Think Tank Keeps Two-Year Colleges on the Cutting Edge

No less than management guru and futurist Tom Peters has referred to them as the “unsung, under-funded backbone of America’s all-important, lifelong learning network.”

The fact that President Clinton mentioned them twice in his State of the Union address was cause for celebration--no president had done so in recent memory.

And in the words of Terry O’Banion, “Even though we are over 100 years old, we’re still like the new kid on the block.”

Community colleges often feel overshadowed by their older, more established four-year sister institutions even though more than half of all Americans have at least taken classes at a community college and, in California, two-thirds of graduating seniors must attend one to prepare for a four-year college.

But O’Banion, who heads a unique Mission Viejo-based national think tank studying progressive change at community colleges, still sounds an optimistic note about their role and future. His nonprofit organization, the League for Innovation in the Community College, for nearly 30 years has quietly promoted innovative teaching and programs at two-year institutions.

“Community colleges in the next decade will raise their profile enormously, because they will keep building on their tremendous accomplishments,” he says.

Much of the work here is the typical stuff of educational policy centers--a staff of seven produces reams of publications, policy papers and two major conferences that are among the largest in higher education.

But the league is unique in its focus on recognizing and promoting innovation at the community college level, serving as a clearinghouse, “a catalyst and incubator” in the words of O’Banion.

“Students would not have the faintest idea what the league is,” O’Banion says, noting its aim at administrators and professors, but the organization has influenced local institutions.

Rancho Santiago College, for instance, will launch an Internet course this summer whose instructor has relied on the league for guidance.

Computer science professor Lynda Armbruster, who attended a league conference last year at which she saw model Internet courses and obtained software for the class, said: “If it were up to me, I would close our college and put everybody in a bus and drive them to one of their conferences.”

That is the way of the league, O’Banion says. It does not march onto campus and tell leaders what to do. Instead, it presses change from the “bully pulpit,” as O’Banion puts it.

And both the work and approach has drawn accolades from leaders in the field.

“I think the league is extremely influential for California community colleges as well as those around the country,” said David Mertes, former chancellor of the California Community Colleges, which at 106 institutions with 1.4 million students is the largest system of higher education in the world.

Mertes, in fact, is heading a project to design a community college in cyberspace in which the league is a partner. Set to launch in September, the International Community College plans to confer associate’s degrees to students enrolled around the globe who will take the classes by computer or video technology.

“Over the years, they have had a strong effect on cutting edge issues,” said David Pierce, executive director of the 1,150-member American Assn. of Community Colleges, the largest organization in the field. “I don’t think there are very many people, if any, who do not feel the league is an important and respected organization.”

A group of 20 community colleges nationwide, including two in Northern and Central California, form the core membership of the league, but about 500 colleges are affiliated, including Cypress College and the Rancho Santiago, Coast and Saddleback community college districts.

Created 29 years ago by a group of academics led by UCLA researchers seizing on the zest for experimentation and innovation that prevailed in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, the league chose to remain in Southern California, making Mission Viejo its base simply because the staff “likes the climate here,” O’Banion says.

There, in a third-floor office next to a Paine Webber, the organization uses $45 million from member colleges, private foundations and corporate grants to put out 120 publications and plan its two main large conferences, on information technology and work force development, that draw thousands of participants annually. The league also annually organizes and conducts leadership training, in which O’Banion says 10% of California’s community college chancellors have participated.

Just as community colleges have evolved since the first one was founded in 1901 in Illinois, so too does the league.

With the passage of federal welfare reform, which will mean a larger role for community colleges in training recipients for jobs, the league is planning to convene college leaders nationwide to discuss how to adapt their campuses.

But O’Banion sees the league’s priorities as two areas: information technology and “work force development,” issuing position papers and studies advocating colleges boost their job training and reach out to local businesses for partnerships.

Through a recent $267,000 grant from the federal government’s Fund for the Improvement of Post-secondary Education, the league is writing a blueprint curriculum for “tech-prep” courses that teach students technology basics.

“They have a certain amount of visibility, so we know what they publish will be listened to,” said Charles Karelis, director of the fund.

But with information technology a hot subject in academia, local leaders most often spoke of the league’s computer-related programs in describing how the organization has influenced their campuses, sometimes subtly, other times more directly.

Robert A. Lombardi, chancellor of the Saddleback Community College District, said through the league’s publications and conferences he came to see the development of technology on campus as vital. In early 1996, the district began installing a $6-million high-speed data network that involved stringing fiber optic cable to classrooms, laboratories and offices that will improve computer networking and Internet access.

“The league has been a source of, if not inspiration, at least a resource to see what’s out there in the real world and in theory and bridge the two,” Lombardi said. “It’s been very influential. I have learned how important it is that we move forward with technology. The league created in me a greater sense of urgency to get this stuff in place.”

At Rancho Santiago College, executive dean of instruction John Nixon said 20 faculty members attended the league’s information technology conference in Phoenix last year.

With software demonstrated there, the college soon plans to open a lab that will teach basic skills in technology. Two faculty members who attended the conference have submitted a proposal to use computers in their reading programs.

And for Armbruster, her “Internet Basics” course, a 1.5-unit class to be taught over the World Wide Web to 40 students this summer, may not have gotten off the ground were it not for the help the league provided.

It provided trouble-shooting and models of online courses that helped her design the course, which aims to teach novices how to find resourceful information on the Internet.

Now, she said, other instructors are asking how they can set up their courses online.

Describing the league’s influence, she said, “It’s almost like throwing a rock in the water. The ripple goes on and on and on.”