Journal of College Student Development

Community colleges represent the cornerstone of access in US higher education. Since their establishment in the early 20th century, these institutions have evolved in ways that intentionally support the needs and demands of their communities. Despite these institutions’ important role in the landscape of postsecondary education, today’s community colleges must navigate critical challenges, emerging trends, and new visions of educational reform. Importantly, student affairs units on community college campuses play a significant role in these tasks. This reality is precisely what this book aims to capture—innovative student success initiatives designed to directly respond to emerging issues on community college campuses. Edited by C. Casey Ozaki, Paulette Dalpes, Deborah L. Floyd, and Gianna Ramdin, The Role of Student Affairs in Advancing Community College Student Success: An Examination of Selected Contemporary Initiatives is a collection of empirical research and scholarly commentary on existing and recommended student affairs initiatives that vary in type, represent diverse community college contexts, and attend to the current sociopolitical moment. In an effort to situate myself to the context of this text and subsequent book review, I briefly offer elements of my professional positionality, which include having a career in student affairs prior to entering faculty work as well as engaging in research that includes a focus on issues of equity in community college settings.

Following Chapter 1, where the editors lay the conceptual groundwork for the text, they dive into an example of practice. Chapter 2, by Kimberly Lowry, Dawna Wilson Horton, and Karen Stills Royster, presents the narratives of two community college campuses in Texas that built student affairs assessment capacity and illuminates the challenges associated with institutionalizing a culture of assessment. These challenges included a collective lack of clarity around assessment and a lack of readiness among staff (e.g., staff being unfamiliar with CAS Standards or conflating assessment outcomes with individual job performance evaluations).

In Chapter 3, Jason L. Taylor and Chuck W. Lepper discuss the proliferation of promise programs as a response to declining college affordability. Although promise programs provide direct aid to students and increase access to postsecondary education, college affordability does not solely determine student success. The authors examine the Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) Promise Program. Although the SLCC Promise Program participant demographics were similar to SLCC Pell Grant students who were not in the Promise Program, program participants had statistically significantly higher first-semester GPAs and enrolled in more credit hours for their second semester. The authors outline how student affairs units can play an important role in creating and implementing promise programs.

In Chapter 4, William Watson, Adela Esquivel-Swinson, and Roland Montemayor discuss collaborative impact and professional development in student affairs to better serve immigrant populations amid growing income inequality. Situated in California, the authors discuss initiatives in the San José Evergreen Community College District resulting from [End Page 610] particular state policy mandates and community partner collaborations that enhanced the district’s support of immigrant and low-income communities.

In Chapter 5, David J. Nguyen, G. Blue Brazelton, Kristen A. Renn, and Michael R. Woodford offer a mixed-methods examination of the impact of LGBTQ+ student support services on community college student success. After highlighting the dearth of scholarship on queer and trans community college students, the authors found that community colleges had fewer LGBTQ+ resources on hand as compared to other institutional types. For those community colleges with established resources and support, the authors identified the importance of four LGBTQ+-specific resources: (a) identity-based resource centers, (b) counseling services, (c) career planning services, and (d) student organizations.

In Chapter 6, Patrick W. Gill and Laura M. Harrison write about the Completion Agenda, an increasingly influential movement that aims to increase the number of college...