The impending retirements of many community college leaders creates a need to better understand who the chief academic officers (CAOs) are and the paths they followed to become CAOs. Nonetheless, researchers have paid relatively little attention to this important leadership position. To address this gap in the literature, the authors undertook a national study of 300 randomly selected community college CAOs. The intent was to determine the educational backgrounds and demographic characteristics of public 2-year college academic deans or vice presidents and compare these findings to those of previous studies to determine trends.
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