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2008 Community College Symposium

Community colleges are a key part of the American higher education system. As these century-old institutions grow and change for the 21st century, new opportunities are emerging to study innovations and improvements in a dynamic field. In 2006, in a series of 23 wide-ranging essays, the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education addressed questions dealing generally with higher education's affordability, access, and ability to prepare students to compete in the new global economy. As a follow-up to the Commission's work, and to the community college virtual summits in 2005 and 2007, the U. S. Department of Education is planning a 2008 "Community College Research Symposium."

The symposium will bring together academics, practitioners, and policy experts to hear, discuss, and learn about key community college initiatives in terms of practices that appear to improve student transitions, views on what is needed to know to validate and further refine these practices, and strategies for building a more complete and valid understanding of practices that educators can use to improve student transitions.

This work is funded by an $890,000 award by OVAE to Synergy Enterprises Inc. (SEI) in Maryland and the Community College Research Center (CCRC), Teachers College at Columbia University in New York. The award is from April 2007 through October 2008.

For more information, please contact the project manager, Gisela Harkin, at gisela.harkin@ed.gov. To view the symposium agenda please go to http://www.sei2003.com/ovae/