Cultivating Leadership: The Role of Agricultural Deans in [STATE] Community Colleges

Agricultural deans at California Community Colleges (CCC) experience a diverse set of responsibilities and challenges. This study investigated the knowledge, skills, and abilities these deans believed were necessary to be effective in their roles as well as what deans believed constituted an effective CCC agricultural program. Results indicated that deans most valued an understanding of district and state policies, effective interpersonal skills, and programs grounded in their local agriculture industry, among other variables. Participants for the qualitative phase included five purposively sampled deans. Participants for the quantitative phase included the population of deans who offer an agricultural associate degree for transfer, with 21 out of 29 deans participating. Findings from this study address a gap in agricultural education literature and can be used for recruitment, professional development, and evaluation purposes regarding CCC agricultural deans and programs. Community colleges serve a critical role in the United States’ higher education landscape, enrolling around 10 million students each year and constituting over 40 percent of all undergraduate enrollments (Community College Research Center, 2021). Yet, community colleges are largely overlooked in agricultural education research, with most studies focused on school-based agricultural education (SBAE) or university agricultural education. This study addressed the gap in literature by investigating instructional deans who oversee agricultural programs at California Community Colleges (CCC). CCC represent the largest system of higher education institutions in the United States, including 2 million students enrolled at 116 colleges (California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, n.d.). CCC instructional deans manage academic departments and are seen as middle management in CCC (Russ, 2006; Sill, 2014). Many CCC deans have expressed challenges in their roles, including managing a heavy workload and the need for more formal training (Nguyen, 2014; Sill, 2014). The focus of this study was on CCC instructional deans who manage agricultural academic departments and programs. The research questions for this study included: 1. What knowledge, skills, and abilities do California Community College agricultural deans believe are required to be effective in their position? 2. How do California Community College agricultural deans describe a successful and effective California Community College agricultural program?