O'Banion's Lasting Legacy
Terry O’Banion’s impact on higher education, and on the community college movement in particular, is both profound and enduring. The breadth and depth of his contributions are not easily captured in a single narrative. Yet even a brief accounting of his work, spanning decades of leadership, scholarship, and advocacy, begins to reveal the scale of his influence and the lasting imprint he has made on the field.
Selected Works Building on O’Banion’s Legacy
This collection highlights selected works by scholars and practitioners whose research builds on and extends Terry O’Banion’s ideas, offering a clear expression of his enduring legacy in higher education. Together, these contributions demonstrate how his learner-centered, humanistic vision continues to shape scholarship and practice.
Boswell, K., & Wilson, C. D. (Eds.). (2004). Keeping America’s Promise: A Report on the Future of the Community College. A joint publication of Education Commission of the States and League for Innovation in the Community College. Denver: Education Commission of the States.
Baker, R. L., & Wilson, C. D. (2006 March). Accreditation and the Learning College: Parallel Purposes and Principles for Practice. Learning Abstracts 9(3).
Lloyd Pfahl, N., McClenny, K. M., O’Banion, T., Gonzalez Sullivan, L., and Wilson C. M. [sic]. (2010). “The Learning Landscape of Community Colleges.” In C. E. Kasworm, A. D. Rose, & J. M. Ross-Gordon, Eds., Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education, 2010 Edition (pp 231-241). Los Angeles: Sage.
Wilson, C. (2010 January). The Nature of Innovation in the Community College: Guidelines for Innovators. Learning Abstracts 13(1).
Miles, C. L., & Wilson, C. D. (2004 Summer). Learning Outcomes for the 21st Century: Cultivating Student Success for College and the Knowledge Economy. In A. Serben & J. Friedlander (Eds.), New Directions in the Community College: Developing and Implementing Student Learning Outcomes, Summer(126), 87-100. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Wilson, C. D. (2002 July). Leadership for Learning. Learning Abstracts 5(7).
Wilson, C. D. (2002). The Community College as a Learning-Centered Organization. In N. Thomas (Ed.), Perspectives: Critical Issues in the Community College. A joint publication of the League for Innovation in the Community College and Macomb Community College Institute for Future Studies. Phoenix: League for Innovation in the Community College.
Wilson, C. (1999 Spring). Faculty of the Future in Learning Colleges. Michigan Community College Journal 5(1), 75-84.
Provost, A. (2023). Digging in the Wrong Place : Tracing Discursive Artifacts of Humanistic Education in the Community College (University of Florida). University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UFE0059307/00001
Contribute Your Work to the O'Banion Scholarly Community
Scholars and practitioners continue to extend the ideas advanced by Terry O’Banion, shaping new conversations about learner-centered and humanistic education in diverse contexts. This page is intended as a living record of that ongoing work.
If you have published research, writing, or practice that builds on, responds to, or is informed by O’Banion’s contributions, we invite you to share the citation and link to the publication here. Approved submissions will be included in a curated set of links to published work, helping connect readers to the broader, evolving scholarly community.