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

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

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

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

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

Chad D. Hoggan is an associate professor of adult, workforce and continuing professional education in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Prior to joining NC State in 2012, he was an instructor of organizational leadership at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

Hoggan&;s higher education journey began as a dual-enrollment student at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas. After transferring to a university and completing a degree in business management, his early career was as a workplace safety trainer and consultant, working with organizations to develop effective safety programs. Yearning to understand more about personal learning and organizational culture change, he enrolled in a graduate program at NC State, where he developed a passion for research around personal, organizational, and social transformation. Hoggan received a master of education in adult and community college education from NC State, and then obtained his Doctor of Education in adult learning and leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Hoggan is the editor of the Journal of Transformative Education. His research primarily revolves around transformational learning, which he has studied in a wide range of research contexts: military veterans in community college, higher education students in leadership development courses, and women navigating the psychosocial transition of breast cancer survivorship. A current focus of his research is on the challenges of community college student success. Recently he has also collaborated with the Aspen Institute and faculty at NC State to redesign their doctoral program in community college leadership.

Bill Browning is an independent consultant with a thirty-year career combining management roles in corporate training, a community-based nonprofit, community college, and workforce development policy and leadership training.

For the first half of his career, Browning climbed into senior management ranks at the American Bankers Association, becoming managing director of a $4 million, twenty-five-person national corporate training consulting enterprise. Since 2001, he has redeployed his knowledge of adult learning in community-based job training and community leadership development focused on serving low-income, disadvantaged, and minority workers. Browning served for five years as program manager for Northern Virginia Family Service&;s (NVFS) job training programs for low-income minority adults, which included the Training Futures program as well as a pre-apprenticeship construction training program. While at NVFS, Browning helped to document the Training Futures program&;s transformational learning program design, and led an innovative coenrollment partnership with Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) that was recognized by the Aspen Institute as a national model.

For the next six years at NOVA, Browning led college efforts to refine the coenrollment partnership with Training Futures and to forge partnerships with several other high performing nonprofits that train low-income minority workers in multiple business sectors, including Goodwill Industries and Year Up. He also led and launched an Adult Career Pathways initiative that helped 1,000 low-income and mostly minority students access and succeed in college studies at NOVA. At the Aspen Institute, Browning researched and authored several case studies documenting effective workforce development practices at community colleges, managed national and local workforce development leadership training programs, and designed and conducted workshops for numerous national conferences and webinars. Since becoming an independent consultant in 2016, Browning has worked with national and regional clients to document effective practices, train community college and workforce development leaders, and to help launch innovative new projects. He is based in the Washington, DC, metropolitan region.