Like many college campuses built in the late 1960s, the learning environment at Lane Community College is classic Brutalist architecture: bare exposed concrete. In a recent survey, students overwhelmingly commented that they experience the Brutalism as austere, cold, drab, and gloomy, especially during the gray drizzly days of a Eugene, Oregon, winter. Some likened it to learning in a parking garage! Find out how Lane is using student and alumni art to transform the campus and celebrate the creative spirit, in this month’s issue of Innovation Showcase.

Interventions to Support Readiness, Recruitment, Access, Transition, and Retention for Postsecondary Education Success
This month, Leadership Abstracts features the executive summary excerpted from a new report released by UCLA's Center for Mental Health in Schools. According to the report, although recognition is growing about the public health and civil rights imperative for reducing the high rate of school dropouts, too little attention is paid to enhancing equity of opportunity for those transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood by increasing enrollment and success in postsecondary education.

Throughout 2009 the League for Innovation, with support from MetLife Foundation, conducted research into the nature of innovation in the community college. One project goal was to develop from the research findings a set of guidelines for community college educators who have ideas for solutions to problems and challenges but are not certain how to turn those ideas into action. These guidelines are the focus of this month's issue of Learning Abstracts.