PROGRAM OBJECTIVES

• Provide students with opportunities to learn about community colleges while in the GSE&IS program at UCLA.
• Enable students to interact with professors and scholars who are experts on issues pertaining to community colleges.
• Allow students to network with the community college “community.”
• Provide students with both research and practical opportunities pertaining to community college practitioners across the nation.

DEGREE OPTIONS

• Master’s of Arts in Education, with elective-course emphases in issues pertaining to community colleges
• Thesis pertaining to community college issues
• Doctorate of Philosophy in Education, with elective and research-course emphases in areas pertaining to community colleges
• Dissertation pertaining to community college issues

COURSES

Community College Seminar

• 5-10 students; seminar; discusses current community college issues; guest speakers
• topics covered pertain to: administration, teaching, students, governance,  research, faculty
• grading: course assignments, class participation, final paper 

Community College RAC

• 5-10 students; seminar; focuses on research project(s) pertaining to community colleges
• quantitative or qualitative; group or individual projects; publication opportunities
• grading: course assignments, class participation, final research project

 Teaching in a Community College

• 5-15 students; seminar; discusses issues pertaining to teaching in community colleges
• internship in local community college
• grading: participation on internship, final report on experience, course assignments
  

• Graduate Student Researcher (GSR)
• Center for the Study of Community Colleges
   

PRACTICAL OPPORTUNITIES

• Employment opportunities at Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership Clearinghouse on Entrepreneurship Education (CELCEE)
• Internship opportunities in Southern California community colleges
• Conference presentation opportunities
   

PROFESSOR INFORMATION

To learn more about the Community College Emphasis, contact professor Arthur M. Cohen at artcohen@gseis.ucla.edu or at (310)825-8337. 

Dr. Arthur Cohen, one of the country’s leading scholars on community colleges, has been at UCLA since 1964. His research on community colleges has encompassed curriculum, governance, faculty, and students. Several foundations and governmental agencies including the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have funded Dr. Cohen’s research. He was a founding member of the Community Humanities Association and the National Council for Research and Planning, and served on the board of directors of the American Association of Community Colleges. He has been president of the California Educational Research Association. 

He offers a community college seminar every year and a Research Apprenticeship Course focused on the study of the community college. 

Publications

Professor Cohen has an extensive publications list totaling fourteen books plus nine soft-cover monographs. His first book was Dateline ’79: Heretical Concepts for the Community College (Glencoe Press, 1969), and his most recent, the fourth edition of The American Community College (Jossey-Bass, 2003). It is the most widely-used text on community colleges, and has been translated into Italian and Japanese. The Shaping of American Higher Education (Jossey-Bass, 1998) is a history of higher education in the United States.   

CURRICULUM/COURSES

APPLICATION PROCEDURES