KINGSTON, December  (JIS) — Jamaica’s community college system stands to benefit from the recent participation of member of the Council of Community Colleges of Jamaica (CCCJ), Howard Isaacs, in a one-week leadership conference in Arizona in the United States (US).

Organised by the League for Innovation in the Community College, the event provided the opportunity for potential community college presidents, or those in transition, to analyse their abilities, reflect on their interests, refine their skills and engage in leadership discussions with community college leaders from across North America.

Among areas examined were communication, marketing, benefits of sitting on external committees, work of boards, entrepreneurship, and support systems for staff and students. “It was a compressive programme,” Isaacs said.

He told JIS News that he will be imparting what he has learnt to help build leadership across the country’s community college system.

 “With the mandate that is given to me… I am expected to prepare a programme where persons who are looking at community college leadership will become exposed to some of the strategies that I have learnt… to build what we have in Jamaica,” he said.

He noted that Jamaica, under the CCCJ, where he once served as Interim Executive Director, has developed a very effective system for higher education.

“The community colleges are vibrant, economically capable of offering a programme with the same qualifications and certificates that you can get at a university, because of how dynamic we are. That’s what makes us so unique. We need to build that model, because it is working in other places and it is working in Jamaica,” he said.

The League for Innovation in the Community College is an international non-profit organisation with a mission to cultivate innovation in the community college environment.

It was founded in 1968, and over its almost five decades of existence, it has sponsored more than 200 conferences, institutes, seminars, and workshops; published over 200 reports, monographs, periodicals, and books; led approximately 140 research and demonstration projects; and provided numerous other resources and services to the community college field.