Community colleges in the United States are faced with several challenges, one of which is increasing the percentage of students that earn an associate degree. Research (American Association of Community Colleges, 2012; Amey, 2005; Eddy, 2010; Roueche, 2008) suggests that community college administrators need to think, act, manage, and lead in ways not required or expected in earlier generations. Significantly increasing the percentage of community college students that earn an associate degree may require a change in the dominant general management logic (Bettis & Prahalad, 1986) of American community colleges. The dominant coalition is the group that creates and revises an organization’s dominant general management logic. This study described the shared mental models of members of the dominant coalition at one community college, and the relationship between those shared mental models and the college’s performance as measured by the percentage of students who earn an associate degree. The research explored the relationships between the dominant coalition’s shared mental models, the community college’s dominant logic, and the college’s focus on associate degree completion. The research found that the Foundations Studies Committee, a group comprised of faculty, staff, and senior leaders at the College, had a leading role in determining what the College would do to improve the associate degree completion rate. This group has many of the attributes of a Professional Learning Community (Lenning, et. al, 2013). Understanding the influence of Professional Learning Communities on organizational development may be helpful as community college work to improve performance on a range of outcomes metrics.
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