Strengthening Engagement between Disciplinary Societies and Community Colleges
Community colleges teach an estimated 44 percent of US undergraduate students, and thus play a critical role in the education of undergraduates. They also hold tremendous potential for disciplines to expand the number of majors and professionals in the field. Moreover, because community college students are diverse by gender, race, and ethnicity, there is additional potential for increasing diversity and inclusivity in the major and profession.
A multi-day virtual workshop will promote the exchange of effective practices for partnerships of community college instructors and their respective disciplinary societies.Participants will include faculty, administrative, and professional society leaders. Together they will explore how to support community college faculty in their teaching and professional development and to expand the involvement of community college faculty in their respective disciplinary societies. The workshop will foster discussion of strategies including conferences, publications, professional development workshops, networking opportunities, leadership development, faculty and student research, supporting students' professional pathways (careers and transfer), projects aimed at promoting justice, equity, inclusion, and diversity, surveys, and recommendations.
The workshop builds on a New Directions for Community College publication, Partners in Progress: Community College Faculty and Disciplinary Societies (Maier, Rowell, & Macdonald, 2021), to which workshop participants will have open access. This work highlighted both challenges and promises for community college faculty engagement with professional societies across eleven disciplines.
This workshop, will bring together community college faculty, professional association representatives, and community college administrators from at least twelve disciplines. The participants will (1) learn more about strategies and resources across disciplines to strengthen partnerships of community colleges and disciplinary societies, (2) make an action plan for each of the disciplines represented in the workshop, considering faculty, administrative, and disciplinary society contributions and perspectives, (3) explore how collaboration between community colleges and disciplinary societies can improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the professions, (4) discuss possible cross-discipline collaborative efforts that would enable sharing of scarce resources and allow for greater dissemination of evidence-based practices, and (5) build networks of those interested in these issues.
2023 Virtual Workshop »
April 28 & May 5, 2023, asynchronous summer check-ins, September 29 & October 6
2022 Virtual Workshop »
January 20, 21, 27, & 28, 2022