Questions community college boards should be asking. Most AI conversations focus on tools and risks; this brief reframes them as governance questions—about mission, teaching and learning, workforce, decision-making, and long-term strategy. A field guide for boards moving beyond reactive AI decisions toward an intentional, mission-centered approach.
What it is, why it matters, and how boards can begin. An introduction to anticipatory governance—a way of operating in which boards regularly and explicitly engage multiple possible futures, replacing a single assumed path with intentional engagement with the range of futures the institution may need to navigate.
How anticipatory governance reshapes board deliberation. A field guide to the questions that surface assumptions, expand time horizons, and make the future an explicit part of how boards consider the decisions in front of them—organized around time, environment, patterns, direction, identity, and the limits of current thinking.
Provocations for rethinking the purpose and structure of the institution. Three plausible futures—The Learning Ledger, The Living College, and The Commons College—designed to make the question of the college's identity and purpose visible, so leaders can engage it directly rather than answer it by default.
Ten "what ifs" for community colleges. A set of provocations covering autonomous transportation, fragmented work, AI tutors, outcomes-based funding, problem-based learning, student-led micro-colleges, and more—each surfacing the futures that today's choices may quietly be producing.
Each brief is written to be used—in a board retreat, a cabinet meeting, a planning session. They focus on "what if" questions and the implications of shifting conditions, providing a way to engage the future in a disciplined and accessible format.
If you'd like to use a brief in your own work, or commission a new one focused on a specific question facing your institution, get in touch.
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