Continued from front cover

Colleges can use iStream for individual and organizational growth in a variety of ways. For example, League publications provide options for reading circle books, conference keynotes and other video-streamed or audio-streamed presentations can be used as the basis for conversations about learning, online communities of learners offer a resource for successful programs from fellow practitioners, and iStream features can serve as content for all-college listservs and newsletters.

As iStream continues to develop, the League will add resources for students as well as college administrators, faculty, and staff.

Overview of the League
The League is an international consortium dedicated to catalyzing the community college movement. The League hosts conferences and institutes, develops Web resources, conducts research, produces publications, provides services, and leads projects and initiatives with member colleges, corporate partners, and other agencies in a continuing effort to make a positive difference for students and communities. Since 1968, the League has been making a difference in community college education and in the lives of millions of educators and students.

As the leading community college organization in the application of information technology to improve teaching and learning, student services, and institutional management, the League hosts the annual Conference on Information Technology (CIT), featuring hands-on computer labs, international distance-learning links, partner exhibits, and an asynchronous learning community. Advances in online learning have created new options and opportunities to extend courses, degrees, and training beyond traditional service boundaries and fulfill workforce needs in even the most remote communities. The League, with support from the Sloan Foundation, is leading Project SAIL (Specialty Asynchronous Industry Learning) as a national network promoting access, exchange, and dissemination of specialized industry-driven programs anywhere and anytime for community college students.

The League is also spearheading efforts to develop more learning-centered community colleges through its Learning Initiative. The goal is to assist community colleges in developing policies, programs, and practices that place learning at the heart of the educational enterprise, while overhauling the traditional architecture of education. To that end, the League publishes monthly Learning Abstracts, and in 1998, the League introduced Innovations, an annual conference dedicated to improving student and organizational learning. In 2003, the League launched the Learning Summit, a smaller event designed for educators to network, share ideas, and discuss challenges and issues they face as they work to make their institutions more learning centered.

The League is the principal provider of national programs and publications to prepare leaders for community colleges. The League's Executive Leadership Institute (ELI) prepares senior-level administrators for the community college presidency and features more than 20 community college CEOs and senior educators as faculty. Each month, the League publishes Leadership Abstracts, a brief on key leadership issues distributed to more than 22,000 presidents, trustees, and senior administrators, nationally and internationally.

The League is a major leader in influencing the expansion and improvement of workforce training programs in community colleges in the U.S. and Canada, and is a strong force in garnering recognition for the important role that community colleges play in the overall educational system and in involving major foundations and corporations in community college development. The League has entered into a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE), to lead the College and Career Transitions Initiative (CCTI) Consortium of site partnerships. Through its collaboration, the CCTI Consortium is identifying, developing, and refining practices that help students move effectively from high school to college and to careers by better aligning and improving the quality of secondary and postsecondary programs in high-demand career areas.

The activities listed here detail many of the ways in which the League makes a difference in community college education. However, the most powerful influence is seen in the lives of the more than 10 million students served by two-year colleges each year, many of whom are first-time college attendees, returning students, women, and minorities. These students and their aspirations continue to inspire and encourage us to incorporate all of our resources in efforts to improve community college education through innovation, experimentation, and institutional transformation.