Document Author: Katharine M. Broton

The Power of Partnerships: Field Experiments for Translational Impact in Higher Education (2025)

As support for higher education practice and research retracts and campuses
seek ways to adapt, we encourage community college leaders and
scholars to look to one another and embrace partnerships to advance
campus and student success. Randomized field experiments, long at the
crossroads of ideological struggles in education, offer a unique opportunity
to impact research, practice, and policy. We offer partnerships as
a tool to bridge the field experiment divide and move forward with
a both/and thinking approach. Drawing on insights from our longstanding
collaboration, we elaborate on a field experiment done in partnership
as an example of aligning institutional and research goals to advance
policy and practice with ethical intentionality and efficiency. In doing so,
we argue for the potential of field experiments without falling into purist
ideals of causal analysis as a panacea for solving higher education’s
problems or dismissing them altogether for their shortfalls and
challenges.

Unmet Needs: Campus Support for Community College Students in Need of Food and Housing Assistance (2025)

Nearly 1 in 4 community college students experience food insecurity, and 1 in 13 experience homelessness; however, little is known about the extent to which institutions support them. Using community-based participatory research and data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, we found that the majority of students in need of assistance did not receive food and/or housing support from their institution. Multilevel model results indicate that receipt of assistance varies across student and institutional characteristics. Compared with their majority peers, students who used disability services and Students of Color were more likely to have received support, while gender non-conforming students and those with lower levels of food security were less likely to have received help. Institutional size and gender make-up were also related to the likelihood of students reporting receipt of assistance. This study highlights the current limitations of campus supports for basic needs insecurity and provides insights for scholar-practitioners seeking to improve program implementation.

Public Testimony on Hunger in Higher Education, Submitted to the National Commission on Hunger (2015)

For the past several years, we have conducted research on hunger affecting college studentsacross the nation, and we thank you for the opportunity to share what we have learned. Our goalis to provide useful information about food insecurity among undergraduates and offer potential policy solutions to help alleviate this problem.We urge the National Commission on Hunger to align hunger policies with educational policies, in order to ensure that individuals from low-income and economically vulnerable backgrounds have a fair shot at mastering college-level material and securing college credentials.In particular, we recommend the following actions.