About the Lab
A think tank on the future of community colleges
Community College Futures Lab explores how community and technical colleges can see change early and act with more than one future in mind. That includes how boards govern. It also includes how presidents, leadership teams, faculty and staff use foresight in their own work.
The Lab publishes signals, briefings and tools that anyone can use, and it works directly with colleges, systems and state associations. It was founded in 2025 and is based in Portland, Oregon.
Why the Lab exists
Why plan for one future when several are possible?
Community colleges make long decisions in short cycles. A building, a program, a partnership or a key hire can shape a college for decades. Yet most planning assumes the next ten years will look much like the last ten.
That assumption has rarely carried more risk. Artificial intelligence is changing work and learning at the same time. Demographics are shifting. Public trust in institutions is falling. The Lab exists to put better questions about these changes in front of the people who lead, govern and teach in community colleges.
What the Lab holds to
Four commitments
The future is plural.
The Lab works with several plausible futures at once. A single forecast hides how much is uncertain, and it invites a college to plan for one future that may never arrive.
Assumptions deserve daylight.
The most useful question in most meetings is what the group is assuming will stay true. Stated assumptions can be tested. Unstated ones simply govern.
Foresight belongs in everyday decisions.
Foresight is most useful when it becomes part of ordinary work: board agendas, cabinet proposals, program reviews and department planning.
Questions travel further than answers.
Every college sits in a different place. The Lab publishes questions so that people can work through them in their own context.
Founder
Andrea Henderson
Andrea Henderson founded Community College Futures Lab after 25 years in state-level community college leadership. She served 18 years as executive director of the Oregon Community College Association and six years as executive director of Arkansas Community Colleges.
In both states she worked where colleges meet policy: with legislators, governors’ offices, state boards and college presidents. Governors appointed her to the Oregon Task Force on Higher Education and Workforce, and to the Arkansas Economic Recovery Task Force and Career Education and Workforce Board.
She holds a master’s degree in foresight from the University of Houston. Her writing has appeared in The EvoLLLution and ACCT Trustee Quarterly.
She has spoken on strategic foresight at ACCT, AACC, the AACC New Presidents Academy, the League for Innovation in the Community College, the Rural Community College Alliance, the Community College League of California, the Missouri Community College Association and the Wyoming Association of Community College Trustees.
Using the Lab’s work
Free to read, print and share
Everything in the resource library is free to read, print and share. Please credit Community College Futures Lab and link to ccfutureslab.com.