On the Front Lines of Rural-serving Community Colleges: Novice Presidents Share their Experience of the Job

Community colleges are experiencing retirements of a large number of their executive leadership, as well as staff and faculty. Though the economic downturn has recently slowed these retirements, they are expected to occur over the next decade. This impending leadership crisis will require community colleges to enact processes to find new qualified leadership, at a time when less qualified candidates are in the pipeline. Community colleges are complex and necessitate leaders who are multi-skilled and well versed on the mission of these comprehensive institutions. Through the use of qualitative inquiry, this study shares the experiences of five first-time community college presidents from four regions in the state of Texas, who have been in their roles less than five years at the time of their interviews. The study takes a different approach than other research on community college presidencies, as it enables the presidents to share their relatively new experiences of attaining their f