Wheelhouse publishes timely, readily understood and actionable
briefs for decision-maker audiences statewide, including
community college administrators and trustees, the California
Community College Chancellor’s Office and Board of Governors, the
Office of the Governor, the State Legislature and media covering
higher education.
We serve as the hub for a statewide network of researchers
whose work informs and connects to our mission. Our work is also
informed and supported by a Research
Collaboration Council of 12 community college CEOs.
To cultivate the next generation of California Community
Colleges-focused scholars, we engage undergraduates, graduate
students and postdocs in our work and sponsor an annual
summer research
fellowship for doctoral candidates whose work touches the
CCCs.
Community College Baccalaureate Degree
Benefits and Opportunities: California’s Community College
Baccalaureate Programs (Hoang, Vo and Rios-Aguilar,
2022)
Pioneering The Community College Baccalaureate in California: The
Experience of West Los Angeles College (Aguiar, Dones,
Quiñones, Rios-Aguilar, Chavac and Cruz, 2022)
A Missed Opportunity for Equity? Early Observations on CA’s
Community College BA Pilot (Cuellar and Gandara, 2017)
Community College Finance
Funding Incentives for CCCs: Impacts of the SCFF on Financial Aid
Receipt (Linden, 2022)
Understanding the Student-Centered Funding Formula (Linden,
2022)
Community College Leadership
Kurlaender, M. & Bennett, S. (April 2024).
Focusing on Wins: California Community College Leaders Reflect on
Pandemic-Era Innovations. ARCC Network Blog.
Leading as Myself: California Community
College CEO Reflections on Personal and Institutional Growth
Across a Year of Racial Reckoning (Bush, Cooper, Escobar,
Kurlaender and Rodriguez, 2021)
Toward a More Perfect
Institution: Reflections from California Community College
Leaders on Racism, Anti-Blackness and Implicit Bias (Bush,
Cooper, Kurlaender and Rodriguez, 2020)
Who’s on Line One? The Delicate Juggling Act of Community College
CEOs (Cooper and Benson, 2019)
Talk to Me: What California Community College Trustees Want from
their CEOs (Cooper, 2017)
Tough Job if You Can Keep It: What California Community College
CEOs Say About Their Challenges and Longevity (Cooper, 2016)
Developmental Education Reform (AB 705)
Working as Designed: A Causal Analysis of AB 705 Shows Increased
Rates of Transfer-Level Course Taking and Passage (Alice Li,
2023)
Navigators of Critical Reform: California Community College
Counseling Faculty as Agents of Change in Implementing AB 705
(Acevedo, 2022)
Progress and Potential: Considering the Question of Racial Equity
in CA AB705 (Melguizo, Cooper, Kurlaender, Bensimon, 2021)
Dual Enrollment
Growth Interrupted: An Update on Dual Enrollment Participation
Among Public High School Graduates, (Dykeman, Reed,
Friedmann, Kurlaender, 2024)
A Strong Start for College and Career: Dual Enrollment
Participation from 9th to 12th Grade,
Appendix of County and District Stats (Friedmann, Reed,
Kurlaender, Dykeman, 2024)
A Foot in the Door: Growth in Participation and Equity in Dual
Enrollment in California (Kurlaender, Reed, Grosz, Mathias
and Hughes, 2021)
A Leg Up on College: The Scale and
Distribution of Community College Participation Among California
High School Students (Friedmann, Kurlaender, Li and
Rumberger, 2020)
A Rising Tide: Dual Enrollment is Growing Among California High
School Students (Wheelhouse, California Education Lab, and
PACE, 2020)
Financial Aid
Linden, R. (May 2024).
Early Alerts: How Two California Colleges Are Using Relief Funds
to Keep Students Enrolled. ARCC Network Blog.
Rodriquez, O., Payares-Montoya, D., & Cook, K. (2024, May).
How did pandemic recovery funding support California community
colleges? San Francisco, CA: Public Policy Institute of
California. [Submitted to ERIC, pending approval.]
Cooper, S. (April 2024).
Zero Textbook Cost: In California, a Community College President
Leveraged Short-Term Funds for Long-Term Impact. ARCC Network
Blog.
Financial Aid for
California Community College Students (Kurlaender, Martorell,
Friedmann, 2021)
Why do Some Students Fail to Receive Pell Grants? (Friedmann
and Martorell, 2019)
Money Left on the Table: An Analysis of Pell Grant Receipt Among
Financially-Eligible Community College Students in California
(Martorell and Friedmann, 2018)
Text Me: The Promise of Strategic Nudging to Increase Student
Awareness and Access to Financial Aid (Rios-Aguilar,
Martinez, Graves, Lopez, and Deil-Amen, 2018)
Pandemic Impacts and Innovation
Kurlaender, M., Cooper, S., Bush, E., & Rodriguez, F.
(Forthcoming). From the Disruption of the Pandemic, A Path
Forward for Community Colleges. Change: The Magazine of Higher
Learning.
Martinez, M. (Forthcoming). Portraits of Resilience: Community
College Students Navigating Challenges Amid the Pandemic [ARCC
Network Brief]. New York, NY: Community College Research Center
at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Hurtt, A.
Wheelhouse Research Collaboration Council: Shaping our
Understanding of Pandemic Recovery. (April 2024). ARCC
Network Blog.
Pandemic-Period Enrollment and Persistence in California
Community Colleges (Linden, Kurlaender, Martorell and
Carrell, 2022)
Everybody Pulling in the Same Direction: The COVID-19 Shift to
Online Delivery of Instruction and Student Services (Hart,
Xu, Hill and Alonso, 2021)
Turning on a Dime: California Community
College Transformation in Response to COVID-19 (Cooper, Hart,
Kurlaender, Rios-Aguilar, Rodriguez and Sublett, 2020)
Special Populations
A
Portrait of Student Parents in the California Community Colleges:
A New Analysis of Financial Aid Seekers with Dependent
Children (Reed, Grosz, Kurlaender and Cooper, 2021)
Higher Learning Inside: An
Exploration of the Demographic Make-up of Incarcerated Persons
Taking Postsecondary Courses in California (Britton,
Friedmann and Adan, 2021)
Like a Juggler: The Experiences of Racially Minoritized Student
Parents in a California Community College (Huerta,
Rios-Aguilar, Ramirez and Muñoz, 2021)
College Quality: The Promises and Pitfalls of Measurement
(Kurlaender, Carrell and Jackson, 2018)
Student experience
Enlace Comunitario Identifying Opportunities to Enhance Community
College Outreach and Recruitment of Latinx/a/o Students
(Mayra Nuñez Martinez, Marcela G. Cuellar, Sherrie Reed and Celia
Esposito-Noy 2023)
More than just
money? Early outcomes of Lake Tahoe Community College (LTCC)
College Promise Program in New Directions for Community
Colleges (Claudia Escobar, Elizabeth Zeiger Friedmann, and
Silvia Tovar, 2023)
Toward Belonging in the Community College Classroom: Lessons from
the Learning for Equity Ascend Research Network (LEARN)
(Escobar, 2023)
Course Closed: Using Waitlists to Study the Effects of Course
Shutouts on Community College Students (Robles, Gross and
Fairlie, 2021)
Transfer Pathways
ADTs at Year 10 (Baker, Kurlaender, Friedmann,
2020)
Starting off on the Wrong Foot: Math Misalignment and STEM
Outcomes in California Community Colleges (Park, Ngo and
Melguizo, 2019)
Associate Degrees for Transfer: A Snapshot of Progress Across CA
Community Colleges (Baker, Kurlaender and Friedmann, 2018)