| There is a pending crisis in community colleges as a leadership gap is being created with the vast retirement of presidents. In addition, leaders in positions that traditionally feed into the presidency are also retiring, and in some cases there is a lack of interest in the CEO position. However, succession planning is not practiced in most higher education institutions, and as a result, there is not a robust pipeline to fill the vacated leadership positions. Among the factors listed for a lack of succession planning is the culture of higher education institutions; therefore, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine how the culture and traditions of a community college influenced succession planning.;The study was conducted through the lens of Schein's three-tiered model which focuses on organizational culture. Data were collected through the use of interviews and document reviews, and the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) method was utilized to analyze the data. Four themes emerged from the analysis: change is constant at the institution, diversity along with professional and leadership development are valued, top leaders are recruited from outside the institution, and succession planning was viewed as important. Challenges to succession planning include the underlying assumption that higher education should not be run like a business, and top leaders should be selected via the traditional national search. Findings indicated that having a written succession plan does not mean that succession planning is being practiced within an institution. |
