| Summary: | Today's community college system should evolve further in the post-pandemic environment of the 21st Century by reimagining their model through innovation with competency-based education (CBE) to better fit the environment in which they now operate. The purpose of this study was first to gain a deeper understanding of how community colleges succeed at implementing CBE and what is needed for successful leadership in CBE at community colleges nationally and, second, to develop a means to share that knowledge more widely with community college leaders across the country. Interview and survey data collection in Cycle 1 investigated successful CBE implementation in community college with CBE leaders in community college. Action steps in Cycle 2 were developed to inform CBE leadership practices in community college, aiming to give community college CBE leaders a better understanding of the role of CBE leadership. Findings included CBE innovation in community college is very hard but success can be had, leading CBE in community college requires a non-executive, operational, and transformational leader and transformational leadership principles to succeed, the capacity of the transformational CBE leader to successfully manage the complexity and scale in transforming the culture and mindset is what truly builds the institutional capacity to innovate, CBE growth in community colleges is on the horizon but challenges persist that make it unlikely to meet the definition of a disruptive innovation, and collaborating with a leading CBE higher education organization to inform the practices of community college leaders is effective but doing so through a webinar approach may not be the most effective way to engage this group. Implications for the CBE community are to establish a CBE leadership framework, prioritize future research on the practice of CBE implementation, focus efforts in consultation on supporting the non-executive operational leader, and move to more interactive forms of engaging the CBE community to inform practice.--Author's abstract
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