Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory
Category: Student Well-Being
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted higher education, particularly community colleges serving significant proportions of traditionally disadvantaged students. This mixed methods study examines how Texas community colleges responded to the crisis and the extent to which they institutionalized pandemic-driven changes. Using state-wide student-level administrative data, and survey and interview data from administrators at ten community colleges, we found that the study colleges rapidly expanded online instruction by leveraging existing learning management systems and faculty expertise, while extending advising, counseling, and basic needs services into virtual and hybrid formats. Guided by organizational resilience theory, our findings show that colleges absorbed the pandemic’s disruptions and engaged in transformative change. Through distributed leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and a heightened focus on student well-being, they redefined instructional practices, support infrastructures, and institutional culture, becoming more adaptable and empathetic organizations. These findings may help explain why persistence and completion remained stable post pandemic, despite sharp declines in enrollment in 2020 and 2021. More broadly, the study advances understanding of resilience in postsecondary contexts and offers insights into how crises can drive organizational learning and transformation.
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/30mv-h525
