Creating Entrepreneurial Community Colleges

Carrie B. Kisker illustrates how community colleges can utilize design thinking to identify and evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities, and experiment with the internal changes necessary to optimize outcomes for stakeholders. Kisker outlines a process whereby college leaders can empower faculty and staff to think creatively about how to reduce their institution's dependence on state allocations in ways that are not only consistent with the college's mission and values, but also provide the greatest likelihood for institutional and student success. Drawing from case studies at four community colleges, Kisker provides a roadmap for colleges to move beyond their historical pattern of incremental responses to external pressures, and instead innovate in a creative, mission-oriented approach. "In this engaging book, Carrie Kisker wows us with the stories, data, and practices of a rural community college in Iowa and urban ones in Phoenix and Fort Worth that are using design thinking to create opportunity for students and prosperity for communities." --Rebecca A. Corbin, president and chief executive officer, the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship "Kisker highlights the work of community college innovators who involved wide-ranging stakeholders--including faculty, college administrators, and employers--in collaborative ventures that respond to community needs while at the same time generating badly needed revenues. The result is a compelling analysis of how community college leaders might sustain institutional commitment to community betterment even as government appropriations decline." --James C. Palmer, professor emeritus of higher education, Illinois State University "Carrie Kisker's work with four of our exemplar community colleges could not be better timed as we look toward a post-COVID era for community colleges. It will help largely risk-averse cultures purposefully forge new, more entrepreneurial futures for our Digital Age of constant, rapid change that is transforming our college landscape before our very eyes." --Kevin Drumm, founding board chairman, National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship, and president, SUNY Broome Community College Carrie B. Kisker is an education research and policy specialist with Kisker Education Consulting in Los Angeles, and a director of the Center for the Study of Community Colleges.