ purchase of the tools upon program
completion. When the college did not have
money to hire new instructors for the program,
they turned to other companies to fund
instructors’ salaries for a nite period of time.
Once program enrollments were up, the college
was able to use tuition revenue to support the
entire cost of faculty. The initial boost from
industry helped the college scale its program
and deliver more skilled workers. These industry
partnerships provide many benets, including
free and low-cost program equipment,
scholarships for students in credit programs,
and unique opportunities for students to be
interviewed and hired after graduation.
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Patrick & Henry Community College | Martinsville, Virginia
Rural Community College Excellence | 26
Leverage Institutional Consortia
to Enhance Mission-Aligned Functions
To address resource constraints and advance
mission-critical functions, strong rural colleges
establish creative partnerships, often with
other colleges. A leading example comes
from Northwest Iowa Community College,
which is part of several consortia with other
community colleges and regional universities
to share services. The College Alliance Sharing
Technologies (CAST), for example, was
created by Northwest Iowa and three other
Iowa community colleges to share external
research and technology functions. The CAST
ofce handles state-level reporting, houses
equipment and hardware, and manages a
shared enterprise resource planning system,
which contains nancial aid records, business
services, and other student information.
Northwest Iowa leaders report that this shared
resource frees up their institutional researcher’s
time to do mission-critical student success
work, such as generating weekly grade reports
and program-level retention reports. Faculty
use these reports to compare their program’s
retention rate to those across the college,
an important part of the college’s annual
program review process. If a program falls
below institutional average levels, faculty must
develop an action plan for improvement.
Freed-up IR capacity also enables college
leaders to receive enhanced student outcome
data reports, which provided new insights that
led to new success strategies. For example, one
enhanced report revealed that working adults
were struggling to complete general education
courses. Further investigation revealed that
daytime scheduling was partially to blame, so
the course schedule was revamped to offer
more evening sections. Other solutions, such as
enhanced tutoring and supplemental instruction,
a move to eight-week courses, and faculty
professional development have all arisen from
deeper data use that was made possible by rst
sharing critical IT and reporting services with
other institutions.
Northwest Iowa also belongs to college
partnerships that expand students’ access to
online courses and aid in their success. One
consortium—called the Iowa Community College
Online Consortium (ICCOC)—enables Northwest
Iowa and its partners to jointly offer courses that
each individual college either wouldn’t be able
to ll alone or would struggle to hire faculty to
teach. Another consortium of nine community
colleges across Iowa and Illinois enabled
Northwest Iowa to purchase Dropout Detective,
software that supports advising and an early alert
system the college uses to target support for
students struggling in online courses. Northwest
Iowa pays a small additional amount to use
the technology to support in-person courses.
The college takes a similar approach to jointly
fund its student information system. Instead
of purchasing a lower-performing system, the
college participates in consortium pricing,
which has enabled it to secure a much more
sophisticated student information system than it
could afford on its own.
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Northwest Iowa Community College | Sheldon, Iowa
Rural Community College Excellence | 27
Partner to Expand Bachelor’s Attainment
Effective rural community colleges develop
formal partnerships with local and regional
higher education institutions to overcome
geographic barriers to transfer and develop
needed regional talent.
Relatively few four-year colleges and universities
are located in rural communities, limiting access
to bachelor’s degrees and the good jobs that
require them. Successful rural community
colleges work with universities to develop
transfer pathways that allow students to
complete a bachelor’s degree close to home.
The New College Institute is an educational
center established in 2006 to expand access to
higher education in southern Virginia, including
the rural areas surrounding Martinsville, where
Patrick & Henry Community College is
located. Funding from a local philanthropy, the
Harvest Foundation, helped build the institute,
while ongoing funding for faculty and space
is provided by the state of Virginia as well as
community colleges and four-year universities.
In addition to workforce training, the institute
offers opportunities for Patrick & Henry
students to remain close to home while earning
bachelor’s degrees in programs of substantial
community and statewide need, including two-
plus-two programs in cybersecurity and teacher
education. Two primary university partners—
Longwood and Radford—provide funding for the
physical facility where they offer these degree
programs in partnership with Patrick & Henry,
ensuring the availability of faculty for upper-
division courses.
A similar opportunity is available to students at
Northwest Iowa Community College, which is
at least three and a half hours away from all three
Iowa public universities. To expand educational
access to rural Iowans, the universities created
four Western Iowa Regents Resource Centers
that provide online access to bachelor’s degrees,
including for community college transfer
students. The resource center in Sioux City
partners with Northwest Iowa to help fund a staff
member who makes sure students can earn a
bachelor’s degree online while still accessing the
strong student services at the resource center.
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Catawba Valley Community College | Hickory, North Carolina
Rural Community College Excellence | 28
The staff members helps students select the
right courses for their intended transfer degree
and addresses student needs.
Through this partnership, the Iowa Board of
Regents provides an annual report to Northwest
Iowa detailing transfer rates, GPA before and
after transfer, credits earned in rst term, and
retention after transfer. These data are used
by the registrar, associate of arts academic
advisors, and other Northwest Iowa college
administrators to identify which institutional
relationships can be strengthened. This
partnership has delivered results: Northwest
Iowa transfer students have a higher average
rst-term GPA than other students in the state
(3.13, compared to 2.8), complete more credit
hours than other Iowa transfer students, and
have a rst-year retention rate at the state’s
three public universities of 95 percent.
In Kentucky, a partnership between West
Kentucky Community and Technical College
and a four-year university program is helping
ease a shortage of mental health providers
in the community. Lindsey Wilson College’s
School of Professional Counseling (LWC), a
four-year university program that trains licensed
counselors across Appalachia, rents space
on West Kentucky’s campus, where it delivers
upper-division courses to West Kentucky
students, taught by a combination of adjunct
faculty based in the community and full-time
faculty who commute. LWC employs an onsite
enrollment coordinator, who helps students
navigate transfer, registration, and nancial
aid. West Kentucky students who graduate
from LWC have a clear pathway to a counseling
career, and their communities receive trained
mental health professionals. An added benet:
Some transfer graduates remain in the local area
and provide mental health support to students.
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Imperial Valley College | Imperial, California
Rural Community College Excellence | 29
4. Utilize Small Size as a Strength
Rural community colleges enroll an average of about 2,500 students, less than a third of the national
average. While smaller enrollments can limit nancial resources, there are upsides to a small college
environment. The relatively small number of faculty, staff, administrators, and students can enable
interpersonal relationships to ourish, and highly effective rural colleges take advantage of their small
size to personalize advising and faculty-student relationships. Out of necessity, strong rural colleges
also assign multiple roles to individual leaders, roles that are usually managed independently at a
larger institution. Our research found that combining responsibilities—while at times burdensome—can
increase coordination between different parts of the college and, in turn, strengthen the effectiveness
of student success strategies.
Combine Functions That Align Initiatives
and Enhance Student Success Strategy
Rural college leaders, especially those with small
budgets and enrollments, expressed during
our research how difcult it can be to recruit for
and fund specialized positions needed to meet
student success goals. Among the most difcult-
to-ll positions are grant writers, institutional
researchers, and information technology
professionals, roles in demand by many colleges
and employers. To ll these functions, several
colleges researched for this report combined
positions, particularly those responsible for
student success, data analytics, and technology.
Zane State College leaders combined
information technology (IT) and institutional
research (IR) into one department under a
single executive director, recognizing that IT
systems hold much of the data that institutional
researchers need to understand student needs
and evaluate the effectiveness of student
success strategies. In addition to saving money,
this merger helped advance student success
work by both enhancing the college’s data
capacity and creating a structure to engage
more leaders in student success data analysis.
Zane State established a data quality team of
representatives from the registrar, business
ofce, and admissions, led by the IR director,
which analyzes data in response to specic
questions, such as whether a student failing
a course has longer-term implications for that
student’s success.
Data quality team members consult with senior
leaders about who needs what data, when they
need it, and how it can best be shared, including
what messaging would be most effective in
promoting data use. This approach is designed
to help increase everyone’s focus on the data
most aligned to the college’s priorities, reducing
the likelihood that cabinet members or other
leaders receive data they don’t need and cannot
nd time to use. The data quality team also led
the college’s “Know Your Number” campaign,
which was designed to ensure that more part-
time students take 20 credits and full-time
students take 30 credits annually. As they have
educated faculty and staff about this campaign,
college leaders and the data quality team have
been careful to explain that a positive correlation
between students taking more credits and
graduating does not mean increasing credit
loads is always the right solution; they need to
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Utilize Small Size as a Strength
Rural Community College Excellence | 30
consider whether students have children, work
full-time, or have other obligations that might
stand in the way of increasing credits.
As a result of the data quality team’s efforts,
Zane State faculty and staff know the same key
data points, and leaders have been able to more
clearly communicate their expectation that staff
in each functional area take action when gaps
are revealed. As a result, the college diversity,
equity, and inclusion (DEI) team is studying
the courses students fail in their rst semester
and year. The advising department is studying
overall retention rates, success in rst-year
experience courses in the rst three weeks,
success in math and English in the rst year, and
how many students are making progress toward
the 30-credit-hour benchmark. The ndings and
related goals that result from these analyses will
be shared with the broader college community,
so everyone can craft reform plans aligned to
college-wide priorities. Because each of the
metrics examined was prioritized by college
leaders and the data quality team, the efforts of
those working specically on DEI and advising
reforms are more likely to align to college-wide
student success goals.
Skilled IR leaders and teams are critically
important to using data to improve student
success, but there are often few candidates
willing to work at the pay community colleges
can offer, and urban colleges with more
resources often outbid rural ones for qualied
candidates. In response, some rural community
colleges have enhanced salaries and retained
needed talent by combining IR with other roles.
At Patrick & Henry Community College, Chris
Wikstrom leads an IR team of two while, at the
same time, serving as vice president of student
and academic services. The combined role
enables him to effectively and efciently lead
data-informed student success efforts. When
the college needed to track course outcomes
data to better understand the particular
barriers students face, Wikstrom enlisted two
faculty members to help with data analysis
and research. To support implementation and
evaluation of student success strategies, the
college’s IT department hired a programmer
with app development experience who could
create data dashboards and other homegrown
systems, alleviating the need for the small IR
department to translate data into a usable
format. This allowed the IR team to devote its
energy to developing usable insights from
the data. For example, the IR team was able to
explore course registration data to understand
what prevented students from enrolling in and
completing programs. That, in turn, resulted in
providing more timely reports to advisors about
students at risk of being dropped from classes.
In each of these cases, Wikstrom’s leadership
of both IR and student and academic services
enabled the college to work to advance quickly,
in an integrated way.
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Catawba Valley Community College | Hickory, North Carolina
Rural Community College Excellence | 31
Northwest Iowa Community College took
a similar approach, combining institutional
research with student success functions. Mariah
Oliver serves as the college’s grant writer,
student support coordinator, and IR leader—and
brings a valuable data orientation to each role.
This combination of responsibilities allows her
to understand student needs, respond with
student-facing strategies, and raise external
funds to support those strategies. For instance,
Oliver and her application administrator
generate a weekly grade report using Learning
Management System data. Those reports are
used by faculty to prioritize which students need
interventions, so a team of advisors and faculty
can contact those students to help them stay on
track to graduate. Helping everyone focus on
using this single report might not happen if an
IR director were independently generating data
insights, without such a complete understanding
of the college’s prioritized student success
strategy. This strategy (and others implemented
over time) have enabled the college to achieve
an impressive 73 percent three-year graduation
and transfer rate—and Oliver uses her deep
understanding of those strategies to make the
college’s case in grant applications for funding
future strategies.
Strengthen Relationship-Driven
Advising with Intentional Strategy
Research shows that colleges can effectively
advance student success when advisors
proactively connect with students to help
them choose a program aligned to their post-
graduation goals, stay on track to graduation,
and receive needed resources.
48
Many rural
colleges report that they struggle to hire enough
advisors to fulll these functions. But while some
rural colleges seem to rely on interpersonal
relationships among faculty, staff, and students
to advise students, relationships alone rarely
lead to excellent and equitable student
outcomes. Without systems to ensure that every
student is supported, too many students fall
through the cracks, especially when faculty and
staff retire or leave the college. Effective rural
colleges create a strong advising infrastructure
to ensure that students are consistently
supported from entry to graduation.
Lake Area Technical College employs an
innovative approach to advising, enabled by
its cohort-based programs. When students
enter the college, they do not choose courses,
instead embarking on a prescribed program
of study alongside a cohort of, on average, 17
students, who remain together throughout their
program. The college employs no professional
advisors and instead relies on program faculty
to advise students in each cohort. To ensure
that new faculty learn how to deliver effective
advising, veteran faculty members mentor new
ones. While students are required to meet
with faculty advisors, it is the proximity of the
cohort and faculty in the same courses, day after
day, that likely makes the biggest difference.
48
Jenkins, Davis, and Sung-Woo Cho. 2012. “Get with the Program: Accelerating Community College Students’ Entry into
and Completion of Programs of Study.” Community College Research Center. https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/
get-with-the-program.html.
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Utilize Small Size as a Strength
Northwest Iowa Community College | Sheldon, Iowa
Rural Community College Excellence | 32
When a student is absent, it’s obvious, and
someone in the class usually knows why, making
it possible for the faculty member to reach out
and help solve challenges. Faculty report that
their intensive advising role makes them better
teachers because they understand students’
academic and nonacademic needs. As a result of
these and other efforts, Lake Area Tech boasts
an impressive 76 percent three-year graduation
and transfer rate, 30 percentage points higher
than the national average.
Few colleges are organized around such
structured programs. Those with more exible
programs and greater course choice almost
always rely on some professional advisors, but
many rural colleges lack the resources to hire
enough advisors to help students as much as
they need. So, it’s typical for rural colleges to use
faculty—who often teach the same students in
multiple classes—to supplement small teams of
professional advisors who concentrate on a few
critical parts of the student lifecycle.
Patrick & Henry uses a tiered advising model
to help students at key milestones. Five
professional advisors help with registration and
onboarding before handing students off in the
second semester to full-time faculty advisors,
who provide program-specic guidance.
Patrick & Henry’s approach effectively assigns
duties based on the strengths and capacities
of advisors and faculty. Professional advisors
have the right training and timing to provide the
focused support needed to help students make
program choices early in their rst year, ensuring
that students get onto a solid path quickly.
Faculty advisors employ their subject matter
expertise, industry connections, and regular
proximity to students to help them progress
through programs.
The relationships rural college faculty and
staff build with students can yield actionable
information, but that information is more likely
to be used if there are formal structures in place
to capture and communicate it. At
Zane State,
college leaders recognized that because so
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Utilize Small Size as a Strength
Northwest Iowa Community College | Sheldon, Iowa
Rural Community College Excellence | 33
49
Jenkins, Davis, Serena Klempin, and Hana Lahr. “Zane State College Weaving Projects and Budgets Together to Support
Student Success Overview of Guided Pathways Reforms at the College Large-Scale Changes to Practices.” Accessed
November 10, 2022. https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/zane-state-college-case-study.pdf.
many student supports owed from personal
relationships with staff, some students’ needs
were being overlooked, and resources weren’t
always going to the students who needed
them most. As part of a rst-year experience
course, the college created a mandatory intake
survey that includes eight questions about
demographics and specic obstacles students
may face. Responses to that survey are analyzed
alongside high school GPAs and Satisfactory
Academic Progress status to assign students
a low-, medium- or high-risk rating, which
college success coaches use to deliver different
amounts of outreach and support. The success
coaches can also mobilize resources across
divisions, including from faculty members who
play a critical role in helping students choose
and stay on a program pathway.
This was an improvement from the past,
when Zane State success coaches relied on
students coming to them with challenges or
faculty agging concerns. College leaders
now expect success coaches to proactively
contact the students who are at the highest
risk of not persisting, and to alert the faculty
teaching these students so they can reach out,
too. This intentional approach to advising has
contributed to the college’s rapid increase in
three-year completion rates from 34 percent
for the 2012 cohort of rst-time, full-time
students to 54 percent four years later.
49
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Utilize Small Size as a Strength
Catawba Valley Community College | Hickory, North Carolina
Rural Community College Excellence | 34
|
Conclusion
Conclusion
Excellent rural community colleges across the
United States have many strengths: internal
agility; deep connections to place; and
strong relationships among faculty, staff, and
students. When strategically deployed, these
strengths help rural colleges reform their
internal operations and develop exceptional
partnerships that result in excellent and
equitable student outcomes and contribute
to community vitality. Failure to marshal
those strengths is a lost opportunity to foster
economic opportunity for community members
and develop talent needed in rural areas.
We hope the examples of excellence featured
in this report provide inspiration for community
colleges across the country and ideas about
how to apply their assets to the critical goal
of strengthening the lives of rural community
college students and entire rural communities.
We look forward to seeing how the lessons
offered by these college fuel further rural
community college excellence.
Northwest Iowa Community College | Sheldon, Iowa
Rural Community College Excellence | 35
Conclusion
Research Design
The lessons and examples included in this
publication come from several research
projects of the Aspen Institute College
Excellence Program.
Original research for this project began with
an evaluation of student outcomes data for
all rural and rural-serving public community
colleges in the U.S., which we dened using
Carnegie Classication. Primary student
outcomes data included rst-year retention,
three-year graduation rates disaggregated
by race/ethnicity and Pell Grant status,
median earnings 10 years after entering the
institution, the percentage of students who
came from families in the bottom 20 percent
of income and moved into the top income
quintile after graduating (using Opportunity
Insights’ Mobility Index), and the transfer and
bachelor’s completion rate for rural institutions
in the Aspen Prize’s Top 150 eligible list (using
National Student Clearinghouse data). Median
student earnings data were compared to the
median family income of the county in which
each college is located, and the bachelor’s
completion rate was compared to the county’s
bachelor’s attainment rate. Institutions
with student earnings that are closer to the
county’s median family income, and those with
bachelor’s completion rates closer to or above
the county’s bachelor’s attainment rate were
considered to have stronger outcomes. We
identied institutions with strong outcomes on
these measures controlling for regional location,
proximity to a metro area, student headcount,
racial demographics, and comprehensive vs
technical orientation. We circulated a list of
those institutions to experts in rural community
college practice, asking which did strong
student-oriented reforms work, yielding 25
institutions. We conducted one-hour interviews
with the leaders of each of these 25, gathering
information about reform practices and related
outcomes. From those interviews, we identied
a diverse set of ve colleges doing exceptional
work and conducted, for each, 1.5-day site visits
that included interviews with leadership, faculty,
staff, external education partners, employers,
and students.
This guide also draws upon research from
rural and rural-serving institutions studied
during multiple cycles of the Aspen Prize for
Community College Excellence (see footnote for
detail on the Prize methodology).
50
Additional
research cited in this report comes from the
Transfer Playbook, Workforce Playbook, and
Rural Transfer Pathways report (methodology for
which can be found in those publications).
51
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Conclusion
50
“Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence.” The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program, https://highered.
aspeninstitute.org/aspen-prize/. https://highered.aspeninstitute.org/aspen-prize/
51
Davidson, Brittney, Tess Henthorne, Karthik Ilakkuvan, Linda Perlstein, Keith Witham, and Joshua Wyner. “The Workforce
Playbook: A Community College Guide to Delivering Excellent Career and Technical Education.” https://highered.
aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The-Workforce-Playbook_Final.pdf; Wyner, Joshua, KC Deane,
Davis Jenkins, and John Fink.“The Transfer Playbook: Essential Practice for Two-and Four-Year Colleges.” https://www.
aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/aspen-ccrc_transferplaybook_05-2016.pdf; Mehl, Gelsey, Tania
LaViolet. “Rural Transfer Pathways: Balancing Individual and Community Needs.” https://tacklingtransfer.org/wp-content/
uploads/2021/08/Rural-Transfer-Pathways.pdf.
Rural Community College Excellence | 36
Community Colleges Featured in this Guide
1
32
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
1. Wenatchee Valley College — Wenatchee, Washington
2. Walla Walla College — Walla Walla, Washington
3. Columbia Basin College — Pasco, Washington
4. Imperial Valley College — Imperial, California
5. Diné College — Tsaile, Arizona
6. Colorado Mountain College — Glenwood Springs, Colorado
7. Amarillo College — Amarillo, Texas
8. Lake Area Technical College — Watertown, South Dakota
9. Northwest Iowa Community College — Sheldon, Iowa
10. West Kentucky Community & Technical College — Paducah, Kentucky
11. Zane State College — Zanesville, Ohio
12. Catawba Valley Community College — Hickory, North Carolina
13. Patrick & Henry Community College — Martinsville, Virginia
