University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Community college leadership for student success

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Community college leadership for student success

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Content Copyright 2023 Jeremy Brown

Community College Leadership for Student Success

by

Jeremy Brown

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

December 2023

The Committee for Jeremy Brown certifies the approval of this Dissertation

Robert Filback, Ph.D.
Amber Hroch, Ph.D.
Julie Slayton, J.D., Ph.D.

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2023
iii
Dedication
I dedicate this dissertation to my family and friends who helped me to get to this point in
my life. There are too many to name them all, but there is a core group who have helped keep me
moving forward through some difficult years including Cody, Jeff, Larry, Carla, and Tawny.
More to the point, I want to dedicate this to two people specifically. First is my Dad, David
Brown, who I love, respect, admire, and appreciate. I am so grateful for your strength, your
example of selflessness, the way that you prioritize family, and especially the way you loved and
cared for mom. Second, my mom, Cyd Brown, who I love and miss more than I can ever
express. You were my favorite person, the one I would call at the end of a bad day or with good
news. I was working towards this goal at least in part to make you proud, and then five years
ago, you passed away, and I almost quit. But I wrote a note on my whiteboard at home that you
wanted me to finish, and that note has helped keep me going. Your kindness, generosity, humor,
and positivity are traits that I try to carry with me daily. I am so grateful for the example of love
and compassion that you and dad provided for me growing up.

iv
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. Julie Slayton for her support,
guidance, and compassion throughout this long and difficult journey. When she agreed to step
into the role of my dissertation chair after I had switched topics and made my second major
career transition, I am not sure she or I knew what challenges were yet to come. The way that she
provided the perfect balance of pressure and encouragement when both were needed helped me
to stay on the path. Her countless hours of support through the data analysis process and the
invaluable guidance as I worked through my exploration and explanation of my findings helped
me to better understand my research and my work in the community colleges. I will be forever
grateful for the personal, academic, and professional support that Dr. Slayton has provided to me
over the years through this process.
I would also like to thank Dr. Robert Filback for agreeing to support me in this process as
a member of my committee. The generosity he has shown giving his time and the kindness and
flexibility that he has demonstrated throughout the process has been greatly appreciated.
Additionally, I want to express my appreciation for Dr. Amber Hroch, the final member
of my dissertation committee. Dr. Hroch has been a great source of inspiration and guidance to
me as a researcher within the California Community College system who has done some work
that I have respected for years. I was grateful to have her support and encouragement as a
member of my committee.
Finally, I want to thank the individuals who gave me their time and the benefit of their
personal experiences and perspectives as participants in this study. Each of them spoke freely
and shared openly, and that is not easy, so I am very grateful. I also want to thank the leadership
of the institution who supported my research.
v
Table of Contents
Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ viii
Chapter One: Overview of the Study .............................................................................................. 1
Background of the Problem ................................................................................................ 2
Statement of the Problem .................................................................................................... 8
Purpose of the Study ........................................................................................................... 8
Significance of the Study .................................................................................................... 9
Organization of the Dissertation ....................................................................................... 10
Chapter Two: Review of the Literature ........................................................................................ 11
Student Persistence in Higher Education .......................................................................... 11
Change Leadership in Higher Education .......................................................................... 22
Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 37
Chapter Three: Methodology ........................................................................................................ 42
Research Design................................................................................................................ 42
Sample and Setting ........................................................................................................... 43
Data Collection and Instruments ....................................................................................... 45
Data Analysis .................................................................................................................... 48
Credibility and Trustworthiness ........................................................................................ 49
Ethics................................................................................................................................. 51
Limitations and Delimitations ........................................................................................... 53
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 54
Chapter Four: Findings ................................................................................................................. 55
vi
Finding 1: Community College Leaders’ Definitions of Community College
Student Success Were Inconsistent Aside from a Common Theme of Equity ................. 57
Finding 2: Informal Leaders Worked to Influence Change by Sharing Examples
or Stories of Personal Experiences From Working Directly With Students About
Those Strategies They Believed were Most Likely to Improves Student Success ........... 67
Finding 3: Formal Leaders Believe They Influenced Change Through Using Data
to Highlight or Expose a Problem and Establish a Shared Vision for Change ................. 75
Finding 4: Both Formal and Informal Leaders Believed They Influenced Change
Through Relationships Built on a Foundation of Trust .................................................... 78
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 83
Chapter Five: Discussion .............................................................................................................. 84
Implications and Recommendations for Policy, Practice, and Research .......................... 87
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 92
References ..................................................................................................................................... 94

vii
List of Figures
Figure 1: Astin’s Student Engagement Framework ...................................................................... 16
Figure 2: The RP Group’s Student Support (Re)defined Framework .......................................... 19
Figure 3: Conceptual Framework ................................................................................................. 38

viii

Abstract
This dissertation describes a study that examined the experiences of community college leaders
engaged in leading institutional change to improve student success. The study was conducted at a
mid-size, public, 2-year institution in Southern California. Eight participants were chosen
through purposeful snowball sampling of leaders from across the institution who were
facilitating workgroups of a specific transformational change initiative. The study utilized a
qualitative case study research design with data collected through one-on-one interviews using a
semi-structured interview protocol with each participant. The interviews focused on gathering
data related to each participant’s beliefs and perceptions about the definition of community
college student success, what it takes for an institution to help students be successful, and how
they personally were working to influence and lead change to improve student success at the
institution. Four findings emerged from the data: community college leaders have inconsistent
definitions of student success aside from a common theme of equity, informal leaders work to
influence change by sharing examples or stories of what they have seen help students most,
formal leaders use data to highlight or expose a problem and establish a shared vision for change,
and both formal and informal leaders rely upon a relationship built on a foundation of trust to
influence change. From these findings emerged a set of recommendations for policy, practice,
and further research in the area of community college change leadership which are also
presented.

1

Chapter One: Overview of the Study
Nationally, community colleges serve roughly 39% of all undergraduate students based
on Fall 2020 enrollment (American Association of Community Colleges, 2022). In the state of
California, this important, open-access public option for postsecondary enrollment serves
approximately 1.8 million students and is the largest system of higher education in the nation
(California Community College Chancellor’s Office (CCCO), 2023). The institutions that serve
these students are facing rising educational and operational costs, dramatic shifts in technology,
and increasingly diverse student populations with varying needs that the community college
model was not originally designed to serve (Eddy, 2019); thus, community colleges must change
how they operate (Bailey et al., 2015a; Kuh et al., 2015). Baime and Baum (2016) indicate that
based on past research, efforts or initiatives requiring significant institutional change are likely to
be met with considerable internal opposition making full implementation challenging. I was
interested in understanding how formal and informal community college leaders at the institution
worked to implement new initiatives and overcome resistance or opposition through the change
process. Thus, this study focused on the different leaders’ understandings of the definition of
student success at one community college and the strategies they employed to influence change
with the goal of improving student persistence and success at their institution.
My interest in this area of research was based on my experience within the California
community college (CCC) system. I first became an administrator in the system in 2015, and I
have seen significant change and increased expectations and accountability for student success
throughout my tenure. Several programs mandated by the State Legislature with the support of
the CCCCO require institutional change at every level and even more collaborative leadership
than ever before. For example, the implementation of the Student-Centered Funding Formula

2

(SCFF) beginning in 2018 represented an incremental move to a community college funding
formula that was based not only on enrollment, but also equitable student outcomes, creating the
potential to incentivize accountability for institutional improvements to student goal attainment
rates. Additionally, as one of the more recent examples, the statewide implementation of the
“guided pathways” framework of student success required structural and functional changes at
every level of the institution with its own set of expectations for accountability and reporting.
The Aspen Institute (2014) published a set of essential leadership competencies and skills
to provide community college presidents with a framework for leading institutional change
initiatives. Based on my experience within the CCC system, I know that it is important that
large-scale change initiatives are led with collaboration between leaders throughout the
institution, including staff, faculty, administration, and students. My goal was to identify the
experiences and leadership strategies that these leaders believed helped them more successfully
implement student success initiatives. I was also interested in discovering how these leaders
framed their work, based on their beliefs about the definition of student success. I plan to share
my findings from this study with the field to help inform leadership development programs at the
institution and system levels.
The remainder of this chapter outlines the background of the problem in relation to
community college student success and accountability and leadership and change management.
This chapter also presents the statement of the problem, the purpose and significance of this
study, and the organization of the rest of the dissertation proposal.
Background of the Problem
The first community college, Joliet Junior College, was created in Joliet, Illinois in 1901
as an extension of the local high school for students who could not afford to enroll at a 4-year

3

university (Phillippe & Gonzalez Sullivan, 2005). Shortly thereafter, the first CCC was
established in Fresno, California with a similar purpose—also as an extension of the local high
school—and even shared the same campus (Fresno City College, 2020). In 1960, with a total of
56 community colleges in the state, the California Master Plan for Higher Education formalized
the public higher education market by creating three distinct systems, the California Community
Colleges, the California State Universities, and the Universities of California. In this plan, the
intent of the California Community College System was to serve much the same mission as
Joliet Junior College, an open-access institution of higher education with a broad educational
scope (California State Department of Education, 1960). The current slate of 116 community
colleges in California, like other community colleges throughout the nation with open-access
policies and a wide range of degree and certificate programs as well as more short-term skills-
building opportunities all represent a key community resource for developing long-term
employability skills and pursuing further educational options (Miller et al., 2014). Baime and
Baum (2016) argue that a community college student’s ability to succeed in achieving their goals
is largely dependent on the programs, supports, and services these institutions provide.
Despite the open-access mission of the 116 community colleges in the California system,
the following data points suggest students continue to face many barriers in their journey to
completing their educational goal(s). As of 2017, the data were that:
• Less than half of the students who enrolled achieved their goal of completing a
degree, certificate, or transfer-related outcome.
• The average time it took successful degree earners to complete an associate degree
(generally considered a 2-year program) in a CCC was approximately 5.2 years.

4

• The rising costs of books, fees, and living expenses represented a financial hardship
that was not met by the limited options of financial aid available to CCC students.
• Achievement gaps among students from minoritized populations largely based on
historic and systemic inequities continued to persist. (California Community College
Chancellor’s Office, 2017)
Legislative and regulatory interest in aligning institutional priorities with the national
framework of assessing institutional quality and effectiveness by measuring completion led to
more states adopting a performance-based funding formula (Bailey et al., 2015a). Following this
national trend, the California State Legislature began implementation of the SCFF in 2018. As
additional motivation, the CCCCO established the following ambitious goals as part of the
Vision for Success, which are loosely related to the student success metrics in the SCFF, to be
accomplished by 2022:
• Increase the number of students who earn a degree, certificate, or work-related
skill set by at least 20%.
• Increase the number of students who transfer from a community college to a
California public 4-year institution by 35%.
• Decrease the average number of units that community college degree earners
complete by the time their degree is conferred from 87 to 79.
• Increase the percent of career technical education skills building students who report
that they are employed in a field close to their area of study from 60% to 76%.
• Reduce achievement gaps for disproportionately impact student populations by 40%
and eliminate these equity gaps by 2027.

5

• Reduce and eventually eliminate gaps in all other measures among students in
disproportionately impacted regions of the state of California. (California Community
College Chancellor’s Office, 2017)
To continue receiving certain ongoing categorical funding that the CCCs had been
previously granted by the State Legislature, each college and district were required to set local
goals that directly aligned with and demonstrated support for the ambitious system goals
described above. Unfortunately, according to the CCCCO State of the System Report (2022),
while progress was made for all students across the system over the timeframe laid out in the
Vision for Success, regional and equity gaps persisted, and in some cases, they grew wider. This
is especially important because the same report indicates that out of the 1.9 million students
served by the system in the 2020-21 academic year, 112,904 (5.6%) were African American,
251,739 (11.5%) were Asian, 1,000,492 (45.8%) were Hispanic, and 99,412 (4.4%) identified
with multiple ethnicities (CCCCO, 2022).
Community College Success
According to Wang (2017), community college student success is difficult to define, as
the goals of community college students are as diverse as the students themselves. Additionally,
Baime and Baum (2016) indicate that each community college has a unique definition of success
based on its respective mission, setting, and program offerings. While some colleges focus
primarily on preparing students for transfer and completion of a 4-year bachelor’s degree, others
serve the local workforce needs with short-term programs or terminal associate degrees.
However, the national system of evaluating success for community colleges is based primarily
on the singular metric of graduation rates. In this system, students who transfer to a 4-year
institution prior to completing a degree as well as those who only intend to enroll to advance

6

specific work-based skills to pursue a promotion or salary advancement in their current career
are deemed unsuccessful at the community college level (Baime & Baum, 2016). Yet even when
taking a more holistic approach to examining student success, the outcomes do not appreciably
improve.
The struggles community colleges and their students face have been met with several
initiatives aimed at improving the student experience. Both nationally and within the California
system of higher education, there have been efforts in the areas of developing clearer pathways
for student completion, improving the connection between advising and instruction, revising the
system of career technical education, aligning requirements for transfer with 4-year institutions,
and transforming the role of developmental education (Bailey et al., 2015a; Dougherty, 2002;
Jenkins et al., 2017; Rosenbaum et al., 2017; Wyner et al., 2016).
One student success initiative that has shown positive outcomes is the national “guided
pathways” model, which was created to improve efficiency and effectiveness while meeting the
needs of community college students by moving from the “cafeteria” approach where students
may complete a random assortment of classes and experiences along their journey to a more
structured and integrative approach to student success (Bailey et al., 2015a; Jenkins et al., 2017).
This model includes the following four overarching “pillars” for colleges, setting the foundation
for improving the student journey from initial entry to goal completion:
• Clarify the Path–intentionally designing program pathways with clear expectations and
guaranteed offerings to allow students to complete their intended goal within an
appropriate timeframe.

7

• Enter the Path–guiding the students through the process of identifying academic and
career goals early in their journey, helping them choose the right path and move more
seamlessly through their college experience.
• Stay on the Path–providing appropriate and intrusive student supports, both academic and
non-academic, to ensure all students have the resources they need to succeed.
• Ensure Learning–improving the quality and consistency of instruction and more closely
aligning learning outcomes to the needs of the workforce and society. (Bailey et al.,
2015a; Jenkins et al., 2017)
The national guided pathways project included two California Community Colleges that
demonstrated early successes and ultimately received support from the California State
Legislature and the CCCCO for statewide implementation, with an allocation of $150 million
that was to be dispersed among the 114 CCCs over a 5-year period beginning in 2017. In 2022,
another $50 million was allocated statewide, with $2.5 million being set aside for system-level
work and the rest being distributed amongst the now 116 CCCs.
Leadership and Change Management
Highly effective leadership is required at throughout an institution for institutional
change to be transformative and enduring, the way the guided pathways change initiative is
intended to be (Kotter, 2014). Schuster et al. (1994) suggest that institutional change decisions
like this in the higher education setting should include involvement from faculty and
administrative leadership, particularly from the college president. Involving faculty leadership is
critical because while faculty are ultimately responsible to the institution through traditional
reporting structures, their academic freedoms are protected and preserved to the greatest extent
possible (Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, 2010). The role of

8

administrative leadership is also essential, beginning with the president who typically balances a
range of responsibilities and expectations while maintaining a broad focus on the overall
institutional context (Bolman & Gallos, 2021). The college president generally delegates
responsibility among key institutional administrative leaders to manage areas such as academic
affairs, student services, and business or operational services. Each area represents a critical
component of institutional change efforts like those described above.
Statement of the Problem
The changing landscape of higher education requires cost-effective innovations that
account for the diverse backgrounds and needs of the new student populations served (Kuh et al.,
2015). Institutional change initiatives are difficult, and many are met with resistance. Even when
change is required, it can be difficult to move forward without those who have been invited to
participate in and lead the change having shared definitions and goals. Formal and informal
leaders in California community colleges bring different perspectives and experiences to their
approaches to influence change and their individual understandings of student success.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to explore the similarities and differences in the ways that
formal and informal community college leaders defined student success and how they
approached influencing change based on their individual definitions of student success and their
positions within the institution. In this study, I employed qualitative research methods to
interview community college staff, faculty, and administrative leaders regarding their unique
backgrounds and experiences, beliefs about the definition of student success, and the ways in
which they believed they went about working to influence change at the college. Through an
investigation into a specific set of leaders who were engaged in a large-scale institutional change

9

initiative designed to improve student persistence and success, I attempted to answer the
following research questions:
1. How do community college leaders, both formal and informal, define student
success?
2. How do formal and informal community college leaders approach influencing
organizational change, given their individual definitions of student success and their
positions within the institution?
Significance of the Study
As a current administrative leader within the CCC system, the primary significance of
this study was to identify skills and strategies that would help me and my colleagues in our work
to improve student persistence and success within our own institutions. In my current capacity, I
help identify and facilitate professional development opportunities for a community college; this
work may lead to the creation of a leadership development program for all stakeholders of the
institution, with a particular focus on administrative leadership. Additionally, I currently serve on
several statewide workgroups and boards, and this research, along with the guided pathways
efforts, may help me better support and inform the work of these groups. Finally, I hope to be
able to contribute to the broader field of community college leadership by sharing my findings
with statewide representative organizations to help inform their leadership and professional
development plans. I believe that this study is important because the leadership in the CCC
system is constantly changing and becoming increasingly diverse. I hope to begin to develop an
understanding of the unique strengths and needs of this changing population through this study
and identify themes and trends for use in further research. Ultimately, my goal is to help the

10

CCC leaders more effectively work to implement high-quality student success initiatives to
improve student outcomes.
Organization of the Dissertation
This rest of this dissertation proposal is organized as follows. Chapter Two includes the
literature review and conceptual framework that provides the foundation for this study. The
literature review will provide a more thorough and historical perspective on theories related to
college student persistence and success, describe types of student success initiatives, and
highlight key leadership strategies for change management. In Chapter Three, I detail the
qualitative research methodology I used to answer the research questions. This includes an
outline of the site and sample selection criteria, the plan and rationale for data collection, and the
process by which the data was analyzed for the report of findings. Chapter Four lays out the
findings of the current study related to the research questions. The four findings are described in
detail with example quotes from the interviews of the study participants to highlight the key
themes that emerged. In Chapter Five, I describe the implications of the four findings as they
relate to future directions for policy, practice, and research in related areas.

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Chapter Two: Review of the Literature
In this study, I examined the similarities and differences in the ways that formal and
informal leaders of a community college defined student success and the strategies that they
chose to employ to influence change to improve student success. The following questions were
asked:
1. How do community college leaders, both formal and informal, define student
success?
2. How do formal and informal community college leaders approach influencing
organizational change, given their individual definitions of student success and their
positions within the institution?
To answer these questions, I drew from relevant literature in the areas of student persistence and
success as well as organizational leadership and change management. This chapter concludes
with my revised conceptual framework, which reflects both those aspects of my tentative theory
that served as the foundation for my study and continue to be a part of my theory as well as those
aspects that that emerged because of data collection in relation to the ways community college
leaders believe they work to influence change to improve student persistence and success.
Student Persistence in Higher Education
To explore community college leaders’ definitions of student success and what they
believed led to more successful outcomes, it was essential to first understand the factors
contributing to individual student withdrawal and persistence. This is because institutional
leaders make decisions about how to improve student persistence, success, and goal attainment
based on their understanding of those factors that cause students to withdraw or the barriers they
face along their path. The following section presents several evidence-based theories on student

12

persistence, with a particular focus on the aspects of those theories that may inform institutional
action. First, I offer Tinto’s (1975) Integration Theory, which focused on why students decided
to drop out of college and the role of institutional context and environment in this decision.
Second, I turn to Giuffrida (2006), who proposed an adaptation of Tinto’s theory to address the
unique experiences and needs of minoritized students within higher education. Third, I present
Astin’s (1970, 1984) Student Involvement Theory that highlighted the impact active student
engagement could have on student outcomes as well as how institutional action could promote
deeper student engagement. Finally, I discuss the Student Support (Re)defined framework,
created by the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges (The RP
Group), that highlighted the interrelated nature of six factors that support student persistence and
success in the context of the CCC System (Booth et al., 2013).
Tinto’s Integration Theory
In the groundbreaking article, “Dropout from Higher Education: A Theoretical Synthesis
of Recent Research,” Tinto (1975) argued that a student’s decision to drop out of college came at
the end of a series of interactions between the student and the institution. The scholar built upon
prior research largely focused on individual experiences and characteristics to highlight the
importance of student integration into the college community. Drawing from sociological
research, Tinto developed a model of student persistence based on community and a sense of
belonging, in which insufficient engagement on the part of the student would lead to separation
or withdrawal. Rather than ignoring the individual experiences and characteristics with which a
student enters college, Tinto suggested that these background characteristics play a significant
role in the student’s level of commitment to achieving their educational goal(s). Throughout the
college-going experience, a student makes decisions about whether to participate in either the

13

academic or social community of the college or both. Tinto found that a lack of integration in
either of these aspects of the institution would have a negative impact on the student’s
educational commitment and might lead to withdrawal.
Tinto (1975) believed that the responsibility for building and sustaining this community
was shared between the individual student and the institution. The student chooses whether to
use tutoring services, participate in campus events or activities, get involved in clubs, or run for
student government. The institution establishes policies for student involvement in decision-
making, invests in student life, or provides academic support services. Moreover, Tinto
suggested that the institution has the responsibility of encouraging students to choose to engage
by highlighting the positive impact of participation.
In a follow-up article regarding the stages of student departure, Tinto (1988) highlighted
the sense of discomfort that accompanies the student journey into and through various
communities within an institution. Leaving the familiar familial environment and highly
structured setting of pre-collegiate education, the student experiences a great deal of change in a
short timeframe. The extent to which the student can let go of and embrace the change plays an
important role in their level of commitment to the chosen institution and educational goal(s). To
best support this difficult transition, Tinto suggested that institutional actors should focus on
providing structured engagement opportunities and activities in the first year; providing both
academic and social programs and services to new students during this key transition phase
makes it more difficult for students to choose not to engage.
To further support institutional efforts in student persistence, Tinto (2010) described four
areas of focus: (a) expectations, (b) support, (c) feedback, and (d) involvement. While students
have certain expectations for themselves and the institution, institutional actors have their own

14

expectations for students. The key for the institution is to ensure that the expectations are clearly
articulated and consistent, including everything from grading practices and program
requirements to a consistently applied student code of conduct. The support component describes
both academic supports (e.g., tutoring and writing support), as well as general supports (e.g.,
financial aid). Additionally, supports aimed at strengthening emotional well-being and self-
efficacy may help students feel more connected to the institution, especially those who enter
under-prepared for college-level work. An institutional focus on providing feedback involves
frequent assessment of student learning and engagement and sharing the results of that
assessment with the student for increasing personal awareness of progress. One specific example
Tinto highlighted was the impact of institutional “Early Alert” systems, which allow institutional
actors to identify students at risk of failure or withdrawal so that they can provide support and
encouragement as needed. Student involvement, or engagement, is the level of active
participation that a student demonstrates in the classroom and within the general campus
community. The key for institutions is to establish a campus climate that encourages student
engagement, particularly by providing a wide array of opportunities for participation and even
incentivizing student participation in these activities (Tinto, 2010).
Giuffrida’s Cultural Adaptation of Tinto’s Theory
While Tinto’s model did not ignore the importance of a student’s personal background
and characteristics, a major critique of this theory is that it does not account for issues of racial or
ethnic minoritization. To mitigate the negative impact of this limitation in Tinto’s theory,
Giuffrida (2006) applied cross-cultural psychological theories in proposing a more culturally
aware adaptation of Integration Theory. The first major component of Giuffrida’s adaptation is
the shift from the term integration to connection. The researcher found that integration suggests

15

a process of acclimation to the institutional culture and some degree of separation or loss of the
former culture. In addition to this general idea of connection to the institutional culture or values,
Giuffrida suggested that an extra focus on cultural connection is needed for minoritized students
to succeed. Students need to remain connected to their families, their traditions, and to the
broader community of their cultural heritage in a way that is not highlighted in Tinto’s theory.
The second major component of the adapted theory is the distinction between students from
collectivist and individualist cultures. The researcher highlighted the fact that the competitive
and individualist nature of the traditional college culture represents a barrier for minoritized
students from more collectivist cultures. The researcher suggested that students from this type of
cultural background are motivated more by family expectations and career or personal goals
(Giuffrida, 2006).
Astin’s Student Involvement Theory
Astin’s (1970) framework for a new theory of student engagement examined the
interactional role of student characteristics upon entering college (inputs), the college
environment, and the measurable results of the student experience (outputs). Inputs include
demographic characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status, as well as
personal and educational goals and career aspirations. The college environment includes the
people, buildings, programs, and services, as well as the policies and cultures of the institution.
Lastly, outputs consist of student gains in knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as changes in
behavior and motivation. As seen in Figure 1, student inputs have a direct impact on student
outputs as well as contributions to the college environment, which in turn influences student
outputs (Astin, 1970).

16

Figure 1
Astin’s Student Engagement Framework

Reprinted from “The Methodology of Research on College Impact, Part One” by A. W. Astin,
1970, Sociology of Education, 43(3), p. 225 (https://doi.org/10.2307/2112065). Copyright 1970
by the American Sociological Association.

Astin (1984) moved beyond the passive view of these relationships with the student
involvement theory, which states that the more a student gets involved in academic and co-
curricular aspects of the institution, the more successful they would be. Moreover, student
involvement is defined as the extent to which a student is physically and mentally engaged in the
pursuit of their educational goals. Rather than focusing on student motivation and other
individual or institutional characteristics, Astin focused on the observable behaviors associated
with student involvement. This was, in part, an effort to develop a theory that was more practical
and less conceptual than previous theories, so that it can be more easily applied within an
institution (Astin, 1984).
Astin (1984) also described the student involvement theory in the context of five general
features or hypotheses. First, student involvement occurs on a continuum of engagement from
general to specific. General involvement includes students who are actively engaged in a variety
of activities, both inside and outside of the classroom, while specific involvement describes the
student who engages in only what is required within the classroom to reach a desired outcome.
Second, involvement is contextual and applied differentially by students depending on the given
resource or activity. For a variety of reasons, students decide what level of involvement they will

17

have and make these decisions with each new opportunity that arises. Third, student involvement
can be described in terms of both quantity and quality. Fourth, there is a direct connection
between the level of student involvement and the learning and development a student achieves.
Lastly, the success of an educational policy can be evaluated by the extent to which it drives
student involvement (Astin, 1984).
Like Tinto, Astin (1984) believed that the institution plays a significant role in providing
the student with opportunities to get involved as well as encouraging that involvement. These
opportunities can include athletics, clubs, student leadership, and campus life activities, as well
as specialized programs and services. Additionally, involvement can include program or course-
based opportunities to apply aspects of learning to hands-on activities and real-world
experiences. Institutions also influence or implement policy, such as student codes of conduct or
expectations for community engagement, which place expectations or enticements on the level of
student involvement (Astin, 1984).
In contrast to Tinto, Astin (1975) initially focused on student “fit,” particularly the impact
of minoritization experienced by traditionally underserved and underrepresented populations on
persistence based on a perceived lack of “fit.” The scholar’s research demonstrated that students
are more likely to persist and succeed when they perceive similarities in their own backgrounds
and those of the other students enrolled at the institution. Additionally, Astin (1993) examined
the impact of institutions that actively seek to develop policies and practices promoting equity,
diversity, and multiculturalism. Examples include institutional work to diversify the faculty and
staff of the institution as well as establishing learning communities for students of color. Based
on this research, Astin (1993) found a direct positive relationship between these institutional

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cultures and improvements in student involvement and success among these minoritized student
populations.
The RP Group’s Student Support (Re)defined Framework
A report published by researchers with The RP Group summarized key findings from a
series of focus groups with approximately 900 CCC students (Booth et al., 2013). The mixed
methods study analyzed student perspectives on which student support services and activities
contributed the most to student success, particularly for those of Latinx or African Ancestry
backgrounds. The 13 colleges that agreed to participate in the study were representative of the
CCC system in terms of their student and community demographics, geographic location, and
student goals and outcomes (Booth et al., 2013).
Booth et al. (2013) employed stratified random sampling of 10,918 students with
intentional oversampling of Latinx and African Ancestry students, ultimately gathering feedback
from 785 students (7% response rate) via phone surveys and 102 students via focus groups. As a
result of the research, six factors arose from the students’ experiences, which Booth and
colleagues categorized and labeled as Directed, Focused, Nurtured, Engaged, Connected, and
Valued. In their results, students identified the factors as having a distinct order of importance
while also demonstrating interconnectivity as demonstrated in Figure 2. Students also reported
that experiencing at least one factor often leads to an experience associated with another factor.
This work serves as the foundation for a framework of student success depicting the six key
factors as essential elements that students need and institutions can provide to improve
completion and transfer rates (Booth et al., 2013).

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Figure 2
The RP Group’s Student Support (Re)defined Framework

Reprinted from Using Student Voices to Redefine Success: What Community College Students
Say Institutions, Instructors and Others Can Do to Help Them Succeed (p. 6), by K. Booth et al.,
2013, Berkeley, CA: The Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges.
Copyright 2013 by The RP Group.

Booth et al. (2013) indicated that the most highly ranked need for community college
students was for their experiences to be directed toward achieving related educational goals. This
includes assistance from the institution with identifying and setting goals as well as planning out
a sequence of courses in a way that allows the students to meet their aims within a reasonable
amount of time. Within the CCC system, the primary mechanism for establishing this sense of
direction is the educational plan (ed plan). Students reported having trouble throughout this
process because of a lack of human and technological resources. In addition, students indicated
that while counseling faculty plays a pivotal role, they would like to have more involvement and
guidance from their instructional faculty in identifying and clarifying academic goals (Booth et
al., 2013).
The second most important factor according to the researchers is the feeling of being
focused or motivated toward achieving their goal (Booth et al., 2013). This sense of motivation is
often driven by perceptions of success and momentum, such as passing a class or completing a

20

transfer requirement. Additionally, students reported that when they are able to track progress
toward achieving their goals, either with a counselor or by looking at a web-based tool, they are
more motivated and encouraged to continue. Students do not discount the need for a certain
degree of intrinsic motivation or focus; rather, they identify external ways of influencing this
drive (Booth et al., 2013).
Furthermore, students reported the feeling of being nurtured or cared for as the third most
important factor in their ability to persist (Booth et al., 2013). The researchers found that students
are more likely to succeed when they believe someone else wants them to succeed and truly
cares about their personal and educational goals. This level of care could come from faculty and
staff, or it could come from family, friends, or peer students. When pointing to faculty and staff
who had provided this sense of care and nurturing, students described tangible assistance and
support demonstrating an understanding of their needs and challenges, both inside and outside of
the classroom. Students reported that even small gestures make a significant difference in
establishing a sense of community and support (Booth et al., 2013).
The fourth factor surfacing in the research is the students’ level of engagement or
involvement (Booth et al., 2013). The students indicated that this engagement occurs inside and
outside of the classroom in both academic and extracurricular activities offered and encouraged
by the institution. Higher levels of involvement help establish a sense of community that leads to
increased motivation for students. The students also reported that many of their peers did not see
the value of engagement, representing an area where both the students and the institutions could
shoulder responsibility. Booth et al. suggested students need to take more initiative in getting
involved and the institutions need to better advertise and promote opportunities for involvement.
The students indicated faculty plays a critical role in developing this engagement, but they also

21

pointed to administrative functions of providing access and opportunity for student involvement
(Booth et al., 2013).
A sense of connection marks the fifth factor in improving student success (Booth et al.,
2013). Examples of this connection include participation in student clubs and campus life
activities, forming study groups, and developing friendships with other college students. Again,
the students pointed to faculty as a key facilitator of this connection, but the institution plays a
significant role in providing the time and space to build these connections. Students reported that
the more time they spend on campus outside of class, the more connected they feel to the college
community. Limitations to student connection include the relatively small amount of time
community college students spend on campus outside of class, a sense that part-time faculty are
especially disconnected from the institution, and a view on the part of some students that the
community college is a steppingstone and therefore connection is unimportant (Booth et al.,
2013).
The final factor arising from the report is the ability to provide value to the college and
the community (Booth et al., 2013). This factor is difficult for students to articulate without
prompting, but when asked specific questions, many reported the significant impact of being able
to contribute through community service, feedback to faculty, or service as a peer tutor or
mentor. This also includes the ability for students to engage in leadership and governance while
at the college (Booth et al., 2013).
From the beginning of the study, the researchers ensured they would be able to focus on
the unique needs of the racially minoritized students as well as other student groups traditionally
marginalized in higher education (Booth et al., 2013). By highlighting the needs of the Latinx,
Black, or African American students, as well as students with disabilities and first-generation

22

students, Booth and colleagues identified equitable approaches to applying their framework to
improve student success. When discussing issues relating to being focused, the Latinx, Black,
and African American student populations all identified financial aid as a key element in
maintaining focus and motivation. When discussing the factor of engagement, students with
disabilities highlighted a stronger need for classroom experiences featuring hands-on activities
rather than solely lecture-based lessons. When asked about connection and community, first-
generation students indicated that they typically spend much more time on campus outside of
class, and they express a strong desire for activities and opportunities to build that connectivity
(Booth et al., 2013).
The unique aspects of the work of Tinto, Giuffrida, Astin, and The RP Group established
a general understanding of personal and environmental factors that influence student
engagement, persistence, and ultimately success. The authors also suggested ways in which the
institution could influence these factors as well as the students themselves to improve the
likelihood they will persist and achieve their educational goals. However, moving an institution
to a college-wide culture focused on student persistence and success requires action and
intentionality of the institution’s leaders, with a particular focus on leading organizational
change.
Change Leadership in Higher Education
To explore the relationship between leaders’ beliefs about what it means for community
college students to succeed and how they believe they go about influencing change to improve
success, it was important to understand the relevant literature on leadership and change
management. The following section presents several evidence-based leadership theories and
strategies that were used to inform the conceptual framework for the present study. Bolman and

23

Deal’s (2021) work concerns the leadership frames or perspectives through which a leader
interprets and responds to their organizational context. Bensimon et al. (1989) and Bolman &
Gallos (2021) contextualized this work to the unique aspects of the field of higher education,
including the split role of academic and operational or administrative leadership that is
particularly relevant for the current study. Argyris and Schön (1996) and Schein (2017) defined
the role of leaders in leading and implementing change in an organization that values and
prioritizes learning. Finally, Bragg et al. (2014) proposed the Transformative Change Initiative
(TCI), which identifies critical elements of designing and implementing effective and enduring
change, specifically within the community college setting.
Bolman and Deal’s Four Frames Theory Applied to Higher Education
In the fourth edition of Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership,
Bolman and Deal (2021) described four frames influencing the ways leaders perceive their
organizations and make decisions: (a) structural, (b) human resources, (c) political, and (d)
symbolic. Now in its seventh edition, this work represents many years of research and writing on
organizational management and leadership. Through their research, Bolman and Deal developed
a framework recognizing the importance of a leader having a deep understanding of human
behavior, motivation, and relationships, and how these factors impact an organization. The four
frames help a leader contextualize these individual and group dynamics, allowing them to act
and move the organization forward (Bolman & Deal, 2021).
First, the structural frame focuses on policies, procedures, and distinct roles of
individuals to advance the organization toward achieving clear goals in the most efficient way
possible (Bolman & Deal, 2021). Second, the human resources frame pertains to the personal
and interpersonal aspects of the people within the organization, with the idea that the

24

organization must adjust to meet their unique needs. Third, the political frame focuses on the
competing priorities and power struggles of an organization, primarily where networks for
collaboration and compromise are needed to effectively move the organization forward with
limited resources. Lastly, the symbolic frame deals with organizational lore and the unique
interpretations of facts, figures, ideas, and values that build organizational meaning and identify.
Each frame represents the worldview of the individual leader who applies the frame to
understand their organization and suggests approaches leaders may take to improve the
organization and implement change. The authors also noted that while a leader may be more
innately predisposed to applying only one of the four frames, more effective leaders will learn to
apply all four when making decisions to avoid negative outcomes (Bolman & Deal, 2021).
Bensimon, Neumann, and Birnbaum’s Academic Application of the Four Frames
In a report titled “Making Sense of Administrative Leadership: The ‘L’ Word in Higher
Education,” Bensimon et al. (1989) explored the application of leadership theories to higher
education, including a detailed application of Bolman and Deal’s (2021) four frames theory.
While the four frames theory can be applied to formal and informal leadership experiences in
any organizational context, Bensimon and colleagues suggested that the distinction between
administrative and academic authority in higher education requires a unique adaptation of
leadership theory. The authors focused on the application of the four frames theory largely
because it centered on the thoughts and perspectives of individual leaders as opposed to the
specific traits, skills, or attributes of leadership. In this application, the authors suggested
different names for the four higher education leadership frames, where the leader views the
college or university as a Bureaucracy (structural), Collegium (human resources), Political
System (political), or Organized Anarchy (symbolic). The authors then suggested a fifth frame

25

combining aspects of the latter four into an integrative view of the institution as a Cybernetic
System (Bensimon et al., 1989).
In applying the structural frame to a view of the institution as a Bureaucracy, the authors
focused on the hierarchical nature of organizations through a central figure with ultimate
authority for decision-making (Bensimon et al., 1989). Bureaucratic leaders in higher education
favor clear lines of reporting with an emphasis on management, efficiency, effectiveness, and
goal setting. These types of leaders are often viewed as having risen to their position through
exceptional knowledge or power and are sometimes described in almost heroic terms.
Bureaucratic leaders can even develop a self-image that they are more effective than others in
their position, particularly those who have held their position within the same institution. They
demonstrate effectiveness through the way they staff and manage their leadership teams, how
they direct the resources of the institution, and how they relate to the faculty without ceding
control. As a result, the authors cited research suggesting these leaders are often classified as
domineering and distant, leaving students directly impacted by ineffective and insufficient
services or support (Bensimon et al., 1989).
The authors then described the human resources frame such that higher education
institutions can be viewed as a Collegium, or a group of learners and educators with a common
purpose and equal footing (Bensimon et al., 1989). Here, the focus is on developing community
and engaging formal and informal leaders in fair discussion of priorities to build consensus.
These types of leaders are willing to sacrifice their own interests for the good of the college, and
they expect that others will do the same. Through establishing shared norms, values, priorities,
and goals, collegial leaders emphasize the processes of inclusive decision-making and consistent,
effective communication. Rather than focusing on their own leadership ability or the capacity of

26

their administrative teams, these leaders identify and engage talented individuals from across the
institution. While the authors indicated research demonstrating how collegial leaders tend to
influence more positive outcomes, they also noted this approach may be indicative of a lack of
strong leadership or responsibility (Bensimon et al., 1989).
The view of a college as a Political System highlights the need for leaders to manage and
navigate conflict between competing factions, priorities, or programs (Bensimon et al., 1989).
Political leaders in higher education focus on policy and process as well as the identification of
institutional goals and the strategies that can be implemented to reach those goals. For these
types of leaders, decisions are made by a small group of political influencers, of whom are
selected due to their formal leadership position, their power and influence with key stakeholder
groups, or their persistent advocation to be included in the process. Presidents and other
administrators who are political leaders see themselves as mediators or problem solvers who,
after considering competing resource needs and the solutions proposed by their team, build
support and consent for their chosen outcome. To ensure their desired result, these leaders
exercise control over what information is shared and how it is communicated. While the authors
suggested that these leaders can be highly effective, particularly when resources are scarce, the
political frame presumes conflict as core to an institution, which may be perceived negatively by
those within the college community (Bensimon et al., 1989).
When viewing a college or university in symbolic terms as an Organized Anarchy, a
leader recognizes that they are joining an institution during ongoing work with pre-defined
standards, expectations, cultures, and ideals (Bensimon et al., 1989). Such leaders assume
positions within organizations that are already in process; rather than taking control or making
sweeping change, they interpret and apply established practices to new challenges or

27

opportunities. The idea of “anarchy” is predicated on the notion that institutions often work in
silos with decentralized day-to-day decision-making and a clear divide between academics,
student services, and operational units. These types of leaders spend a great deal of time learning
about the institution, its history, and the individuals or groups who serve as guardians of the
institutional culture. When they see a need for change, they make small adjustments over time
and involve those who might otherwise oppose the change early in the process. The authors
suggested that a primary criticism or drawback to this leadership approach in higher education is
that it implies leaders have little direct impact on the institution and that a president needs to
remain relatively hands-off and allow the organization to operate and change naturally with
limited intervention (Bensimon et al., 1989).
In integrating aspects of the four frames into the view of an institution as a Cybernetic
System, the authors focus on a leader’s ability to monitor negative feedback loops and address
issues of institutional performance (Bensimon et al., 1989). The integrative approach involves
leaders who develop teams to ensure that each of the four frames is considered when making
decisions. In this integrative frame, leaders identify and train “monitors” throughout the
institution who focus on trends, metrics, or indicators of performance from enrollment and
course success to committee effectiveness and employee morale. Effective Cybernetic leaders
identify the most important elements to continually assess, select strong “monitors” for these
areas, and ensure that these individuals feel comfortable raising concerns and providing negative
feedback. These types of leaders learn to consider institutional performance using all four frames
with an eye on the unintended consequences of their actions. In addition, there is a strong focus
on understanding and questioning sources of data or information, encouraging the recruitment

28

and inclusion of diverse perspectives, and welcoming broad stakeholder engagement (Bensimon
et al., 1989).
Bolman and Gallos’s Academic Application of the Four Frames
In 2011, Bolman and Gallos (2021) applied the four frames to leadership in higher
education settings in their book entitled Reframing Academic Leadership, which is now in its
second edition. Understanding the complexity of modern higher education institutions and the
limitations of formal positions of leadership in colleges and universities, the authors focused
more on the way leaders use the frames to make sense of the institution in times of challenge or
transition. Within each frame, the authors identified the foundational work or decisions a leader
must address as well as the tools they are likely to employ in the process (Bolman & Gallos,
2021).
According to the authors, leaders who apply the structural frame to an institutional
challenge or change situation must make two key decisions (Bolman & Gallos, 2021). First, they
must decide how to divide the work among different people or departments. Although this
differentiation of roles and functions is not unique to higher education, the concepts of faculty
governance and academic freedom, among other factors, make this decision more complicated.
The second, and perhaps more important decision, pertains to how the differentiated roles and
responsibilities will be coordinated and integrated such that the institution progresses as
effectively and efficiently as possible. In addressing these two issues, the leader focuses on
organizational charts, job descriptions, and structures or processes for governance and decision-
making. In clearly designing and communicating these important fundamental elements of the
institutional operations, the leader will establish boundaries and expectations (Bolman & Gallos,
2021).

29

Employing the human resources frame to a leadership challenge or change process, an
institutional leader’s focus must be on ensuring they have the right people in the right positions
to support the work needed (Bolman & Gallos, 2021). The alignment of employee talents,
abilities, and interests to the goals of the institution requires the leader to not only recruit and
retain new and highly qualified employees, but also to provide training and development to bring
existing employees up to level needed to meet new expectations. Leaders employing this frame
will start with clear and open communication about what is needed for the college to improve,
followed by a delineation of the resources and time needed for people to learn new skills and
grow professionally. These leaders will also recognize the need to build a team approach to the
complex work of institutional change by establishing committees or workgroups and
empowering them to do what is necessary to help the institution advance (Bolman & Gallos,
2021).
Leaders with a preference for the political frame must first develop a strong
understanding of the political landscape of their institution, which requires them to address three
aspects for each new scenario (Bolman & Gallos, 2021). First, the leader must have a clear
definition of the key stakeholders in each issue they are working to address. The stakeholders for
an institutional change initiative likely include students, staff, and faculty, but can also comprise
community members, elected officials, or workforce partners. Once the political leader identifies
the individuals and groups who play a role in the change process, the next step is to develop an
understanding of the interests of each stakeholder as they relate to the issue at hand. Finally, the
leader must identify the potential power each stakeholder may wield in influencing the result of
the change process. To move through the political terrain, the leader must take what they learn
from addressing the three aspects and work toward collaboration and compromise. Through an

30

emphasis on shared goals and interests, patiently working through conflict or disagreement, and
developing consensus, the political leader can work to gain support from key stakeholders for the
proposed change (Bolman & Gallos, 2021).
In higher education, leaders who embrace the symbolic frame must connect the vision of
the future to the institutional culture and mission (Bolman & Gallos, 2021). Regardless of
whether the institutional culture is strong or pervasive, there will always be a sense of nostalgia
or tradition, and leaders who are more grounded in the symbolic frame will message the
proposed change in terms of how it connects to and builds upon that history. The symbolic leader
builds this connection and helps others buy in to the change by shaping the story of the
institution and making the new vision seem like a natural progression in that story. This is
particularly effective when the leader can make that story personal to the individuals or groups
with whom they are sharing the story. One of the most powerful ways for a leader to introduce
change through the symbolic frame is through the implementation of aspects of the vision for
change into existing ceremonies or rituals, such as graduation ceremonies, convocation activities,
sporting events, and orientations (Bolman & Gallos, 2021).
Organizational Learning
Argyris and Schön (1996) suggested that while institutional leaders may be able to help
set the stage for change, the entire organization must be engaged in the process for such change
to last. The authors indicated that this is best accomplished through a process of organizational
learning. Successful organizational learning within the complex structures and social norms of a
college or university requires critical reflection on both the observable actions and stated beliefs
of the organization as well as the underlying values and beliefs. The authors described these
organizational learning factors as “theories of action,” which help leaders anticipate or describe

31

the ways in which an institution may respond to a proposed change and identify strategies for
overcoming any negative response. When there is a clear gap between the observable actions and
mission statements (espoused theories) and the implicit values and beliefs (theories-in-use) of an
institution, organizational change would be more successful when regarded as a way of closing
that gap (Argyris & Schön, 1996).
Argyris and Schön (1996) cautioned that exposing gaps between the institution’s
espoused theories and the theories-in-use may be seen as threatening to individuals in the
organization as well as the overall organizational culture. This can lead to a sense of fear and
mistrust within the organization and lead what the authors called “defensive routines.” If these
routines are allowed to persist, they can result in institutional stagnation as individuals and the
organization becomes increasingly unwilling or unable to discuss issues or challenges they face.
Ultimately, this can lead to an institutional culture that is incapable of critical self-reflection,
learning, or improvement due to fear. To avoid this situation, the organization must first focus on
developing a culture of trust and openness where individuals feel safe and supported in their
work and where risk is for the purposes of improvement is praised (Argyris & Schön, 1996).
According to Argyris and Schön (1996), the reflective organization engages in two styles
of learning: single- and double-loop learning. Each style of organizational learning includes an
evaluation of institutional performance, the identification of areas for improvement, and a course
of corrective action. However, single-loop learning only considers the espoused theories of
action, focusing on improvements that can be made to structure or process, while double-loop
learning includes a consideration of the implicit values of the theories-in-use and critical self-
reflection that can lead to defensive routines. The latter method of organizational learning is
concerned both with the effectiveness of the organization and the extent to which the

32

organization is fulfilling its mission and preserving its values. Overall, both styles of learning are
important to institutional change and improvement initiatives, and both can occur simultaneously
(Argyris & Schön, 1996). Single-loop learning is particularly important because it allows the
organization to make small, incremental changes to improve organizational performance.
However, these changes may not last or transform the overall organization without similar
changes to the underlying culture stemming from double-loop learning (Argyris & Schön, 1996).
Learning Culture
In the fifth edition of Organizational Culture and Leadership, Schein (2017) described
the role of culture in organizational change processes. Schein suggested that the organizational
culture is a way that an institution contextualizes its internal and external environment. In times
of change, the organizational culture provides a sense of calm and stability while also protecting
the status quo. When an organization is facing rapid and recurring change, Schein suggested that
a more adaptable, learning-focused culture can help the organization succeed. For leaders to help
their organizations move toward a learning culture, the author described 10 characteristics or
dimensions representing critical components of this type of organizational culture (Schein,
2017).
First, according to Schein (2017), organizations with a learning culture attempt to be
more proactive in responding to the changing environment. These organizations are continually
focused on the learning process as a way of identifying areas for improvement or potential
challenges and developing appropriate solutions before any issues arise. The second
characteristic involves a deep and sustained commitment to “learning to learn.” An
organizational learning-centered culture recognizes value in mistakes or failure as a crucial part
of the learning process. Furthermore, the organization encourages and supports an appropriate

33

level of risk to provide a safe place for this type of learning. Third, organizational learning
cultures are built upon positive assumptions of humanity and stakeholder engagement. When the
conditions are right and the appropriate resources are available, individuals within this type of
organization will take the opportunity to learn and grow. This includes ensuring appropriate
staffing, strategic allocation of funding, provision and maintenance of effective technology, as
well as sufficient time and physical space. The fourth characteristic pertains to institutions which
view unrest and instability in the external or internal environment as an issue that can be
managed and, to an extent, overcome. These organizations anticipate potential instability and
establish structures and strategies to quickly respond to the underlying causes of the unrest. Fifth,
learning organizations are committed to analysis, self-reflection, and inclusive dialogue about the
challenges they are facing. This collaborative approach to evaluation ensures that the
organization maintains a commitment to continuous improvement. The sixth identifying quality
is that a learning culture is one that focuses more on the future of the organization than the past
or present. By looking to the future, the organization can adapt and move forward unencumbered
by past practice or “status quo” behaviors and expectations. Seventh, organizations with a
learning culture embrace open and regular communication. The author notes that it is important
that the communication be clearly related to the task at hand and identify how the work
contributes to the future improvement of the institution. The eighth characteristic involves a
strong commitment to cultural diversity and the role of diversity in ensuring a more effective
decision-making process. Diversity ensures a broader range of perspectives and ideas are
involved in the process of analyzing and responding to a given situation, ensuring that more
potential pitfalls can be avoided. Ninth, the learning organization is one that recognizes the
complexity and interrelatedness of its various departments and stakeholder groups. By respecting

34

the dependence between its component departments in institutional change initiatives, the
learning organization can anticipate and plan to address a wider variety of complicated and
multifaceted impediments. Finally, the author indicated that a learning organization is one that is
committed to introspection and ongoing analysis of its internal culture (Schein, 2017).
Schein (2017) suggested that the role of leaders dedicated to a learning culture in an
organizational change initiative is to recognize that the organization may experience a certain
level of anxiety. This anxiety stems from uncertainty and a perceived loss of identity and can be
at least partially mitigated by encouraging and developing the 10 dimensions described above.
Moreover, this anxiety may present in a variety of ways, but typically includes a show of
disagreement or aversion to the proposed change among stakeholders. By providing a safe and
open environment through the adoption and support of the organizational characteristics
described previously, stakeholders can learn about the problem at hand, develop an
understanding about the proposed change, and identify their own role in the change. As a result,
the leader can help the organization embrace the change process (Schein, 2017).
Transformative Change Initiative
The goal of the Transformative Change Initiative (TCI), a framework resulting from the
Office of Community College Research and Leadership out of the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, is to help community colleges implement full-scale evidence-based
innovations to improve student success and institutional effectiveness. The researchers found that
new initiatives are often introduced as “pilot” programs focused on small groups or individual
programs and are difficult to “scale up” to the broader college population. However, when
successful colleges plan to scale an initiative, they first focus on spread and endurance. Bragg
and colleagues defined the spread of an initiative as the extent to which it would require change

35

within the institution and the broader community, including peer colleges, transfer institutions,
and feeder school districts. The researchers subsequently defined the endurance of an initiative as
both the amount of time it would take to implement the change and what it would realistically
take to ensure the change was sustained throughout that timeframe. To fully address these two
key factors, the researchers proposed a framework with seven guiding principles for institutional
leaders to consider throughout the change process (Bragg et al., 2014).
According to Bragg et al. (2014), the first guiding principle consists of Leadership,
Organization, and Support. Within the framework, leadership mainly pertains to influence and
impact rather than formal positions of authority or responsibility. The researchers argued that the
key was to engage stakeholders at every level in the change process. The entire organization
should be focused on and contributing to the overall goals of the initiative to ensure systemic and
lasting change occurred. In this framework, formal leaders must demonstrate active support
through the appropriate allocation of time and resources (Bragg et al., 2014).
Bragg et al. (2014) offered the second guiding principle in the framework as the colleges’
local Adoption and Adaptation. The researchers suggested that for an institutional change
initiative to succeed, it must include consideration of the local context of the specific institutions
involved. In addition, college leadership must conduct a careful analysis of what works as well
as areas for improvement throughout the process of scaling a new initiative. This iterative
approach to implementation should ultimately result in a unique adaptation of the proposed
change, resulting in greater success compared to the wholesale adoption of the original idea
(Bragg et al., 2014).
Guiding principle number three within the TCI involves the development of Networks
and Professional Development (Bragg et al., 2014). According to the researchers, large-scale

36

change is most successful when colleges engaged in the change find partner institutions which
are either currently engaged in implementing a similar change or have already gone through and
completed the process. This professional network allows for the development of a shared
knowledge base and effective practices. Additionally, stakeholders in different institutional areas
could collaborate with peers at other institutions to identify and address potential barriers within
their specific operational function. This principle may also help create tailored professional
development opportunities to educate and train all employees involved and ensure a more
effective implementation (Bragg et al., 2014).
The fourth guiding principle entails Policy-Focused and Publicly-Financed Reform
(Bragg et al., 2014). This principle focuses on state- and federal-level reforms that could set the
stage for institutional change, particularly within public institutions. However, the local aspect of
this principle includes the expectation that the chief executive officers of colleges engage in
advocacy, including lobbying elected officials and related state oversight agencies, to provide
this type of support. Additionally, colleges could develop locally implemented policies and
resource allocation practices to further support the change initiative (Bragg et al., 2014).
The fifth guiding principle in the framework involves the provision of Technology
Support and Technical Assistance (Bragg et al., 2014). While the researchers noted the
importance for colleges to not view technology as the answer to a given problem, most
institutional change initiatives would require improvements or expansions in technology
infrastructure. The technology could comprise a tool central to the enduring success of the
change or a resource to help streamline the implementation process. Accordingly, the successful
adoption or expansion of the technology would require that institutions provide technical
assistance. Following this principle, bringing in individuals or companies with expertise in the

37

technology or even the broader initiative could help employees realize a new way of doing their
work or a completely new role (Bragg et al., 2014).
Bragg et al. (2014) described the sixth guiding principle as the ways in which institutions
engage in Targeted Sharing and Dissemination. Once institutions decide to implement a new
change initiative or scale an existing pilot program, Bragg et. al. argued that the change leaders
must decide how to engage the broader college communities. By working with stakeholder
groups and smaller departments to understand the specific impact of the change on their day-to-
day work, it could be tailored to fit within their unique context. Doing so may help establish
shared ownership of the change initiative and expand communication of the purpose and value of
the change (Bragg et al., 2014).
The seventh guiding principle within the framework involves the institutional approach to
Evaluation Utilization to Grow Impact (Bragg et al., 2014). The researchers noted the value of
systematic research and evaluation to ensure that the change initiative progresses successfully,
ultimately leading to long-term positive impact on student success and institutional effectiveness.
While this marks the final principle, the design of an effective research and evaluation plan must
occur from the start to fully align with expected milestones and success indicators of the change
initiative. Broadly sharing the results of the research and evaluation is also an integral
component to either support the case for course correction or to celebrate accomplishments
(Bragg et al., 2014).
Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework presented below is my culminating theory, after completing
my study of how community college leaders, both formal and informal, believe they work to
influence transformational change to improve student success. Maxwell (2013) notes the

38

conceptual framework is an essential aspect of the research design, as it presents a map to guide
researchers through the design, investigation, and analysis phases of the process. The conceptual
framework is a tentative theory formed from elements of prior research, pilot studies, thought
experiments, theoretical models, and personal experience (Maxwell, 2013). My conceptual
framework for this study was drawn originally from the theoretical and empirical research on
college student persistence and engagement, leadership, and change management. This
framework was also influenced by my personal experience working in higher education for over
18 years and particularly in community college administration for the past 8 years. The final
revised conceptual framework is also influenced by the findings of the present study. As
Maxwell suggests, I articulate my conceptual framework (Figure 3) using labeled boxes, color-
coding, and connecting lines to indicate relationships between the various elements.
Figure 3
Conceptual Framework

This framework represents my view of how transformational change for student success
occurs when formal and informal community college leaders, either consciously or
unconsciously, draw upon their own beliefs or perceptions about what it means for community

39

college students to be successful and what it takes for institutions to support that success. I assert
that the beliefs that leaders have about what it means for community college students to succeed
are based on the unique goals of each individual student. Given the diverse goals and needs of
these students, the leaders in these institutions identify actions to support student goal completion
that are best reflected by the six factors detailed in the Student Support (Re)defined Framework
(Booth et al., 2013). I believe that institutional leaders attempt to work to provide the space and
foundation for students to feel directed, focused, nurtured, engaged, connected, and valued by
the organization. My theory is further supported by the work of earlier researchers in the field of
student persistence, including Tinto (1988, 2010), who suggested that the actions of institutional
leaders should help to clarify expectations, mandate, or incentivize deeper levels of engagement
and participation, and provide holistic support to meet student needs.
At the same time, the leaders work within their context as part of a network of leaders at
the institution to identify strategies that they believe will help them influence change in others. I
argue that the first major goal for leaders is to interpret and understand the context of the
institution, and their role in it, through their preferred leadership frames as described by Bolman
and Deal (2021) and contextualized to the higher education setting by Bensimon et al. (1989) and
Bolman and Gallos (2021). While this is part of my tentative theory of how leaders work to
influence change in their institutions, it did not appear in my research because of a delimitation
in the way my semi-structured interview protocol was crafted. However, based on my review of
the literature and my personal experience, I believe it is an area for future research. As described
in the second part of this chapter, foundational to any institutional change work for any leader is
that they must work to build trust among the various stakeholders and bring them into the change
process by encouraging institutional self-reflection and building an institution committed to

40

organizational learning (Argyris & Schön, 1996; Schein, 2017). I argue that, when working to
establish trust and engage others, institutional leaders either knowingly or unknowingly employ
various leadership frames and strategies when leading a change initiative (Argyris & Schön,
1996; Bensimon et al., 1989; Bolman & Deal, 2021; Bolman & Gallos, 2021; Bragg et al., 2014;
Schein, 2017). Throughout each stage of this process, the leader must provide overall guidance
and support for the change initiative, including establishing a shared sense of vision or purpose,
ensuring appropriate training or professional development, allocating resources as needed, and
facilitating regular and effective communication (Bragg et al., 2014). I believe that institutional
leaders often employ these change leadership strategies instinctively. Moreover, it can
sometimes be beneficial when multiple leaders operate throughout the institution to implement
transformational change to improve student success. This is like the Cybernetic frame of
leadership proposed by Bensimon et al. (1989) who suggested that executive leaders should
identify teams of leaders or “monitors” who could help to lead an institution towards a shared
goal.
In my tentative theory, based on the review of the literature, my personal experience, and
the findings of the present study, the formal and informal leaders approach influencing change in
different and similar ways based on their positions within the institution. The formal leaders
either employ organizational learning strategies like the use of data to expose a problem and
highlight the need to work towards a shared vision for change. The informal leaders engage in a
process that I describe as influential storytelling or sharing examples or stories about how they
have worked to directly impact the student experience and improve student success. I believe
that both formal and informal leaders rely upon relationships built upon trust to approach their

41

work on influencing change. Most importantly, these leaders must be working towards a shared
local vision or definition of student success for the change to be transformational.

42

Chapter Three: Methodology
In this chapter, I outline my reasons for employing qualitative research methods to
answer my research questions, detailing the specific methods of data collection and analysis that
I employed. The overall purpose of this study was to explore the ways that formal and informal
leaders at a community college defined student success and understand the strategies that they
chose to employ to influence change to improve student success. This qualitative study was
informed by the following research questions:
1. How do community college leaders, both formal and informal, define student
success?
2. How do formal and informal community college leaders approach influencing
organizational change, given their individual definitions of student success and their
positions within the institution?
Research Design
In my research study, I used a qualitative research design. Creswell (2014) suggested
qualitative methods are more appropriate when attempting to understand the ways the research
participants interpret and respond to a given situation. Qualitative methods are particularly
effective in applied fields such as education and administration where efforts to improve practice
can be informed through an investigation and understanding of the perspectives of those
individuals who are the focus of the research (Merriam, 2009). Qualitative methods allow for the
exploration of the full context within which participants act, including how their context shaped
or influenced their actions (Maxwell, 2013). I investigated the beliefs and perceived actions of
leaders at a single community college and my research methods helped me to identify similarities
in the ways they defined community college student success and the strategies they believed they

43

used when working to influence change. Consistent with Maxwell (2013), a carefully structured
and deliberative qualitative research design was used to support comparability across similar
leaders in related situations or settings. My design was also informed by a constructivist
worldview. Creswell (2014) described the constructivist worldview as one that is focused on the
ways individuals make sense of the world based on their background, experiences, and social
interactions within the given community of study. Through my research, I explored the
similarities and differences amongst the diverse group of leaders about their beliefs about what it
means for community college students to succeed, what the institution needed to do to help
students succeed, and the leaders’ own positions and relationships at the college and how that
might relate to their preferred strategies for influencing change.
My specific research design consisted of one-on-one interviews of formal and informal
leaders at a single community college. According to Merriam (2009), interviews are particularly
effective when the actions or behaviors that are the focus of the study cannot be directly
observed or when it is important to understand the underlying thoughts or past experiences of the
study participants. As the focus of my research was on how community college leaders define
student success and how they believe they work to influence change to improve student success,
it was important that I used one-on-one interviews to explore the complex nature of these
leaders’ perceptions about their decisions and actions.
Sample and Setting
As I was focusing on the leaders at a single community college, my research design
followed the structure of a case study. Merriam (2009) indicated that in case study research,
there should be two levels of sampling because first the specific case needs to be identified, and
then the potential participants must either all be interviewed or sampled for the study. My case

44

selection was based on the college’s work to implement the California Guided Pathways student
success initiative because this is a statewide change within the CCC system that requires holistic
and transformational change throughout the institution. On a national level, the guided pathways
reform effort is described as a redesign of the entire student experience, from the student’s first
contact with the college to completion, including structural and operational changes at
throughout the institution (Bailey et al., 2015b). This large-scale change initiative requires
collaboration and engagement of all institutional stakeholders, allowing for local adaptations that
require college leaders to make decisions about what changes to implement and how they should
be implemented. To identify the specific college, I identified the colleges that had been part of
the first round of institutions to implement the guided pathways change initiative as this would
suggest an institutional desire for change.
The study took place at a 2-year community college in Southern California during the
spring semester of 2020. The college will be known in the study by the pseudonym, Local
Community College (LCC). The college was an early adopter of the California Guided Pathways
initiative and is a mid-size college within the system with between 7,500 and 10,000 students.
According to Merriam (2009), the case study sampling process starts with the purposeful
identification of key research participants who clearly align with the intent of the study and then
expands to additional participants recommended by the primary participants as those who
represent the essential characteristics or qualities that are the focus of the study. The first round
of leaders was identified by reviewing the college’s structure for leading the implementation of
the Guided Pathways initiative locally. This meant examining college websites and documents to
understand how the work was being led locally and what decision-making structure had been
implemented. As a result of this research, I discovered that there were a series of workgroups

45

that had been created, each of which had a staff, faculty, and administrative facilitator. The
workgroups all reported up through a steering committee that was facilitated by a faculty
member and another administrator. The collective group of facilitators, along with the college
President, was the first part of a two-step snowball sampling that I conducted to complete my
case study sampling, which ensured that I would have both formal and informal leaders involved
in the guided pathways institutional change initiative in my original pool. This represented 10
email invitations, of whom seven agreed to participate in the study. During my interview with
each of the seven leaders, I asked for references of additional leaders who may have particularly
relevant information for the present study, which led to three additional email invitations and one
additional participant. Ultimately, the eight participants represented four formal leadership
positions like College President or Dean and four informal leadership positions like Manager of
Grant Programs or Instructional Faculty. While I would have preferred to wait for more faculty
and, the academic year was coming to a close, and the summer was approaching, which would
have meant less likelihood that full-time faculty who were more involved in the leadership of the
guided pathways work at the college would be available given that they would be off-contract.
With this in mind, and the fact that the others whom I had attempted to recruit had either
declined to participate or failed to respond after numerous requests, and with the rich data that I
had at that point across both formal and informal leaders, I decided that I had reached saturation.
Data Collection and Instruments
According to Maxwell (2013), the specific methods of data collection in a qualitative
research study are informed both by the research questions and the situation or environment that
is the focus of the study. I used individual interviews to collect data for this study. Qualitative

46

interviews are useful when the researcher is attempting to understand the beliefs or opinions of
the study participants (Creswell, 2014; Merriam, 2009).
Interviews
Merriam (2009) suggested that interviewing is a data collection tool that is used to some
extent in all qualitative research studies. Decisions about the style, content, and structure of the
interviews should be at least partially guided by the research questions, particularly the type of
information that the researcher is attempting to discover through the interviews. Moreover, the
interview format typically falls on a spectrum between highly structured and unstructured or
informal (Merriam, 2009). For this study, I conducted a series of 1 to 1.5-hour interviews with
the identified participants virtually via Zoom following a semi-structured format. Merriam
(2009) described this format as one that includes a mix of more structured interview questions
and others that are more flexible and open-ended. Additionally, this format allows the researcher
to adjust the order of the questions and expand upon emerging themes while ensuring that the
core required data is collected from all participants (Merriam, 2009).
A key component in conducting a successful semi-structured interview is to develop a
protocol with a core set of high-quality questions (Merriam, 2009). At the same time, Maxwell
(2013) argued that while the interview questions used to collect data should be informed by the
research questions, it is not always appropriate to directly pose the research questions as part of
the interview process. As Patton (2002) suggested, I incorporated a range of interview questions
including questions about experiences, opinions and values, feelings, knowledge, sensory
perceptions, and background or demographics. Through a combination of pre-determined
questions and clarifying or exploratory probing questions, participants had the opportunity to
share their experiences as leaders in the community college. According to Merriam (2009),

47

probing questions or prompts allow the researcher to adapt the interview based on the
participants’ answers in real time so that a more nuanced and holistic understanding of their
experience can be captured for the research study. Within the questions were focused attempts to
understand the leaders’ perceptions of their beliefs about what it means for community college
students to succeed, what colleges should do to help them succeed, the leadership frames and
strategies they preferred to employ to influence change, and the overall work to facilitate
transformational change at the college. This included specific questions about the leaders'
understanding of community college student success, experiences leading or implementing a
specific change related to student success at the college, examples from their time facilitating the
guided pathways workgroup at the college that demonstrate successes and challenges, and their
perceptions of the college climate related to change.
Merriam (2009) indicated the importance of developing a rapport with each participant
and remaining as polite and neutral as possible throughout the interview process. During the
interviews, I used active listening skills to interpret and understand the responses in relation to
the research questions and the conceptual framework. According to Merriam (2009), using a
recording device to capture audio from the interviews allows the researcher to focus on the
participants’ responses while taking limited notes. Minimal note taking while recording also
allows the researcher to make note of the participants surroundings and any non-verbal cues that
they demonstrate during the interview process. While Merriam (2009) indicated that participants
may initially be wary of being recorded, they often become more comfortable and may even
forget they are being recorded, particularly if the recording device is small and inconspicuous.
Given that the interviews were conducted virtually via Zoom at a time when many community

48

college leaders had learned to adapt to Zoom meetings, much of this potential discomfort was
likely avoided, but participants were given the option to not have the interview recorded.
Data Analysis
Creswell (2014) argued that the data analysis stage of a research study occurs
concurrently with the both the data collection phase and the preparation of the study findings.
While conducting the interviews and observations, I took note of highlights or reference points
related to the research questions and the components of the conceptual framework detailed in
Chapter Two. Merriam (2009) suggested that the researcher must carefully construct a protocol
and methods for managing these raw data sources and notating logistical details surrounding the
interviews and observations they represent. For example, an interview protocol with field notes
should indicate the identity or pseudonym of the interviewee, the type of participant they
represent (i.e., academic or administrative leader and specific title), time of day and location of
the interview, and any other relevant details. These notes helped to focus my analysis of the
transcripts from the interviews. In addition, the process of preliminary coding or jotting during
the data collection phase allows the researcher to identify emerging themes or concepts that add
to the original framework for the study (Saldaña, 2015).
During the formal phase of the data analysis process, I used the NVivo qualitative data
analysis software to store all interview audio and transcript files and field notes. I conducted an
initial deductive coding process using a priori codes identified in my conceptual framework,
including the six student success factors, concepts related to institutional and individual trust,
and the qualities of organizational learning of data use and critical self-reflection. I did this by
reading each transcript individually several times and coding them within the NVivo software,
creating my codebook as I worked through the process. My secondary inductive coding phase

49

involved using analytical tools described by Corbin and Strauss (2014), including asking
questions about the data, looking for comparisons, drawing from personal experience, and
looking for emotions that were expressed as part of the participants’ stories. For example, as I
was beginning to pull together the various codes around the ideas that were shared by the study
participants about the definition of community college success, it was through questioning the
data myself and with my dissertation chair that the themes of inconsistency, individual vs.
institutional action, and equity became clear. Throughout the coding process, I also created
analytic memos, which Saldaña (2015) suggests are meant to help the researcher document and
reflect upon the decisions made about coding processes and structures. These memos helped me
to identify or clarify relationships between codes or clusters of codes. It was these memos that
helped me keep track of leadership strategies that were emerging as unique to formal leaders vs.
informal leaders, as well as those that were being described by leaders in both groups. My final
coding and analysis phase occurred while I worked on summarizing the findings of the study
through the development of my report of findings. In this stage, I applied a critical lens to my
write-up and remained open for new themes to emerge that may not have been uncovered during
the previous stages. The main thing that emerged during this stage was the lack of data that
connected to the part of my conceptual framework related to the four frames theory of leadership
from Bolman and Deal (2021), indicating that my interview protocol may not have been crafted
in a way to collect relevant data in this area.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
Maintaining credibility and trustworthiness throughout my study included several active
steps. To ensure the credibility of my findings, I used triangulation of sources as suggested by
Creswell (2014) and Merriam (2009). I had eight participants, and I analyzed within and across

50

the data to ensure that I did not rely on one “voice” more than others. This was then also
followed up through peer review during regular meetings between myself and my faculty chair to
further question the data and solidify both my findings and my presentation of the findings. To
further support the credibility of my research, I also used what Maxwell (2013) described as
validity checks, including ensuring saturation by including the majority of the facilitators
identified as leads in the guided pathways work at the institution in my study and devoting a
good amount of time to interviewing the participants resulting in rich descriptive data sets for my
analysis.
With respect to trustworthiness, Creswell (2014) and Merriam (2009) suggested that
reflexivity or self-reflection on the part of the researcher regarding their role in the research
process, including any bias that may have impacted the data collection or analysis, is a strategy
that can help mediate this barrier. A potential barrier to the overall credibility and trustworthiness
of my research findings is my personal background and potential bias as an administrative leader
within the community college system. My experience as a community college leader in relation
to student success, institutional effectiveness, and planning gives me background knowledge and
insight into how community colleges operate and could have impacted my ability to remain
neutral when speaking with study participants about their leadership experiences. In this case,
my semi-structured interview protocol was critical, as I was sure to write the questions in a way
that avoided leading questions, I allowed the participants to share their experience freely, and it
was my responsibility to stick to this protocol as closely as possible. Additionally, my experience
participating in statewide efforts to improve student persistence and success gives me advanced
knowledge of effective practices from peer institutions as well as the available resources and
programs that may or may not have been well utilized by the institution. This could have

51

impacted my ability to withhold judgment or evaluation when discussing the specific student
success initiatives or changes that were being implemented by leaders at the institution. With
regard to this area, my conversations with my faculty dissertation chair helped to ensure that my
own experience and biases weren’t improperly influencing my findings or my interpretations of
the data as we worked together to question my findings and ensure that they were directly tied to
the data. Finally, while the CCC system is very large, the field of administrative leadership
within the system is smaller, and ultimately there were two study participants with whom I had
prior experiences in state-level activities. In this area, my use of analytical memos proved
especially useful as it allowed me to make note of particular areas where potential bias may have
entered my interpretations, and as I reflected on my coding, I could examine whether my
personal experience with a participant may have impacted my interpretation of their statements.
While each of these factors served as a potential source of bias, my acknowledgment and
transparency of these factors from the beginning of the study and the strategies I described
helped me to prevent or mitigate the impacts as much as possible.
Ethics
According to Merriam (2009), in the design and implementation of a research study, the
ethical principles of the researcher are a critical component that can be influenced by multiple
factors, including federal, institutional, or professional standards. The researcher must decide up
front their approach to the protection of research subjects, privacy and confidentiality, informed
consent, and transparency. However, additional ethical situations or considerations may arise
throughout the research process and the researcher must base emergent decisions upon their own
principles and values (Merriam, 2009). I believed that it was my responsibility to conduct as
ethical a study as possible by clearly articulating the overall goals and scope of the research as

52

well as participants’ reasonable right to confidentiality. As part of my ethical responsibility, I
obtained site approval and Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, to conduct research at the
community college. I also obtained IRB approval at USC prior to conducting the interviews on
the CCC site and provided the college with verification of such approval.
I provided each interview participant with an informational handout including informed
consent language describing the research questions, the purpose of the study, and my approach to
the security and storage of the raw data files via email at least two days prior to our Zoom
interview. The document and my interview protocol both included language ensuring that each
participant was aware that they could decide to end their participation in the study at any point. I
used both audio and video recording through Zoom and limited notetaking to capture the verbal
and non-verbal responses of my research participants. I informed participants of my intent to
record the interview session prior to starting the recording and asked for their permission. I told
them I could take more detailed notes rather than record if they were more comfortable with that
option, but everyone agreed to be recorded.
Additional considerations related to the ethics of my research included my intent to
protect the confidentiality of research participants to the best extent possible using pseudonyms
even in my personal documentation. Given that this is a case study focusing on specific types of
leaders at a single institution, anonymity cannot be guaranteed, but I made every effort to
maintain confidentiality in my write-up of findings as well. All recordings, transcripts, field
notes, and other raw data sources have been stored on a secure external hard drive and in an
encrypted project folder for use with the NVivo qualitative research software.

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Limitations and Delimitations
The primary limitation of the study was the limited representation of faculty leadership
among the study participants. While I invited a total of four faculty to participate in interviews,
as these were the four faculty facilitators of the guided pathways workgroups, only one faculty
member agreed to participate. Much of the research, and my personal experience, suggest that
this is an important voice in the institutional change discussion, so it was unfortunate that I could
not get more faculty participants. As it was, the experiences shared by the one faculty participant
were strong. An additional limitation would be the fact that I am a novice qualitative researcher.
While I have conducted several focus groups for institutional research activities, I had not
previously completed a qualitative study at this scale. As a result, my interview skills may have
limited the depth and quality of my raw data. This could have been exacerbated by the
participants' willingness to share or their comfort level over Zoom as opposed to in person.
These various factors may have combined to impact the quality or depth of the experiences
shared by the participants in the study.
The primary delimitation of my study was the minimal data in my interviews related to
the four frames of leadership from Bolman and Deal (2021) and Bolman and Gallos (2021).
While this did not appear to a great extent in my data or my findings, it is still part of my
conceptual framework because I believe strongly that it is how the leaders interpret the context
of their institution and their role within it based on my personal experience in the field and my
review of the relevant literature. I believe that a delimitation of my study is that I did not build
my semi-structured interview protocol in a way that would ask questions that would effectively
help me to explore and understand this . This is why I am including it as an implication for future
research.

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Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to explore the similarities and differences in the ways in
which leaders, both formal and informal, of a community college, defined student success and
understand the strategies that they chose to employ to influence change to improve student
success. This was a case study of a group of leaders at a community college in the southern
region of California during the spring semester of 2020. I collected data using semi-structured
interviews of eight leaders who were engaged in leadership of a college-wide transformational
change initiative at the college. The analysis of my data was an active process that started during
the data collection process. I employed several strategies throughout to ensure credibility and
trustworthiness, while also working to ensure the highest ethical standards possible. Finally, I
attempted to reflect upon the limitations and delimitations of my study design and the methods I
employed to complete it.

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Chapter Four: Findings
The purpose of this study was to explore the similarities and differences in the ways that
formal and informal college leaders describe their strategies for improving student success.
Through interviewing eight leaders engaged in a specific institutional change initiative at a
community college, I sought to understand the perceptions and experiences of the leaders related
to the institutional change work. The findings in this chapter answer the following research
questions:
1. How do community college leaders, both formal and informal, define student
success?
2. How do formal and informal community college leaders approach influencing
organizational change, given their individual definitions of student success and their
positions within the institution?
The findings from my study emerged through the analysis of data from eight community
college leaders engaged in the implementation of the Guided Pathways Framework. Before
describing the findings, I introduce the eight participants in my study and their essential
characteristics (Table 1). After describing the participants, I will then introduce my findings and
how they were similar and different among the group. In the table, I specifically highlight the
participants’ self-reported gender identity and ethnicity to demonstrate the diversity of the group.
The employee classification and role or scope are important to demonstrate the range of positions
and functions across the institution that are engaged in leadership in some way as it relates to the
institutional change initiative. While this group did have an equal representation of formal and
informal leaders, there was an overrepresentation of administrative or supervisory positions and
an underrepresentation of faculty. Finally, I have identified in the table the individuals who I

56

have characterized as having more formal or more informal leadership roles at the institution for
the purposes of this study. This determination was based on our discussion during the interview
about the scope of their role at the institution.
Table 1
Study Participants
Last Name Gender Identity Ethnicity Role/Scope Formal/Informal
Benson Female Caucasian Instructional faculty in the
Arts and Humanities
Informal
Bradley Male Caucasian Dean of Research and
Planning
Formal
Diaz Female Latina Student services classified
professional involved in
student onboarding
Informal
Johnson Male Caucasian Vice President of Instruction Formal
Martinez Male Latinx Director of a student
services program for
minoritized populations
Informal
Smith Female Caucasian College President Formal
Stafford Female African
American
Dean of Student Services Formal
Vincent Male Latinx Manager of grant programs Informal

While most of the participants in this study were administrators at the college, they
represented a broad range of institutional roles, including student services, instruction,
institutional research, grants, and the college President with ultimate responsibility for the
operation of the entire college. Additionally, despite having titles and positions classified as
administration, Martinez and Vincent served in roles that were not formal leadership roles within
the college context based on the department-level scope of their roles within the organization.
Therefore, especially within the context of the holistic and institution-wide nature of the Guided
Pathways student success change initiative work at the college that was the focus of this study,
two groups emerged amongst the participants: the more formal leadership group (Adams,

57

Bradley, Johnson, Smith, and Stafford) and the informal leadership group (Benson, Diaz,
Martinez, and Vincent). The first finding of my study relates to how the leaders defined
community college student success. When sharing how they believed they went about
influencing institutional change to improve student success, the informal leaders (finding two)
and formal leaders (finding three) each described a strategy that seemed unique to their context,
and the leaders from both groups described one common strategy (finding four). Each of these
four findings will be explored in more detail throughout the rest of this chapter.
Finding 1: Community College Leaders’ Definitions of Community College Student
Success Were Inconsistent Aside from a Common Theme of Equity
This finding explores the multi-faceted definition of community college student success
that emerged through the interviews with the eight leaders who participated in this study. Within
this finding, there are two themes. The first theme focuses on the inconsistent nature of the
definitions expressed by the leaders, including a split between the view of the role of the
institution in ensuring student success as either passive or active. The second theme focuses on
the persistent use of equity-minded language in how the leaders described community college
student success. In this theme, the leaders appeared to demonstrate support for linking student
success in the community college setting with the concept of equity. These themes appeared to
be consistent across both formal and informal leadership groups within the study.
Theme 1: Community College Leaders Had Inconsistent Ways of Defining Community
College Student Success.
This theme, as expressed by quotations from interviews of six of the eight participants in
the study, describes how the leaders who participated in this study expressed varied definitions
of community college student success and the role of the institution in ensuring that success as

58

either passive or active. This is in alignment with the literature, which demonstrated that
community college practitioners often define student success at the individual student level (i.e.,
a specific student achieving their personal goal after 2 or 3 years of personal struggles) rather
than the institutional level (i.e., 75% of an incoming cohort of degree-seeking students in a given
year completing their associate's degrees within 3 years), leading to a diverse set of definitions
(Wang, 2017). Consistent with Wang, the leaders I interviewed offered definitions of student
success in vague and broad terms to account for the wide variety of personal goals that students
may have. For example, one of the informal leaders, Director Martinez, defined community
college student success in the following way,
Well, I think the important thing about community college student success is that it’s
individualized. Every person that comes to community college, success is the
achievement of their goals, specifically for themselves, and they come to us with such
diverse goals.
In this statement, Director Martinez suggested that it was the student who defined success for
themselves (“success is…individualized”). Each student identified what their individual purpose
or goal was (“success is the achievement of their goals, specifically for themselves”) and implied
in this statement that it was the institution’s role to somewhat passively support the student’s
work to achieve that goal.
In a similarly broad fashion, one of the formal leaders, Dean Bradley, defined community
college student success by saying,
I would say success is really changing the trajectory of their lives, but in a more concrete
way, it would be them, you know, whatever that goal is that they’re coming in with, and
even if it morphs along the way, you know, helping them get to that point.

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On the surface, this definition seems as though it is like the one offered by Director Martinez. It
includes a vague description of students “changing the directory of their lives” and the
institution’s role is to help students achieve their personally chosen goals, “whatever that goal
is.” However, implied in Dean Bradley’s language that “success is really changing the trajectory
of their lives” and “helping them get to that point,” is that the institution’s role is to actively
support students in achieving their goals. Still, in both definitions, the focus is on the individual
student-level goal and not the institution-level perspective of student success, as described by
Wang (2017)
Another way that leaders in this study defined community college student success was
the students staying focused on achieving career-related outcomes. This included a focus on both
the institutional activities as well as the student choices and actions that support this focus. This
was consistent with the literature related to the Guided Pathways Framework, which described
the importance of students having a clear sense of direction and focus from the very beginning of
their journey aimed towards some type of career outcome, whether that included transfer first or
not (Jenkins, et al., 2017). For example, when asked to define community college student
success, President Smith said that it was
…meeting students where they are and helping them to… articulate what their
educational goals are and helping them realize those educational goals and how it
connects with whatever their next step is, is it transfer, but regardless it’s work, it’s
whatever that career it is that they’re seeking, and not leaving any students behind...
President Smith’s definition was like those offered by Director Martinez and Dean Bradley in
that she believed the student was personally choosing their goal (“articulate what their
educational goals are”) but her focus from an institutional perspective was clearly on actively

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guiding that choice towards a career ("but regardless it’s work, it’s whatever career it is that
they’re seeking”). Similarly, in her definition, Dean Stafford stated that,
From the student’s perspective, I would say success is defined as not only having and
being able to make informed decisions about their career, but getting the proper
preparation, education, and skills they need to move towards that career. So that could be
a certificate, it could be a degree, could be transferring; but ultimately, success for the
student is to get into the career of their choice. From the college’s standpoint, success
looks like helping students reach their goals as quickly as possible.
In focusing on a goal of a career outcome (“ultimately, success for the student is to get into the
career of their choice”), Dean Stafford’s definition of success is similar to that of President
Smith. However, she presented a more passive role of the institution in providing opportunities
for career-oriented education and skill development (“getting the proper preparation, education,
and skills they need to move towards that career”). Both definitions maintain the focus described
by Jenkins et al. (2017) of setting an early and clear direction for students toward a career-related
outcome.
A final way that the leaders who participated in this study described community college
student success was through the act of continuing from one semester to the next or persistence.
This was consistent with the literature, which focused on institutional efforts to establish a sense
of community focused on student engagement and persistence (Tinto, 1975). Professor Benson,
an informal leader who taught in the world languages department, defined success in the
following way,
… success for me first is retention; we don’t want to lose them. So if a student takes a
semester off for whatever reason, there is a huge chance we’ll never get them back… So

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for me, an element of success is identifying their needs, formulating their dream, getting
them on the right track, and, if possible, getting them in a special program.
In her definition, Professor Benson highlighted the importance of persistence, or what she called
“retention,” when she expressed her concern about students who took time off that “we’ll never
get them back.” Professor Benson went on to describe her view of a very active role for the
institution and for herself as an instructor in helping the students to persist and succeed
(“identifying their needs, formulating their dream, getting them on the right track”).
Similarly, Ms. Diaz, another informal leader involved in new student onboarding, defined
success by saying, “…it’s essential that these students come across staff and faculty who
encourage them to continue to just take, you know, take a step at a time. You’ll get somewhere.”
In her definition, Ms. Diaz was not only demonstrating the importance of persistence, or taking
one “step at a time,” as an indicator of success, but also that as long as the student kept moving
forward, regardless of their intended goal, they would “get somewhere” and therefore achieve
some form of personal success. However, Ms. Diaz’s view of the role of the institution was
much more passive, where employees were merely there to “…encourage them to continue…”
Both leaders’ definitions focused on the core components of college student engagement and
persistence as detailed by Tinto (1975).
Theme 2: Community College Leaders Consistently Describe Equity as Central to the Idea
of Community College Student Success.
This theme, as expressed by all of the participants in the study is best exemplified by
quotations from five of the eight interviews. These quotations demonstrate how the leaders
described advancing equity as central to the concept of community college student success. This
is consistent with the literature as Astin (1993) found a direct positive relationship between

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minoritized community college student success and the extent to which institutions actively
promoted equity. Additionally, the focus on equity in student success amongst these leaders is
consistent with the focus on equity as described in the California Community College
Chancellor’s Office Vision for Success (2017), where one of the six system-wide goals is to
“Reduce achievement gaps for disproportionately impacted student populations by 40% and
eliminate these equity gaps by 2027…” (p.2).
One way that leaders described advancing equity as core to the idea of community
college student success was shared by Vice President Johnson, a formal leader responsible for
academic affairs at the college. He described program or degree completion as a component of
student success and pointed out that when some groups experienced lower rates of success in this
area, it was on the institution to change when he said,
You could pick a program of study, and you can succeed in that program of study. We’re
not seeing that happen equitably in all of our student populations, including historically
underrepresented populations, historically minority populations. If we’re not seeing that
happen equitably, and at a high level in each of those populations, then we’re not
succeeding, and that’s on us. It’s not on the student. We’re not assuming that that
population needs to change some things about how they approach college… We’re
making changes…
In this statement, Vice President Johnson indicated that the college was taking responsibility for
minoritized students succeeding at lower rates and “…not assuming that that population needs to
change some things about how they approach college” and instead, the college itself was
“making changes” presumably to improve the graduation rates of the minoritized populations
and close the equity gaps. Essentially, he was relating that the college had identified that

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minoritized students (“historically underrepresented populations, historically minority
populations”) were not experiencing the same graduation rates as their peers (“We’re not seeing
that happen equitably in all of our student populations”). In pointing out these inequities, Vice
President Johnson described the concept of equity gaps or opportunity gaps where minoritized
populations experience lower rates of success, but more importantly, he acknowledged that it
was incumbent upon the institution to make changes to eliminate these gaps (“that’s on us… not
on the student”).
Another way that leaders framed advancing equity as central to the concept of
community college student success was by focusing on equitable access or ensuring that
minoritized and underrepresented populations could access the college and its available
resources. For example, Ms. Diaz described her work in connecting students from a similar
background to her own to the college and its available resources when she said,
… based on my circumstances, financially low-income, I felt that other students needed
to know, that other people that came from my community needed to know that there’s
these opportunities and you don’t have to be, you know, an honor roll student to qualify
as a potential college student… You have the opportunity; the access is there, you know?
Ms. Diaz’s description suggested that students who might not otherwise have felt a connection to
the college might have needed extra support to build that connection and see a future for
themselves at the college (“other students needed to know, that other peopled that came from my
community needed to know that there’s these opportunities”). Her effort to eliminate perceived
barriers to access or enrollment at the college for what she implied were minoritized populations
could be seen as an attempt to eliminate equity gaps within her sphere of influence and thereby

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increase the chances that students from diverse backgrounds would be able to be successful at
the college.
Like Ms. Diaz, Director Vincent described this idea of advancing equity through a focus
on the institution ensuring access to resources and student support. He expanded upon the
description shared by Ms. Diaz when he talked about how important it was that the institution
…ensure that every student has equal and equitable opportunity from access all the way
until they graduate or transfer. And what I mean by that is making sure, of course, that,
you know, we are prioritizing our resources to make sure that those students that typically
don’t, either don’t pursue or don’t know what resources are available or what programs
are there for them, that we are intentional in reaching out to those students and putting all
of those opportunities in front of them instead of the other way around…
Director Vincent’s description is similar to Ms. Diaz’ in that it focused on equitable access and
opportunity, but he also described an institutional commitment to identifying student populations
that were traditionally underserved or underrepresented at the college (“students that don’t, either
don’t pursue or don’t know…”) and “prioritizing our resources” and being “intentional in
reaching out to those students and putting all of those opportunities in front of them” to better
support them throughout their time at the college. He described efforts made by the institution to
reduce or eliminate equity gaps by establishing programs and services that actively engaged
minoritized student populations that, in his opinion, would ultimately help them be more
successful at every stage of their college journey “from access all the way until they graduate or
transfer.” This example is consistent with the work of Bragg et al. (2014), who indicate that for
institutional change efforts to be transformational, attention must be paid to how the

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communications and impacts will be targeted and distributed to reach individual students and
employees without them having to seek out the information themselves.
A final way that leaders framed advancing equity as central to the concept of community
college student success was by focusing on a concrete and holistic plan to address the needs of a
specific population. This can be seen in the quotations shared by President Smith and Dean
Stafford about the expansion and success of the college’s student support program designed for
African-Ancestry students. For example, in her description of the program expansion, President
Smith shared that the leadership team had been asking themselves,
What are we doing and who are we leaving behind, and how do we make that change and
shift? And so, for instance, our African American males are struggling with completing
college-level math … and so we have an Umoja program, and traditionally it has been
just focused on teaching transfer-level English and guidance, and recently we expanded it
to include other disciplines, math included. And last summer, there was a cohort of
students, Umoja students, who completed statistics, and they completed at a 100 percent
success rate… and it’s in those types of things that are replicated over and over that we
can begin to make that difference.
Here, President Smith talked about identifying an equity gap, where African American male
students appeared to experience lower success rates in math, and expanding an existing program
to address this need (“recently we expanded it to include other disciplines, math included”). One
could infer from her statement that there was an intentional allocation of resources to support the
additional courses, and ultimately, it led to “a 100 percent success rate.” Additionally, President
Smith described an ongoing commitment to the program being “replicated over and over” so that
the college could “begin to make that difference” for the minoritized population, which suggests

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she believed the institution was making an ongoing commitment to not only providing those
resources but also continuing to prioritize the reduction and ultimate elimination of those equity
gaps over time.
In her description of the work to expand the Umoja program at the college, Dean Stafford
explained,
Our Umoja Program about a year ago, with the leadership of our counselor coordinator,
made a decision that, in collaboration with myself and the VP, that we wanted to scale
Umoja to be accessible to all Black students… And what we saw by offering that math
class within our Umoja program is by having a passionate faculty member who could
deploy equity practices in the classroom along with the Umoja practices, that we could
actually close the equity gap. And that’s what we did.
Dean Stafford described an expansion not only of the scope of the program (“what we saw by
offering that math class within our Umoja program”) but also the size of the program to include
“all Black students,” which would require even more resources to be intentionally allocated to
this program presumably to ensure that in this way equity would be advanced by not creating a
barrier to access the program for some Black students. Dean Stafford also described the
importance of engaging “a passionate faculty member” in contextualizing instruction to meet the
unique needs and experiences of the students in the program (“deploy equity practices in the
classroom along with the Umoja practices”). Implied in Dean Stafford’s statement is the idea that
making the courses that students needed to take more relatable and relevant to their background,
thereby promoting a more equity-minded and culturally relevant experience, would lead to more
successful outcomes (“we could actually close the equity gap”). In her statement, she highlighted
the importance of making sure the right people were involved in the work (“with the leadership

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of our counselor coordinator…in collaboration with myself and the VP…having a passionate
faculty”) to ensure that a program was effective in advancing equity (“that we could actually
close the equity gap”) and sustainable on a larger scale (“we wanted to scale Umoja”).
Collectively, these quotations demonstrated a shared belief amongst the leaders that there was an
institutional commitment to promoting equity, which research has shown to have a positive
impact on minoritized student success (Astin, 1993).
Finding 2: Informal Leaders Worked to Influence Change by Sharing Examples or Stories
of Personal Experiences From Working Directly With Students About Those Strategies
They Believed were Most Likely to Improves Student Success
This finding draws upon the experiences of the four leaders in the study who have been
identified as informal leaders within the context of the Guided Pathways change initiative at the
college. Within this finding, there are two themes based upon the student success strategies that
the leaders favored. The first theme focuses on two leaders who employed the strategy of sharing
examples or stories of personal experiences from their work with students to demonstrate the
importance of direct one-on-one intervention or support services as a way of modeling and
inspiring others to help improve student success. In this theme, the leaders described situations
where they shared about their experience providing direct intervention or support to students in
their work with other college leaders to inspire others to change the way they work with students
to improve the way the college provided services to students overall. The second theme focuses
on the two informal leaders who chose to employ examples that demonstrated the positive
impact of caring for students as individuals as their preferred strategy to improve student
success. In this theme, the leaders shared examples of situations where they had encountered
students with unique personal experiences and challenges that required a more personal response

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and a demonstration of individual care and concern, and the leaders described how they used
these examples to try and influence others to adopt similar approaches to working with students
to change college practices that would improve the student experience.
Theme 1: Some Informal Leaders Employ Personal Experiences to Influence Change to
Advance Direct One-on-One Student Intervention and Support Services as a Preferred
Student Success Strategy.
This theme describes the strategy demonstrated by two of the four informal leaders in my
study who shared experiences where they demonstrated a preference for employing examples of
providing direct, one-on-one student intervention and support services to students to influence
change. These two informal leaders approached student persistence and success in a way that
was consistent with Tinto (2010), who suggested that institutions should identify students at risk
of failing or dropping out and provide them with the resources they need. In the first example,
Ms. Diaz shared how during a meeting with college administrators, she described her experience
in working with students in the initial onboarding process at the college to advocate for a change
to the staffing structure of her department. She shared that
Students, right off the bat, should be meeting with an educational advisor or counselor.
That way, they get a much more clear picture of, okay, these are your placements, now let
me tell you how this plays into your academic journey as opposed to simply, okay, this is
your English and math, now let’s hope you make an appointment to go meet with a
counselor so they can better explain this to you… And so we really expressed how there
was a need for more staff or faculty who are qualified to be able to reach students beyond
what we were doing in the assessment center… our administrator, the dean, was looking

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at, okay, let’s see who else do we need in the assessment center to help these students be
more successful and guide them through.
In her statement, Ms. Diaz started by describing how she believed things should be happening in
the assessment center, with students getting direct guidance about how their placement results
impact their educational goals overall at the start of their time at the college (“okay, these are
your placements, now let me tell you how this plays into your academic journey”). She then
explained the current practice in the assessment center and her role in it when she described how
she would help students complete an assessment and provide their placement in English and
math, and then her role was to encourage students to “make an appointment to go meet with a
counselor so they can better explain” the placements to them within the context of their overall
educational goals. She described how she and others in her department shared this experience
with the administration in an attempt to advocate for the addition of staff or faculty in her
department (“we really expressed how there was a need for more staff or faculty who are
qualified to be able to reach students beyond what we were doing”) who could partner with her
to provide that guidance on the spot, rather than waiting for the student to seek out that guidance
later. She and her colleagues had employed their experience of feeling as though they could only
“hope” students would seek out this additional guidance to influence change and this had led to
her dean looking at what was needed in the department “to help these students be more
successful and guide them through.” This example is reflective of the Collegium example of
academic leadership as described by Bensimon et al. (1989), where the focus is on building a
sense of community for fair and open dialogue so that informal leaders can work with their
formal leaders to establish shared values and priorities to improve the organization.

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The second example was shared by Professor Benson, who described a story that she
relayed to one of the Guided Pathways workgroups to model what she saw as an expanded idea
of the roles and responsibilities of instructional faculty when it came to supporting students’
needs to influence her colleagues to adopt a similar approach. She described an experience where
her role needed to expand beyond the scope of her expertise in the classroom setting when she
shared that
A few years ago, when DACA was implemented… there was an information piece at one
of the flex (training) times that invited faculty to understand the connection between
DACA and financial aid… so I went, and I found out… that the students can get financial
aid so they can move forward. We don’t know about their future, but they can transfer,
and they can go to a Cal State… I had a student who was one of the best students I ever
had… she applied for transfer, and then one day, she came to my office very upset… and
she said, “Well, I went to a counselor, and I was told there's no financial aid for us in the
Cal State system.”… So I looked it up with her. She was in my office, and we looked at
the Cal State financial aid, and there it was… So I connected her with our financial aid.
And the financial aid person said, ‘Wait a minute, that kid was not on financial aid here.’
And she goes, ‘Well, she's going to get all that money back from all the time she's been
here.’ So that was organized. She got her money back, and then she was at Cal State and,
you know, and she's now finishing her credentials. She’s now fully legal. And she is
she’s going to be an educator. She’s going to be a community college educator. So I said,
sometimes, even in a college that is well-intentioned, it's the way information is
disseminated that is not good enough for me. It's not clear enough. It's not the
responsibility of the financial aid office. It's my responsibility as an instructor because we

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are the ones in contact with the students. There are students who never see financial aid,
never see counselors, never see anyone. You are their go-to person… we are getting
there, a lot of us don't assume that that's our role, but it is our role. So the shift of culture
is happening.
In her story, Professor Benson shared this experience where she provided a direct intervention
and support for her student by helping her navigate the financial aid information of the Cal State
system (“So I looked it up with her. She was in my office, and we looked at the Cal State
financial aid, and there it was”) and by helping her to navigate the systems within her own
college (“So I connected her with our financial aid”). By sharing this experience with the Guided
Pathways workgroup and others at the college, Professor Benson modeled her own personal
approach to a “shift of culture” that she described where faculty are starting to see their role
evolve to include serving as the “go-to person” for students, to help them navigate the college
and identify the resources and supports they need or the find the people who can help them like
financial aid or counseling. As she put it, “sometimes, even in a college that is well-intentioned,”
information is not communicated in a way that makes it easy for students to understand, and
Professor Benson believes that it is her “responsibility as an instructor because we are the ones in
contact with the students.” Professor Benson’s example is also a demonstration of an informal
leader applying the human resources frame as described by Bolman and Gallos (2021) in helping
to train existing employees for a new or shifting expectation of their role because she was
sharing it with her colleagues in a way that was trying to inspire them to adopt a similar
approach. Additionally, both Ms. Diaz and Professor Benson shared examples where students
required more proactive and intrusive support, like the approach that Tinto (2010) suggested

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institutions should adopt of identifying at-risk students early and providing them with the support
and resources they need to be successful.
Theme 2: Some Informal Leaders Employed Personal Experiences to Influence Change to
Advance Care for Students as Individuals as a Preferred Student Success Strategy.
This theme describes the strategy that was demonstrated by the other two informal
leaders in the study, who exhibited a preference for using examples of their direct experience
with students needing personal care as an individual and not merely as a student, as a strategy to
influence change. The approach that these two informal leaders chose to take is consistent with
Booth et al. (2013), who suggested that one of the most important things that community
colleges and their employees can do to help students succeed is to provide a sense of nurturing or
care. In the first example, when asked about his work with the Guided Pathways change
initiative, Director Vincent shared an example of how he described a situation that he saw
students struggle with in a workgroup he was helping to lead to model his approach as a way of
influencing others to expand their understanding of the challenges students face and the supports
that should be established to meet their needs.
…so many times, I see students who just don’t ask the questions they need to ask, you
know, when they need help or when they might be in trouble… So we don’t do a good
job at helping them understand their rights and understand what resources they have
available to them, and our policies and procedures as it relates to academics. Number
one, you know, if they feel like they were treated, treated unfairly by a faculty member,
oftentimes, students would just leave it alone. They won’t pursue it. They won’t make it
an issue. But, you know, there are policies in place for students to feel like, hey, you

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know, if they feel that that happened to them, we have policies to solve some of those
problems. We need to at least have a conversation to try and solve the issue.
In this quotation about how he shared this example with the workgroup, Director Vincent
explained that students often did not have the social or academic capital to know their rights in
certain situations (“I see students who just don’t ask the questions they need to ask, you know,
when they need help or when they might be in trouble”). He also identified that the institution
had not been doing “…a good job at helping them understand their rights and understand what
resources they have available to them…” when they did find themselves needing help. Director
Vincent specifically described the context of situations where a student may feel that they were
being “… treated unfairly by a faculty member,” and he said that students, in this case, were
often unlikely to report it. In his description, Director Vincent shared that he had pointed out that
the college had “policies to solve some of those problems.” In sharing this with the workgroup,
Director Vincent was working to share his experience as a way of inspiring the group to consider
different perspectives and prioritize the demonstration of care for the students and build systems
that are founded on that care. He shared that someone working with a student like the one in his
scenario should first “have a conversation to try and solve the issue…” so that they might be able
to find a way to help the student to know they have rights in these situations and feel empowered
to seek support when they feel like they are being “treated unfairly.” In this example, Director
Vincent could have been described as applying an organizational learning strategy as detailed by
Argyris & Schön (1996), where he was exposing a discrepancy between the way that the
institution describes its care for its students and the experience of some of those students in their
classrooms.

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The second example was shared by Director Martinez, who described an example he
shared with his Guided Pathways workgroup about a situation he had experienced several times
when working with students on their educational plans. In sharing this example, he was working
to influence their understanding of how personal and cultural challenges influence the academic
experiences of their students in ways that required personal care and attention to inspire them to
consider how they might incorporate that perspective into their work with students. He shared
that
Sometimes it’s not academic issues… You know, it could be family support. That's a big
one we get a lot. Sometimes students are saying, “You know, I’m here, but you know,
I’m kind of concerned my family’s not going to be happy with my major. I’m kind of
interested in this career field, but it’s, you know, my family might be angry. My whole
family. Like culturally, like it's not normal for somebody in my family or from my
culture to do this field, and I don’t think I’m going to have a lot of support for it, you
know.” So, we’re even looking into creating some professional development
opportunities right now for our counselors to deal with it. This is a true personal
counseling issue, and we’re talking about family conflict, relationships, and things.
In his quotation, Director Martinez described a scenario that he shared about students who feared
losing the support of their families because of their choice of major (“Some students are saying,
‘You know, I’m here, but you know, I’m kind of concerned my family’s not going to be happy
with my major.”). He went on to share that they had identified a need for academic counselors,
who work most closely with students in establishing educational plans aligned with their majors
and may be more likely to encounter these situations, to have “…professional development
opportunities… to deal with it.” By sharing this scenario with the workgroup, he was attempting

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to inspire them to prioritize this type of work as an institutional effort and to encourage similar
training for others throughout the college. This example demonstrated an application of the
human resources frame as described by Bolman and Gallos (2021), as Director Martinez was
suggesting professional development or training for employees to help them expand their role
and improve their effectiveness in meeting the needs of the students. Martinez shared that what
he was describing was a more personal barrier to success that required a different approach,
including a focus on “…family conflict, relationships, and things” that are not traditionally part
of the focus of academic counselors. Martinez was sharing that it was important to exercise this
care for the individual and very personal needs of the students to help them feel supported as
they pursue their chosen field of study, especially in those instances when they believed “Like
culturally, like it’s not normal for somebody in my family or from my culture to do this field.”
Both Director Vincent and Director Martinez described situations where students required
personal care and support that extended beyond their educational needs which is consistent with
the findings of Booth et al. (2013) who found that a sense of personal nurturing or care is one of
the top six success factors for Community College students.
Finding 3: Formal Leaders Believe They Influenced Change Through Using Data to
Highlight or Expose a Problem and Establish a Shared Vision for Change
This finding describes the strategy expressed by multiple formal leaders in my study who
shared experiences where they demonstrated how they used data to highlight or expose a
problem and establish a shared vision for change. Consistent with my conceptual framework,
using institutional data to demonstrate a gap between the institution’s stated values and goals and
its observable actions or outcomes can help set the foundation for organizational change (Argyris
& Schön, 1996). For example, President Smith shared that during a college workshop with

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almost full attendance and participation by employees from across the institution, she highlighted
what she believed was some important data related to student completion and asked the college
community to reflect and consider the implications as a way of kicking off the college’s work to
implement the Guided Pathways Framework. President Smith stated that
We looked at it as a whole… and less than 10 percent, it was 9.8 percent at that time, 9.8
percent of our students completed an award—degree or certificate—and we came
together and said, this is not acceptable, and it was all constituents. It was faculty; it was
administrators; It was classified professionals and students.
In this statement, President Smith demonstrated that her decision to employ data as a tool to push
for improvement by sharing with the college community that 90 percent of their students were
not completing their program of study led to a college-wide agreement that “this is not
acceptable.” President Smith went on to say that after reflecting on this data, the college
constituents asked
“What can we do?” And that led to five areas: meta majors, college-to-career pathways,
clear pathways, faculty advisement, and models of student care. And so those are our five
spokes, and we worked to develop those, and we recognized that we were working to
transform our institution… and what’s wonderful about [this college] is that we come
together and say, “Ok, this is a problem. How are we going to fix it, and who do we need
at the table to do it?”
In President Smith’s statement, she explained how her use of data to highlight or expose a
problem led to the college community identifying “five areas” for improvement. With this shared
understanding of the problem and plan for improvement in place, she indicated that she and other
stakeholders “worked to develop those” areas, thereby addressing the problem areas to “fix

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[them]” and better support students’ persistence and educational goal attainment. Moreover,
President Smith indicated that the data she chose to share enabled them to work to “transform
our institution,” implying that stakeholders had a vision for the college to be substantially
different than it was at the time. President Smith’s words suggest that the organization had
embraced a shared understanding of the problems impacting student goal completion as well as a
shared vision for how to improve the ways in which the institution served its students. This was
an example of what Schein (2017) described as an organization that was committed to learning
through critical self-reflection and analysis about the ways in which it was not living up to its
expectations.
Dean Stafford also shared that she used data as a tool to help build consensus and lead
change, but her approach included the use of more qualitative data. She reported that she had “…
learned this lesson of not starting with the numbers. Like the numbers are great, but people will
challenge the numbers… people will misinterpret the numbers….” As a result of her experiences
with the limitations of quantitative data, she chose to use student voice as a way of helping to
identify or expose a problem. She said,
…but the power of starting with, like, the student voice, like student testimonials or
student quotes… you can’t argue with that… and that’s part of the reason why we
included students very specifically on our project team. We needed to make sure there
were student voices there because they represent our why. We make sure that they have
the space to speak freely and to contribute because it’s easy to lose sight, and it becomes
about us instead of being focused on our students.
Dean Stafford shared that in her experience, bringing forward the students’ voices—their
personal reports of their experiences and perceptions—was a more effective way for her to get

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agreement from her team that there was a gap between the mission and values of the institution
and the outcomes it was producing, and that this gap needed to be addressed, because “you can’t
argue with that.” She also indicated that maintaining the student voice, through student
participation in the workgroups helped to ensure a clearer and more consistent vision or plan for
improvement that was “focused on our students.” In these quotations, President Smith and Dean
Stafford demonstrated how they used data as a way of highlighting a gap between what the
institution said it was committed to achieving through its mission or vision and what the
measurable outcomes suggested it was achieving as a way of setting a foundation for
organizational change (Argyris & Schön, 1996).
Finding 4: Both Formal and Informal Leaders Believed They Influenced Change Through
Relationships Built on a Foundation of Trust
This finding describes the strategy expressed by multiple formal and informal leaders in
my study who shared experiences where they described how they were able to influence change
because of relationships at the college that were built on a solid foundation of trust. This is
consistent with my conceptual framework, where trust was identified as a fundamental element
of an organizational culture of learning and change (Argyris & Schön, 1996). For example, Dean
Stafford described the approach she took to bringing forward a proposal for a new program
designed to support Black students at the college and how important it was to have established
trust among the faculty and staff at the college before bringing the proposal forward.
Specifically, she said that
… having those conversations and being able to develop trust and rapport with people, to
say, like look, like, you know, this is what we want to do, and we need your assistance to
do it. Our college has said that we have a commitment to student equity and a

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commitment specifically to Black students because we’ve named them, you know,
specifically in our strategic plan. This is how we’re going to get there. And, you know,
having people having that trust allowed me to be able to bridge that gap with those in
those conversations.
In her quotation, Dean Stafford highlighted the fact that her work was made easier by the fact
that she had already been “able to develop trust and rapport with people,” and this made it
possible for her to “bridge that gap with those in those conversations.” Because she already had
this foundation of trust, the faculty and staff were more open to her suggestions and less likely to
question when she came to them with a plan for how to meet the needs of the students (“this is
what we want to do, and we need your assistance to do it”). This trust that Dean Stafford
believed existed between herself and those with whom she was working contributed, in her mind,
conditions that would facilitate an organizational culture of learning and change (Argyris &
Schön, 1996) that would lead to equity for Black students at the college (“this is how we are
going to get there”).
President Smith described the use of relationships built on trust in her work to lead or
influence change by describing her consistent approach to listening and engaging others in the
change process. She said,
I do my research so I have an idea of the direction that I’d like to see it go. But I also
know that the listening part is extremely important because the knowledge doesn’t rest
with me, and each of us has contributions to make to solve the problem. And the answer,
or the direction, or the action is far greater when it’s done in collaboration. And as a
leader, I have to show that flexibility too… and I think those that I work with feel really
comfortable… when they’re asked to come to see the president, they get along. And

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sometimes even those that know me really well get a little nervous, like, what can I do?
But they know that I’ll listen to them and that I value what they bring to the institution
and their service to the students and their fellow employees, and it helps to make better
decisions.
Implied in the statement is that by consistently employing this approach to decision-making,
President Smith has established a foundation of trust (“…and I think those that I work with feel
really comfortable… when they’re asked to come to see the president, they get along.”). She
described how this trust was established and is consistently maintained by the way that she
worked to make sure that people feel heard and valued in the decision-making process (“…they
know that I’ll listen to them and that I value what they bring to the institution and their service to
the students and their fellow employees,”) and ultimately that she believed this helped her “to
make better decisions.” The example shared by President Smith is demonstrative of the political
frame of leadership as described by Bolman and Gallos (2021), where she has worked to
understand the key stakeholders and influencers in the organization, and she has established
relationships and trust with those individuals to allow her to gain valuable feedback during the
decision-making process to help inform the best decision possible.
Director Diaz shared his experience working with his supervisor as a relationship where
he had built a foundation of trust that allowed his supervisor to depend on him to help guide
change within his department and ultimately to participate in college-level leadership
opportunities like the guided pathways change initiative. He described his experience when there
was a change to the structure of the department he led when he shared
…so when we were transitioning from the assessment center to the engagement center,
we went from me being the lead in a two-person department to four to now being the lead

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in a four-person department. And so, she was very trusting of my ability, and she would
always voice her trust in me as well as reach out to me for feedback on my part. What do
you think about this? What should we do? What do you… what are the needs right now
in the office? And what are the… what are the students needing? And so, with that, a lot
of times, I was the one to where I was being looked at in my office as, ok, what do we do
here?
In his example, Director Diaz highlighted the importance of his supervisor trusting his work and
his leadership from past experiences in her decision to call upon him in the expanded leadership
role (“And so, she was very trusting of my ability, and she would always voice her trust in me as
well as reach out to me for feedback on my part.”). He described how this led to her leaning on
him for his input and guidance on the operations, potential changes, and needs of the department
(“What do you think about this? What should we do?”) and that this led to him being seen of as
more of a leader by his peers and other employees within the department (“And so, with that, a
lot of times, I was the one to where I was being looked at in my office as, ok, what do we do
here?”).
Director Martinez shared a similar story about working with his supervisor, where they
had developed a foundation of trust and a common set of guiding principles with their work that
created sometimes unspoken or unrehearsed alignment on proposed change initiatives between
the two of them. He described this when he shared
So she trusts me because she knows I’m going to follow through, and I’m going to follow
the research and the data, and that we’re sharing the same research and data with each
other. And so that when I go and give the presentation, it also aligns with what she said
it’s supposed to be. And that’s the part that always catches me, something that I think is

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pretty amazing because we don’t have realistically time, you know, if I’m going to give a
big presentation on some new initiative we’re working on, I might not have time to
present to her first because she’s also very busy. But because we share the principles, and
we are aligned in the source material we’re using for guided pathways work… we’re
always in alignment.
In this quotation, Director Martinez described a relationship of trust with his supervisor where he
believed she was confident in his ability to represent a proposed change initiative to college
groups, even without first seeing the presentation (“So she trusts me because she knows I’m
going to follow through… if I’m going to give a big presentation on some new initiative we’re
working on, I might not have time to present to her first because she’s also very busy.”). He
described that this trust was built on a shared foundation in the data and research related to the
change (“…we share the principles, and we are aligned in the source material we’re using for
guided pathways work… we’re always in alignment.”). He shared that it is through this trust, that
they are both able to work independently to get the message out about the work to as broad an
audience as possible, and because they have worked to establish this foundation of trust and
shared principles, regardless of which one of them is giving the presentation about the proposed
change it is generally the same information that is being shared (“And so that when I go and give
the presentation, it also aligns with what she said it’s supposed to be.”). Taken together, these
quotations demonstrated the value that the leaders at the institution placed on trust and the fact
that this played an important role in their institutional change work, which is consistent with the
literature and my conceptual framework that highlights this is a foundational element to change
leadership (Argyris & Schön, 1996).

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Conclusion
After analyzing the data and through the review of the findings described above, the
problem of inconsistent and unclear definitions of student success was found to continue to
impact institutional change initiatives. However, consistent with my conceptual framework,
some themes arose where formal and informal leaders worked individually and collectively to
influence change from their individual understanding of student success.

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Chapter Five: Discussion
This case study examined how community college leaders, both formal and informal,
believed they work to influence change to improve student success at a mid-size, public, 2-year
institution in Southern California (Local Community College). Community colleges are
increasingly facing rising costs, dramatic shifts in technology, and more diverse student
populations with various needs that the community college model was not originally designed to
serve so these institutions must change how they operate (Bailey et al., 2015a; Kuh et al., 2015).
The diversity of the students and their expectations and goals also makes defining and measuring
student success for community college students increasingly difficult (Wang, 2017). Work to
implement significant institutional change is likely to be met with a great deal of opposition from
internal stakeholders as well as challenges due to limited funding and other resources (Blaime
and Baum, 2016). Institutional leaders may help to set the foundation for change by fostering
systems of organizational learning, where individuals or groups critically reflect upon their stated
values and beliefs and evaluate how well those are reflected in their observable actions or
outcomes to guide or support proposed change initiatives (Argyris and Schön, 1996). Institutions
that have developed a culture of learning also tend to experience change with a sense of calm and
stability, as these institutions typically embrace continual improvement (Schein, 2017). Within
this context, the purpose of this study was to answer the following questions:
1. How do community college leaders, both formal and informal, define student
success?
2. How do formal and informal community college leaders approach influencing
organizational change, given their individual definitions of student success and their
positions within the institution?

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To understand the experiences of community college leaders, this study used a qualitative
research design. In applied fields like education and leadership, qualitative research is
particularly effective because it involves an investigation to understand the perspectives of the
individuals who are the focus of the research (Merriam, 2009). The participants for this study
were recruited through emails sent to a purposefully generated sample of 15 individuals who
were identified as leaders of one of five workgroups in Local Community College’s (LCCs)
Guided Pathways initiative. This initial recruitment email led to eight qualified participants who
were representative leaders from across the institution, including classified staff, faculty,
department managers, deans, and the college president. I conducted a one-on-one interview with
each leader online via Zoom. The leaders shared their experiences in college, their position at
LCC, and their understanding of community college student success. The majority of the
interview was focused on their work as a leader in the Guided Pathways initiative and, more
broadly, as a leader at the college as it relates to work to improve student success.
The findings from the interviews of the leaders reflected the literature on community
college student success, organizational learning culture, and change leadership. As described in
my conceptual framework, the leaders worked from a core understanding or belief about what
community college student success looks like, whether based on personal experience or
educational background in student persistence theory. Regardless of the specific elements or the
source of their definition of community college student success, the leader then worked to create
institutional change using strategies that were aimed at influencing others to embrace the change.
The ways in which the leaders went about this work were influenced by their position at the
college, including whether they were a formal college-wide leader in their everyday position
(i.e., college president or dean) or informal leader who had been tapped to lead an aspect of the

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Guided Pathways initiative (i.e., faculty member or department director). I believe that with
future study and refinement, this framework could be applied to community college leadership
programs to help future leaders understand how to develop lasting change.
Four specific findings emerged through the interview data provided by the leaders in the
study. First, the leaders had somewhat inconsistent definitions of community college student
success aside from a common theme of equity. This finding was consistent with the literature,
which demonstrated that community college practitioners focus on individual-level definitions of
student success as opposed to institution-level definitions, which can lead to a wide variety of
definitions (Wang, 2017). The common theme of equity within the definitions provided by the
leaders is consistent with the goals of the California Community Colleges, a system that includes
Local Community College (LCC), which set a goal in their Vision for Success to address and
eliminate equity gaps for minoritized students by 2027 (CCCCO, 2017). Equity was described in
ways that suggested it was a core driving force for the leaders’ work to change individual and
institutional approaches to serving students to try and improve student success. Should they have
been able to get everyone on the same page about a common definition for student success, and
what it would take to improve student success, this common drive to achieve equitable outcomes
would be a powerful motivator.
The next set of findings relates to the ways in which the different types of leaders worked
to influence change. The second finding was that both formal and informal leaders believe they
influence change through relationships built on a foundation of trust. This finding was consistent
with the literature on organizational learning, where trust is viewed as an essential foundational
element for change (Argyris & Schön, 1996). The third finding was that the formal leaders in the
study believed they worked to influence change through the use of data as a tool to highlight or

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expose a problem and establish a shared vision for the proposed change. This was also consistent
with the literature on organizational learning, which highlighted the importance of using
institutional data to expose gaps between the stated goals and values of the organization and its
observable actions or outcomes in order to help establish a sense of direction for change (Argyris
& Schön, 1996). The fourth finding was that informal leaders worked to influence change by
sharing examples or stories of personal experiences from their experience working directly with
students about those strategies that they believe are most likely to improve student success. This
finding is somewhat reflective of the literature related to the symbolic frame of leadership, where
symbols, stories, and the interpretation of events help to establish or even redirect institutional
identity and direction (Bolman & Deal, 2021). In summary, the four findings highlighted how
community college leaders throughout the institution defined student success and then went
about working to influence change with the goal of improving student success.
Implications and Recommendations for Policy, Practice, and Research
For Policy
The first finding highlighted the diverse perspectives of six of the eight leaders in the
present study about the definition of student success. Two of the leaders defined success in very
broad terms ranging from students taking a few classes for personal or professional growth to
completing a full degree program and beyond. Two others defined success in terms of an
ultimate goal being for students to obtain or pursue advancement within a career through their
time at the community college and perhaps even after transferring to a four-year university.
Finally, two leaders defined success as the simple act of making continual progress and
persisting from one semester to the next. The implication of this finding is that while each of
these concepts relates to community college student success it can be difficult to move wholesale

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institutional change, like the Guided Pathways initiative forward without a clear goal or sense of
direction. Therefore, a policy recommendation would be for institutions to be required, either as
an expectation of the California Guided Pathways program or as part of an accreditation
standard, to engage in a college-wide process to establish a local, data-informed, research-
backed, measurable definition of student success.
The approach of engaging stakeholders from across the college to help establish shared
goals and priorities has been described as an application of the human resources frame of
leadership to higher education described as a Collegium, which researchers suggest tends to
influence more positive outcomes in change leadership processes (Bensimon et al., 1989). While
there has been system-level work within the California Community Colleges to set goals as a
way to define student success through the Vision for Success in 2017 and the Student-Centered
Funding Formula in 2018, these are still broad indicators of success meant to capture the full
range of goals of the over 1.8 million students served by the 116 colleges. As described in the
Transformative Change Initiative (Bragg et al., 2014) framework, it is important for institutions
to have the ability for “local adoption and adaptation” of concepts or best practices so that they
fit within their local context, and this applies to goals or aspects of a system-wide definition of
student success as well. When the Chancellor’s Office launched the Vision for Success goals in
2017, there was a process for local colleges and districts to adopt local goals, but they were
required to use the same goals and data, which limited the ability to adapt to local contexts. As
an alternative, accrediting agencies in higher education require colleges to establish a mission
(and maybe a vision and goals) and to regularly evaluate that mission and how well it is being
used to drive planning and operations (Banta & Palomba, 2014). Perhaps adding a requirement
that colleges also establish and regularly evaluate or update an institutional definition of student

89

success as part of this process would help provide a sense of direction for some of the work that
was described in the present study. If each college had a shared core vision for how it defines
student success the faculty, staff, and administration would all be able to work towards that
shared definition. Oftentimes, establishing this shared definition requires the institutions chief
formal leader, a President or Chancellor, to drive the work of establishing the shared definition
or vision and perhaps even craft the definition at least as a starting point.
For Practice
The third finding described the use of institutional data by formal leaders as a tool to
highlight or expose a problem and establish a shared vision for change. This approach to setting
the stage for change by identifying a gap between what the college and presumably its
stakeholders have said it is committed to doing and what the measurable outcomes suggest is
actually happening is a type of organizational learning process described by Argyris and Schön
(1996). While this finding was touched on by all of the formal leaders in the present study, it was
only clearly articulated well enough to have been quoted in Chapter Four by two of them. This
suggests that familiarity with this strategy and perhaps even the comfort level with the data itself
may be different. The recommendation that arises from this implication is that formal leaders
should engage in advanced training related to data literacy and the use of data in institutional
change initiatives.
More and more states are moving to a performance-based funding model to incentivize
colleges to meet legislated expectations for measurable outcomes of institutional quality and
effectiveness (Bailey et al., 2015a). California started this transition for California Community
Colleges in 2018 with the Student-Centered Funding Formula (SCFF), although the COVID-19
Pandemic and other factors have delayed its full implementation. As a result, it is more important

90

than ever before that institutional leaders understand the data that will be used to evaluate the
effectiveness of their institutions and even, in some cases, determine the level of funding that
they will receive.
Academic programs geared towards preparing community college leaders should ensure
that they have sufficient training about the types of data involved in community college
leadership and how it can and should be used, especially as it related to change leadership.
Additionally, professional development opportunities developed for current or aspiring formal
leaders should include a focus on the importance of data literacy, even if it is a discussion of why
leaders should pursue this type of training if it is not part of the current training. While this
should include data related to student success, it should not stop there. In describing an
integration of the four frames approach to leadership applied within higher education, Bensimon
et al. (1989) described a Cybernetic approach whereby leaders would identify “monitors”
throughout the organization to help regularly assess institutional performance on a variety of
factors, including student success, enrollment, employee morale, committee participation, budget
efficiency, etc. This allows the leader to gain a more holistic understanding of institutional
performance and identify any potential barriers to change more quickly. Training both current
and future formal leaders, either through formal academic programs or professional development
opportunities, will better prepare them to support their institutions through change processes that
can be difficult for everyone involved.
For Research
The second finding described a tool that the informal leaders in the present study
employed to influence change in others by sharing stories or examples of their work with
students to try and model key strategies or interventions that they believed would be most likely

91

to improve student success as a way of inspiring others to adopt them. The primary focus of the
present study was that the informal leaders used stories and examples of these strategies either
being employed or being needed by students to try and influence change in others at the
institution and ideally inspire institutional change through sharing their own experiences. One
recommendation for further research would be to explore the extent to which informal leaders at
other institutions employ influential storytelling for similar purposes.
The fourth finding detailed the importance of relationships built upon a foundation of
trust as integral to influencing change, as described by multiple formal and informal leaders.
These leaders all described different situations where an existing relationship, either with an
individual or a group, helped them to advance some aspect of their work on the Guided Pathways
initiative. Argyris and Schön (1996) described trust as a foundational aspect of any process of
organizational learning and change. Professor Benson, one of the informal leaders in the study
even described what happens when trust isn’t there between leaders and other stakeholders,
specifically faculty, at the college when she said,
I do think that the relationship and the level of trust between faculty and the leadership is
working. And that’s a key piece for me. If you don’t trust your… if there is a distrust
between faculty and the leadership, then the students will pay the price immediately, and
it ends up in the classroom quickly.
In the present study, there was no sense from any of the leaders of mistrust within the college. In
fact, most leaders shared that there was a general sense of trust and positive employee morale at
the college. One recommendation for future research would be to see if the same strategies for
influencing change would be expressed by leaders in an institution with newer leadership that
had not had time to develop such relationships or in an institution with a history of mistrust

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between different groups, such as faculty and administration or staff and faculty. Or perhaps
future research could explore how new leaders go about building those relationships or
establishing trust within an institution, as this was clearly a key element in the work at the
institution involved in the present study.
Another area for future research is to build a new semi-structured interview protocol that
will better assess the theory posed in my conceptual framework that leaders understand their
institutional and individual context through the four frames of Bolman and Deal (2021). As
noted previously, the data collected from my interviews did not provide any evidence related to
the four frames and therefore I could not include anything related to this aspect of my conceptual
framework in my findings. I believe that future research could be done to more accurately
evaluate the extent to which leaders engage four frames thinking in their leadership work as they
lead institutional change efforts.
A final area of research that could be considered could be an expansion of the current
case study to a broader context of formal or informal leaders, or both, involved in Guided
Pathways work through the California Community Colleges. Such a study might be able to
determine to what extent the findings of the present study were limited to the local context of
Local Community College (LCC). This could also inform statewide efforts related to the Guided
Pathways initiative and either support or improve the other recommendations provided above.
Conclusion
This study explored the experiences and perspectives of community college leaders
engaged in institutional change to improve student success. The findings of this study described
the different tools that these leaders employed to attempt to influence change within the
institutional change initiative work that they were helping to lead. The implications from the

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findings of this study informed recommendations for policy, practice, and research in support of
community college leadership for student success. For me personally, the findings have
influenced the way I approach my work as a Vice President at a rural community college. While
I have always used data in my work, I have become more explicit in my use of data to influence
change and encourage institutional action and I worked with my college President to implement
a college planning process that developed a shared, measurable definition of student success with
a clear institutional commitment to improving equitable student attainment of the identified
outcomes. Additionally, I have incorporated these concepts into my approach to onboarding and
training of my team at various levels, including employees who are both formal and informal
leaders within the college. I intend to further share my findings through presentations at
conferences and workshops hosted by professional leadership organizations.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Brown, Jeremy (author)

Core Title Community college leadership for student success

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Educational Leadership

Degree Conferral Date 2023-12

Publication Date 09/11/2023

Defense Date 04/07/2023

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag change leadership,community college,leadership,OAI-PMH Harvest,student success

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Slayton, Julie (committee chair), Filback, Robert (committee member), Hroch, Amber (committee member)

Creator Email brownjer@usc.edu,jbrown82@me.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113305028

Unique identifier UC113305028

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Legacy Identifier etd-BrownJerem-12349

Document Type Dissertation

Format theses (aat)

Rights Brown, Jeremy

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20230911-usctheses-batch-1094 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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