Equity Case Studies on Rural Community Colleges: A Blueprint for Campus Change

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to provide a blueprint to conduct equity case studies in rural community colleges. Informed by our field work experiences applying case study design and equity-minded frameworks, this blueprint involves four distinct steps: 1) identifying rural community colleges in North Carolina; 2) operationalizing equity in rural community colleges; 3) building rapport and creating buy-in with campus presidents and stakeholders; and 4) methodological considerations. We provide details about each of these steps with the goal of sharing principles, tools, and advice that aided our research design. We conclude by providing research implications to equip future researchers and practitioners interested in advancing equity-minded research in rural community colleges.

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Ascendium Education Group for supporting the work of the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research.The authors thank Dr. Audrey J. Jaeger for her leadership and for providing feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For the purpose of this manuscript, we used the term “Latin*” to refer to all individuals of Latin American and Caribbean descent who reside in the United States (Salinas, 2020).

2. In qualitative case study design, the term “bounded” is meant to set research parameters or boundaries for the case which are determined by the researcher(s), including but not limited to time, place, or physical location (Yin, 2018).

3. Given the need to conduct a critical policy analysis (CPA), The Center assembled another team of researchers to conduct a CPA after each site visit concluded. Although we do not provide details about the process involved with the CPA, we thought it would be important to highlight this additional step.