No abstract

Anderson, Harbour, and Davies (2007) Dr. Alice Farris-Smith was stepping into her first presidency at North Suburban Community College (NSCC), the smallest of three colleges in a local district serving over twenty thousand students per year. She was replacing a president of fourteen years who had become somewhat complacent in his final years. Alice had a solid grounding in community college leadership acquired during her academic training as well as twenty years in academic and student affairs at three different community colleges. The chancellor who hired Alice reported to a seven-person governing board that subscribed to the policy governance model and rarely meddled in operational matters. The chancellor had assured her that NSCC was a good college with normal problems but needed to aggressively seek new programs and partnerships, engage formally and informally with its community, and develop alternative funding streams. Alice was comfortable with this directive and had already decided she would spend her first year building internal relationships and trust while conducting her own analysis of the institution and community.As Alice started to get to know the college, she began to uncover both positives and negatives in the community college's day-to-day operations. For example, she was pleased to see that NSCC's core value of student success was a primary focus of the college at all levels. However, she also spotted some challenges. In the absence of day-to-day oversight from the former president, the faculty and staff had become accustomed to making most operational decisions. Furthermore, NSCC's enrollments had been declining, and 17 2