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Welcome. This is the second issue of the Research and Planning Group’s online journal and the ninth issue of the ijournal. This summer, we joined forces to produce one online journal that provides a greater diversity of articles and a larger pool of community college practitioners willing to write for us. Thus, this issue, Issue #9 of the ijournal, is our pilot collaboration issue. We are planning to publish two more collaborative issues during the 2004/5 academic year—one in February 2005 and the other in May/June 2005. If we find that these pilots are feasible and useful for our general community college audience, we will pursue a long-term collaboration, and seek additional collaborations within the California community college network. You can see where this might be going—the establishment of an online journal of research and practice that could be produced by a wide array of practitioners for an even broader community college audience. The prospects are exciting, and we will work diligently to make this vision a reality.
I want to thank the RP contributors for their willingness to work overtime to help make this issue happen. I worked directly with Rob Johnstone, who produced a fine survey of research on the state of pre-collegiate programs and interventions within the community colleges, and Craig Hayward, who wrote a succinct piece on strategic enrollment management and how it is being used at Mendocino College. Willard Hom and I spent a good deal of time discussing how to utilize his incredible talent for digesting studies and articles and putting them in short pithy abstracts. We decided to establish in this issue a new department for the ijournal that will bring readers a digest of significant articles and reports relevant to our work in the community colleges.
Brad Phillips and his colleagues, Bill Piland and Micah Jendian, took time from their long days working on CalPASS to provide us with an initial description of how reciprocal data-sharing positively impacts courses, programs and curricula in one area of the state. I also want to express my appreciation to Terrie Teegarden, Ken Meehan and Hal Huntsman, the folks at the Pathways to Algebra project, for permission to use their articles on teaching and learning algebra in the California community colleges. These articles will appear this month in the Pathways Annual Report that will be distributed throughout the community colleges.
Finally, you will find a long piece written by Michael Wald and Tia Martinez on “disconnected youth.” I found this study at the Hewlett Foundation website, as it was being used to discuss a nationwide foundation initiative to build support systems for this neglected group. The study is very significant and contains information and data that has not been widely disseminated. The authors argue for the establishment of a comprehensive support system and propose that community colleges should be one of the critical institutions to provide training and education for “disconnected youth.” Michael Wald and Tia Martinez were happy to give me permission to re-publish this study in our journal, and I appreciate their willingness to do so.
Please make sure that you read the interviews with four statewide community college leaders in the theme section—Conversations About Our Future. Sharon Donoff, my co-editor focused on those articles while I worked on the other six. Despite the fact that we never had a chance to meet each other face to face, working with Sharon has been a pleasure. She has been the editor of the ijournal since its inception, and she has been very generous and supportive for this pilot issue.
We need your feedback about the usefulness and relevance of Issue #9, specifically indicating whether the material we published helps to inform your work and your thinking about our collective agenda for educational excellence in the California community colleges. Please write to me at the following address: rgabrine@ccsf.edu
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