Building Communities: How Rural Community Colleges Develop their Communities and the People who Live in them

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Building Communities: HowRural Community CollegesDevelop their Communities andthe People who Live in themMichael T. Miller a & Courtney C. Tuttle aa Higher Education Leadership Program, Universityof Arkansas , Fayetteville, Arkansas, USAPublished online: 17 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Michael T. Miller & Courtney C. Tuttle (2007) BuildingCommunities: How Rural Community Colleges Develop their Communities and thePeople who Live in them, Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 31:2,117-127, DOI: 10.1080/10668920500441689

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BUILDING COMMUNITIES: HOW RURAL COMMUNITYCOLLEGES DEVELOP THEIR COMMUNITIES AND THEPEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THEM

Michael T. MillerCourtney C. Tuttle

Higher Education Leadership Program, University of Arkansas,Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA

Community colleges in rural environments provide a variety of services.There is a great deal of documentation supporting those services that areacademic and economic. The noneconomic and nonacademic results ofcommunity college activities, however, have an undocumented yet signifi-cant impact on local communities. The current study focused on how theactivities of rural community colleges impacted local community self-identity. Using three case studies in the rural mid-south, four primarythemes were identified as outcomes of these rural colleges’ actions: devel-oping community inclusiveness, developing community pride, creating avalue-added community lifestyle, and being the central defining compo-nent of the host community.

Rural community colleges, defined by their geographic location, havebeen estimated at approximately one-third of all community collegesoperating in America (Katsinas & Miller, 1998). More recent attem-pts to catalog this group of colleges has resulted in the identificationof 922 individual rural community college campuses in 533 com-munity college districts (Katsinas, 2004).

Rural community colleges face a host of unique and often difficultchallenges (Murry, 2005). These can be as severe as securing theresources necessary to maintain operation of the college. Only 18 statesnow rely on local taxation for operation of community colleges(King, 1998). In those service areas, real estate taxation can produce only

Address correspondence to Michael T. Miller, Higher Education Leadership Program,

University of Arkansas, 237 Graduate Education Building, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA.

E-mail: [email protected]

Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 31: 117–127, 2007

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1066-8926 print/1521-0413 online

DOI: 10.1080/10668920500441689

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minimal amounts of revenue, and by requesting increases to the mil levy,college administrators find themselves embattled directly with publicschool officials and beneficiaries (Miller & Holt, 2005). Challengesunique to rural colleges also include the recruitment, retention, anddevelopment of a high quality faculty and administrative team; resourcesto support advanced technological applications, including the telecom-munications infrastructure necessary to support high-speed computingtraffic; the availability of trained staff; and the challenges associated witheconomic development in areas that have historically underperformed orhave suffered from prolonged economic depression (a general discussionof these topics is provided in Killacky & Valadez, 1995).

A key for the vitality of a rural community is the ability to identifythe social engines that drive the community—not just economically,but in terms of interactions and community engagement. In manyrural communities, particularly those that are farm based, there arefew, if any, social engines. They might be anomaly tourist attractionsor parks, consolidated schools, or gathering places such as coffeeshops, a gas station, or even the Dairy Queen. In some communities,the social engine could well be something with more size and strengthin engaging the community, such as the rural community college.

The purpose for conducting the current study was to identify if andhow rural community colleges serve as a socially-centering mechan-isms for rural communities that positively influence the self-identityof communities and their residents. The study made use of agrounded theory case study design. It including three communitycolleges in the rural mid-southern United States, with one collegein Alabama, one in Arkansas, and one in Mississippi.

COMMUNITY COLLEGES AS CATALYSTSFOR RURAL LIVING

Rural community colleges have been viewed by residents, state legis-lators, and policy makers, as catalysts for sustaining high-quality oflife opportunities for rural America (Valadez & Killacky, 1995).These community colleges indeed provide key educational opportu-nities for the local population, but they also provide job training,small business support, and in many cases are the focus of town life(Cavan, 1995). Business are more likely to be operated in communi-ties with a college that can provide training. This is especially true iftraining packages also allow for state investment in workforce devel-opment (Maiuri, 1993). In essence, state governments can filtermoney to small communities. Thereby, they increase tax and revenue

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production and, subsequently, improve the quality of life in a givencommunity (Masoner & Miller, 1995).

Rural community colleges have three distinct economic develop-ment service activities. These include providing contract training,developing small businesses, and local economic-development plan-ning. Contract training differs from traditional vocational or occu-pational education in that the ‘‘client’’ for the training is a privatebusiness. Also, the training is being done for the express benefit ofthe business. That is, the purpose of the training is to improve workerperformance or ability for a specific business. Programs might includelearning new computer programs (such as Windows, CAD=CAM[computer-aided design=computer-aided manufacturing]), learning tooperate new machinery (such as SPS [statistical process controls]),learning new compliance standards (such as the ISO [internationalstandards organization] series). Business also will, at times, contractdevelopmental education that can add to the profitability of the com-pany. Increasingly, state departments of labor, economic development,education, and social services are working to consolidate some of theirprograms that serve rural communities. They have found that they canleverage their investment by offering cost sharing with businesses andinvesting in training through local community colleges. Over 90% ofall community colleges offer some contract training.

The second economic development function of community collegesincludes small business development. These activities often includeincubators that provide free or reduced office space. Also offeredare consultative services and advice such as personnel policy develop-ment, hiring assistance, help completing and filing appropriate stateand federal paperwork, marketing expertise, data sets that can feedinto business plan development, and, in some instances, executiveon-loan programs to provide seasoned business leadership. Somestates have found that they are more effective at offering these typesof services by developing networks of community colleges, withexpertise on certain areas located at different colleges. Thisnetworking approach allows for systems to expand their ability tohelp rural colleges.

The third area in which community colleges provide economicdevelopment support is in local economic planning. These activitiesmight include scanning for economic trends and watching legislationor changes to rules and regulations that impact local business orindustry. Several community colleges have even moved into the pol-icy making arena, calling meetings of policy makers to debate issuesthat can impact local industry. They also actively bring citizenstogether to learn about issues that have the potential to impact local

How Rural Community Colleges Develop Communities 119

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business. And, they can provide educational opportunities for localpolicy makers, such as city council members, about potential econ-omic growth activities (Dougherty & Bakia, 2000 provide an excellentsynopsis of these activities).

Colleges can also play a key role in the self-identity of individualsliving in or near the town where the college operates (McDowell,1995). The guiding assumption of this study is that people who growup and live near a college, in this case a rural community college,have a fundamentally different outlook or vision of life, pride, andself-identity. This outlook can arise from frequent early contact withthe college or its faculty, staff, or administrators. Or, it can stem froma community’s sense of pride in serving as the home for the college.The prosperity driven by the college, among other benefits, may alsoinfluence the outlook of those who live nearby.

METHODS

A case study approach was used to describe how rural communitycolleges help individuals determine their own self-identity and reflectthe collective identity of those living in the town. Three institutionswere selected based on willingness to participate, with one institutionin Alabama, one in Mississippi, and one in Arkansas. All three insti-tutions worked to schedule interviews with students, faculty, staff,community representatives, and local business, civic, and nonprofitleaders. As shown in Table 1, a total of 79 interviews were conducted.Characteristics of the colleges and their towns are shown in Table 2.In most cases, notes of each interview were made, but 10 interviewswere also tape recorded and transcribed. This transcription was thencompared to the notes taken from those interviews in order to assurean accurate process of interview recording.

Table 1. Summary count of interviews

Category Number of interviews

Institution Mississippi College Arkansas College Akabama College Total

Students 4 7 6 17

Faculty 5 5 4 14

Staff 4 3 5 12

Private citizens 4 5 3 12

Industry leaders 5 4 3 12

Civic leaders 4 5 3 12

Total 26 29 24 79


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Interview questions were developed in consultation with experts onrural development and the community college. These descriptivequestions were also pilot tested at a nonparticipating community col-lege, and revisions were made to ensure that the questions allowed foradequate and meaningful feedback. All interview data were collectedthroughout the 2004–2005 academic year, and interviews were bothtape recorded and conducted with note-taking. Additional documentsand artifacts were collected from each of the three rural community col-leges in the study including yearbooks, fact books, institutionalresearch data, tourism and real estate materials, catalogs, etc.

A grounded theory and constant comparison approach to dataanalysis was utilized to allow themes to naturally arise from the data.This method allowed for a more authentic sense of discovery ofthemes and issues in portraying how these rural community collegesinteracted with their communities.

The discussion of findings and implications for practice presentedhere are reflective of a broad analysis of the entire interview data set.An extended version of this discussion with additional data reportingcan be obtained in the research series of the Mid South Partnershipfor Rural Community Colleges housed at Alcorn State Universityand Mississippi State University.

FINDINGS

For the current analysis, all data were considered as a group to pro-vide a broad picture of what was happening within the various com-munities. From the 79 interviews and over 1,000 pages of notes andtranscripts, four dominant themes related to community self-identityemerged. These included community inclusiveness, community pride,the value-added community, and town-defining colleges.

Theme 1: Community Inclusiveness

Comments related to how community colleges were a focal point fora wide variety of municipal and civic activities led to the identification

Table 2. Characteristics of case study institutions

Institution Enrollment Community size

Alabama college 900 4,769

Arkansas college 1,526 12,375

Mississippi college 2,698 1,432


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of a theme related to community inclusiveness. These comments camefrom a variety of individuals, including college faculty members, privatecitizens, community leaders, and even business and industry leaders.

All three colleges’ facilities were used by numerous civic groups.Activities ranged from dance classes to political party meetings. Onelocal business leader commented that the college in his community‘‘really tries to use the model where the community college is at thecenter of everything that happens in town. They really are quite liter-ally involved in everything from where meetings are held to grant writ-ing and job training.’’ And in addition to formal education-relatedprograms, college facilities served as locations for wedding receptions,family reunions, church services, and even day care centers.

College faculty viewed their colleges as deeply involved in com-munity activities; and as one faculty member said, ‘‘President X hasus involved in everything. I can hardly go anywhere here in townand not have somebody say something about their being on campus.’’A faculty member at another campus said ‘‘everybody [in town]comes to campus a lot. Sometimes its for Rotary lunch or Sertomans,and there was even a wedding reception here about two weeks agowhere we had to move classes so that the [main hall] could be setup on Friday afternoon.’’

These colleges were more than facilities, though, and offered pro-grams, services, and activities that bring community citizens together.Some were formalized adult leisure education programs, while otherprogrammatic offerings were hosting political speakers, internationalperforming arts, museum exhibits, and even athletic events that sat-isfied broad social appeal. One college offered access to an inter-national traveling theater troupe and gave the tickets away tocitizen service groups. Another college had an extensive athletic pro-gram. When its football team played at home during the fall, itbecame a community event. Another college experienced the samerole with a basketball program and a rotating art gallery.

The compelling idea within this thematic category was that a widevariety of community agencies, activities, and people are reliant onrural community colleges for far more than postsecondary education.These colleges provide a meeting place for the local citizenry to gatherand debate ideas, and gain exposure to worldly ideas. The collegesthemselves often provide the reason for the citizenry to come together.

Theme 2: Community Pride

A variety of comments describing individual actions led to the identi-fication of a theme related to community pride. Many private citizens


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living in towns that hosted community colleges described themselvesas being quite proud of the college’s existence within the community.A town council member said, ‘‘I’m biased, I know, about how great[this town] is. We have good people who care about each other andcare about the community, and I think every single one of us is proudof the fact that we’ve got an excellent community college here.’’ Acommunity member had a similar comment in a different town, indi-cating that ‘‘when the [sports team] plays basketball, everybodycomes out to support them.’’ And a college president said, ‘‘whenwe have a basketball game or baseball game, parents, neighbors, sib-lings, and friends of the student-athletes all come out to support theteam and show their pride in the college.’’ He went on to comment,‘‘we’ve had sellouts for basketball games, and one in particular ismemorable. A star player had been recently engaged to a local girl,and everybody wanted to see the ring!’’

Local business and industry leaders offered multiple commentsabout how job training and retraining programs played a key rolein their ability to recruit and maintain a quality workforce. Similarly,local school officials commented about GED completion programsand adult literacy classes. A private citizen who worked in one ofthe town libraries said, ‘‘We’re different here. We’ve got a college thatdoes things for everybody here. They’re not trying to be Harvard or[the state university], they just try to take care of us where they can,and we’re prouder of our town because they’re here.’’ In one com-munity, as the researchers entered the town’s courthouse and askedabout area attractions, the desk clerk shouted without prompting,‘‘We got a college!’’

Additional comments from private citizens, students, faculty,and administrators pointed to college activities developing andfostering a sense of civic pride. As an enabling institution forstronger community self-esteem development, college leaders sawan expanded role and responsibility for themselves. A president said,‘‘People who live here don’t have to love everything we do, but theyneed to love some of it and they need to love us—that’s a big part ofour job.’’

Theme 3: Value-Added Community

A theme somewhat similar to developing pride among communitycitizens related to how citizens, college employees and students, andlocal business leaders described the better rural life they were ableto lead as a result of the college. These comments were classifiedwithin the theme of the value-added community.


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Several students also identified that they felt very good about theirquality of life growing up in the towns included in the study becausethe college was there and because the college had a positive impact onthe kinds and quality of services the town has access to. ‘‘Well, youknow, I just felt better about being in [here] and going to [the localhigh school] mostly because there is more in [this town], and yea,the college is a big part of who the town is,’’ a former community col-lege student said. ‘‘I don’t think you can say that [the college] alonemakes [the town] great town or place to live, but it makes it a lot bet-ter and it would be just a speck without [the college]’’ he continued.’’When asked to elaborate, he said, ‘‘For starters, there wouldn’t be thesame people in [town]—you’d take out all of the college teachers andadministrators, and then take out the people who like what the col-lege does and what it stands for. I just really honestly think thatyou would have a very different place that wouldn’t be nearly as niceto live in or raise a family if it wasn’t for [the college].’’

‘‘You would have to talk to my mom or dad to find out for sure,but I think they live in here because there is more going on here thananywhere else around here,’’ commented a 19-year-old male student.‘‘My dad drives about 45 minutes to get to work, but they live intown because there are restaurants, grocery stores, better houses,and the college.’’ Elaborating, he continued, ‘‘The college reallymakes a difference here; everybody has some connection to it. Likeour next door neighbor teaches there, and I’ve been going to meetingsand stuff at the college since I was in junior high school.’’

An industry leader in a town said,

We probably would be here [in this town] regardless of whether or not

the college is here, but we are better because they are here—we’re bet-

ter at what we do and how we do it, and I think we all feel better about

ourselves—that this place is a little bit better than the next town

over—because there’s this great college that’s willing to work with

and for us.

Students typically reported through questioning that they felt goodabout living in the areas around these small towns, and that the pres-ence of the community colleges reinforced that positive feeling. Acaricature of this thinking was reflected by one 19-year-old second-year student at a college who was raised in that town.

I don’t think any differently about myself just because I’m from here

or because we’ve got a college here. We’ve got a lot of stuff here that


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just makes life better than other places around here. I mean we’ve got

the Wal-Mart, there are a couple grocery stores, there’s a movie thea-

ter. Unless you go down to [the next town], this is where it’s at.

Another student said,

When I was in fifth grade I went to camp over at the college—all of us

did and we kept going back. We had some better teachers at school and

we would even go to the college’s library to do our homework and meetguys. If you grew up anywhere else around here you wouldn’t be able to

get to the library or hang out at the college. And that was really a great

part of growing up here and something I’ll always remember.

A civic leader in a different town commented, ‘‘We’ve had atough history of racism here, especially north of here. So to havethe college here and to have it shine as an example of integration isreally a good thing. It sets an example and shows young peoplehow to get along in school and in life. We’re a better place becauseof the college.’’

Theme 4: Town Defining

In all three cases, to some extent—and particularly for the two smal-ler communities—there was a strong belief, expressed through com-ments, that the college was in fact the town. The two were largelyseen as the same and intimately interwoven: the college was towndefining. Although the larger town of over 10,000 had a wide varietyof employers, the study participants there expressed consistent townimages as being a ‘‘college town.’’

In the two smaller communities, students and faculty, and specifi-cally private citizens noted that they identified the town as their homeand the home of the college. ‘‘We really are a college town,’’ said achecker at a grocery store. ‘‘When students are around, they’realways coming in to buy Cokes or chips or sandwiches, and at lunch-time sometimes we’ll have students lined up way to the back.’’ Afaculty member put it this way: ‘‘There is a great history in this partof the state, but this community is and has been known as the placewhere the college is, and not much else.’’ An administrator at thesame institution elaborated, commenting that people come to thetown because of the college. ‘‘Folks come to town for other reasons,although there are not really that many,’’ she said, ‘‘But by and large,we are known as the hometown of the college.’’


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The concept of the college playing a role in defining the town wasevident to all three college presidents. One of the presidents said, ‘‘Ithink every single one of us at this college recognize how importantthe college is to the community, and vice versa. Our toughest job isto let other people know that as well.’’

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

Rural community colleges certainly play a distinct role in their com-munities, mirroring some of the traditionally implied roles of their4-year college and university counterparts. They have a unique distinc-tion, however, in terms of serving small towns in ways that 4-year col-leges do not. They are socially enabling institutions that improve andhelp form the identity of rural America, both in terms of individual com-munities and in terms of individuals themselves. There are several keyimplications for practice that subsequently arise from these findings.

First, legislators and other policy makers should consider ruralpostsecondary education within the context of other social and econ-omic policy initiatives. Rural community colleges are much morethan opportunities for further education: they are institutions thatbring societies together for a wide variety of reasons. Recognizingthis unique role, rural community colleges are well-suited and situ-ated to provide one-stop services. They would work well combiningsocial services, health education, labor, and economic developmentactivities. State legislators and other policy makers should recognizethis and invest accordingly.

Second, rural community college leaders should consider their roleas a participant-leader within their communities. All three com-munity college presidents recognized their role in serving the commu-nity’s needs. However, professional associations and preparationprograms should assist presidents in understanding how their actionscan impact the identity development of individuals and collectivesocieties.

And third, rural community colleges should look at their ownservices and work to integrate their activities with other communityinfrastructures. They could, for instance, collaborate with moregovernment agencies such as public libraries and tourism councilsto support and grow local interests. Colleges may also find it helpfulto conduct some form of audit to fully understand how they are inte-grated within their communities. They should then work to stream-line some of these interaction points and expand others.

These findings represent an important first step at looking at ruralcommunity colleges as socially integrated institutions rather than


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relying on classifying them within a postsecondary education pro-vider paradigm. Further research should recognize this status andwork to expand the contemporary understanding of the uniquecharacteristics of rural community colleges and how they can bestbe utilized within the broad framework of working to advance thepublic good.

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Documents

Building Communities: How Rural Community Colleges Develop their Communities and the People who Live in them