By Dr. Jessica Lauritsen, Senior Strategic Impact Director, Education Design Lab
Last week at AACC 2026 – the annual convening hosted by American Association of Community Colleges — our Reimagining Community Colleges Design Challenge partners shared what institutional transformation looks like in practice. Their stories reinforced something we continue to learn through our work:
Transformational change does not begin with programs; it begins with mindset.
Through our work with these leaders redesigning the future of community colleges, three insights are emerging:
1. Transformation starts when institutions ask the right question.
Albert Einstein famously said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
Transformational leaders recognize that the right strategy begins with the right framing of the problem.
At Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) in Ohio, this came to life through one of the most important mindset shifts in their transformation journey:
“We stopped asking, ‘Who do we want to be?’ and started asking, ‘Who does our community need us to be?’”
That shift changes everything.
For Tri-C, transformation began when they moved beyond internal aspirations to become outward-facing in their community responsiveness. They are now grounding decisions in the evolving needs of learners, employers, and the broader community.
The future of learning requires colleges to design around learner and workforce realities, not institutional tradition. For example, this mindset shift is showing up in Tri-C’s work redesigning learning for working adults and learners with nonlinear lives. By recognizing their community needs education built for people balancing work and family, Tri-C is creating more modular and flexible education models, stackable pathways for pause and return, and scheduling that better reflects how learners actually navigate college.
2. Systems change requires more than good ideas — it requires building a movement that shifts culture.
Transformation is not driven by plans alone. It happens when institutions build a movement by aligning leadership, faculty, staff, and systems around a common vision for change.
Forsyth Technical Community College (Forsyth Tech) in N.C. shared how this work has helped catalyze institution-wide momentum, contributing to significant gains in student completion and strengthening their culture of innovation.
For example, this culture shift is evident in Forsyth’s redesign of stackable credential pathways, including micro-credentials, and stronger credit for prior learning, to help learners build momentum toward qualifications in more efficient, affirming ways.
But what stood out most was how this momentum has sparked a deeper conversation about institutional responsibility: not just how students can succeed within existing systems, but how the institution itself must evolve to deserve student trust and persistence.
That reflection led Forsyth to make joy an explicit institutional value, recognizing that learner success is not only about outcomes, but also about creating experiences where students feel motivated, affirmed, and energized to persist.
Because transformational change is not just structural. It is cultural.
3. Institutions transform more deeply when they understand their context.
At Saint Paul College in Minn., the president spoke about understanding the historical context of their campus, including the legacy of redlining in their neighborhood, which has shaped how they think about their responsibility to the community.
Transformation is not just about improving processes. It is about redefining institutional identity.
For example, this understanding of place and community responsibility is shaping Saint Paul’s expansion of applied and experiential learning opportunities across programs, ensuring students have access to internships, work-based learning, service learning, and other high-impact experiences that strengthen their connections to community, career, and economic mobility.
When colleges deeply understand the communities they serve, they begin designing not just for students, but with accountability to place and history.
Across the institutions, one thing is clear:
When colleges redesign systems, with learners alongside educators and employers, they do more than improve outcomes; they redefine what opportunity can be.
At Education Design Lab, we believe the future of learning belongs to learners and will be shaped by institutions courageous enough to redesign around the lives they actually lead.
And if our work with transformational community college leaders has taught us anything, it is this: Meaningful change happens when leaders are willing to challenge inherited assumptions, reimagine institutional responsibility, and build cultures capable of sustaining transformation.
Thanks to our partners, who are showing what that kind of leadership looks like.
