Minding the Dream: The Process and Practice of the American Community College

(Hardback, Second Edition)

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Minding the Dream provides challenging, reflective, and practitioner-based information about community colleges that is data-based, clear and accessible for the general reader as well as the scholar. New employees, current leaders, graduate students, legislators, and boards of trustees need a grounded sense of the magnitude of the community college sector. Minding the Dream evokes the laudatory goals of the early pioneers of the community college movement, while accurately framing key programs and political conundrums challenging community colleges. Minding the Dream celebrates community colleges successes and is scrupulously honest about their failings. Community college leaders need honest information about whats working and need to be challenged about the things that are not. State Legislatures and Congress need updated facts to assist them in making wise funding decisions regarding community colleges. Community college advocates need updated information to assist them in their advocacy work, and Higher Education programs need an updated book about community colleges to use as a basic text. These are the people who can benefit from reading Minding the Dream.

Reviews

This book reflects the potential of the community college as the institution to make a reality of the American Dream. The ambitious goal of the authors is to give an overview of what is happening, why it is happening, and what should be happening on the more than 1,167 campuses of community colleges throughout the US. Although the book does not represent an official view of the American Association of Community Colleges, the AACC was a partner in its publication and authors Mellow and Heelan are long-time insiders in the American community college movement. Mellow and Heelan make excellent use of their knowledge of and familiarity with relevant data and analyses to examine the very broad range of processes and programs in existence at community colleges. The processes include financing community college, measuring effectiveness, governing, developing leadership, and teaching/learning. The programs include developmental/basic skills studies, the transfer experience, economic and workforce development, and English as a second language. The inclusion of recommendations, challenges, and questions for discussion will be of value to teachers and students. The inclusion of a chapter titled 'Global Adaptations' adds value as a text for future community college professionals. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and practitioners. * CHOICE *
The community college is changing so rapidly its record and its challenges are in constant need of updating. No one is better prepared for that update than Gail Mellow and Cynthia Heelan, two seasoned and substantive leaders from the trenches who are also respected scholars. Their seminal book on Minding the Dream has been the best new book written on the community college in this century; the second edition is even better and will stand as the go to source on community colleges for decades to come. -- Terry O'Banion, president emeritus, league for innovation in the community Ccollege and chair of the graduate faculty, National American University
The authors of Minding the Dream, are practitioners and insiders in the world of community colleges who are passionate about the community college as a movement for social justice. Mellow and Heelan both honor community college successes and fearlessly confront our challenges to future success. They challenge us using data generated by colleagues in the field, and they offer solutions that are tried and proven effective by current research. This book is a must read for current and new leaders in our field, and for those who care about the future of community colleges. -- Walter G Bumphus, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges
The authors of this volume, Dr. Gail Mellow and Dr. Cynthia Heelan, are two of the nations most respected community college leaders. This, the second edition of their seminal text, Minding the Dream: Process and Practice in the American Community College, marks the current state of the community college movement and provides a deliberate and data-based plan for progress. They provide a careful path forward, mindful of the pitfalls inherent in closing the gap between the American promise and the disappointing present-day limits on college opportunity. -- Anthony P. Carnevale, former chairman of the National Commission on Employment Policy and former vice president of the Education Testing Service (ETS) between 1996 and 2003

Author Bio

Gail Mellow, the president of LaGuardia Community College in metropolitan New York, is a long time advocate for community colleges. A national speaker and writer, her focus is to create equity for community colleges for their vital role educating students for a global economy and spurring economic development for the communities they serve. Cynthia Heelan, Ph.D., is retired president of Colorado Mountain College and an educational consultant. She is a national facilitator and Distinguished Advocate for the Center for Renewal and Wholeness in Higher Education (www.richlandcollege.edu/crwhe/) She is the author of the Heart at Work: Stories About Speaking From the Heart at Work, and co-author, with Dr. Gail Mellow, of Minding the Dream: Process and Practice or the American Community College. After a long and distinguished career in higher education, she assists educational organizations in leading and planning in ways that engage the entire institutions heart and voice. She is a board member and board chair emeritus for Battery Dance Company of New York City. Dr. Heelan holds a Ph.D. in policy analysis and administration and a Masters Degree in Adult Education from the University of Minnesota. She was an Archibald Bush Foundation Fellow in the College Management Program at Carnegie Mellon U.