Catherine Hartman

In this final chapter, we reflected on the collective works presented in this volume by a diverse group of community college scholars and leaders. Through this reflection, we share how this scholarship sought to operationalize and enhance the definitions of equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership in community colleges. After introducing these definitions, we provide applications for how community college leaders can adopt equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership to their scholarship and practice. We conclude this chapter by providing reflective questions for readers to be able to mobilize equity and social justice to their daily practice. Furthermore, we provide reflective questions to apply these principles at the institutional, systems, and policy level practice.

In this chapter, we discuss the significance of social justice and equity in community college leadership. By examining the intersections between social justice and equity, we sought to understand the role that community college leaders play in applying these approaches. To contextualize our discussion, we outlined key challenges that community college leaders face in developing and implementing these equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented practices. This chapter serves as an introduction to the New Directions in Community Colleges volume dedicated to operationalizing and applying equity and social justice‐driven leadership in community colleges.