Research from the Front Lines: How Community College Practitioners Can Meaningfully Engage in Academic Research About Their Institutions (And Already Do)

This brief article addresses the question of how community college research needs and ideas are identified and by whom. Brought together are examples of the ways and areas in which community college educators already publish scholarly research, what community college practitioners would like to know more about, and the steps community colleges and university-based higher education leadership programs can take to enhance cooperation and engage in mutually beneficial research agendas. In particular, the article describes two symposia that addressed this question at recent conferences of the Council for the Study of Community Colleges, in 2023 and 2024. Based on conversations from these panels and a review of the literature, I make suggestions for how practitioners’ research needs and practices could be actualized, both within community colleges and in university-based programs. I also address the question of how scholars can work with practitioners to better connect research to practice and practice to research.