Using Social-Situational Learning to Create Career Pathways Into Community College Leadership

This chapter describes a partnership created between a community college and a university designed to create pathways into community college leadership. The program used social-situational approaches to learning, placing students enrolled in the university's higher education graduate programs into graduate assistant positions that had defined responsibilities for the college's key strategic priorities. The program introduced students to multiple leadership pathways through participation in a community college environment. Students engaged in work that significantly advanced the college's strategic initiatives. The program centered social-situational leadership development on multiple levels and circulated through the shared priorities of social justice and inclusive excellence across the community college and the university. The partnership viewed graduate student development through the lens of transformative leadership, focusing on equity, access, diversity, ethics, critical inquiry, transformational change, and social justice. These principles underlie in the mission of both institutions.