Connecting Past and Present: Nontraditional Learner and Practitioner Experiences through Service-Learning

Abstract

he importance of understanding the community college as a vital aspect of the higher education landscape has never been more needed, nor more difficult. The American community college is a unique higher education institution greatly influenced by many internal and external forces. Community colleges are open-access institutions drawing a diversity of students including those who are first-generation and underprepared, face socioeconomic challenges, have personal immigrant histories, seek employment or transfer pathways, and/or are nontraditional learners with complex work and family demands. Many community college faculty members are not doctorally prepared, are part-time faculty, and possess fewer pedagogical tools than university faculty. Externally, community colleges are considered responsible for the health and economic stability of their area and for regional efforts to remediate existing educational achievement gaps. The complex nature of community colleges and their students have a direct impact on the successful persistence and completion of students (Cohen and Brawer 2008). In this chapter, we suggest that service-learning can be leveraged within this dynamic setting and we focus on practices that students and faculty use to help navigate the complexity of the nontraditional student experience specifically.

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