Community college leadership is facing a crisis. At the opening of the 21st century, the opportunities for the development of new leaders and leaders in situ are not particularly good. Couple this with the forecasted need for an unprecedented number of well -prepared people to lead in faculty, administrative, and trustee roles, and the scope of the crisis emerges. Now add the increasing complexity of colleges and the knowledge and skills necessary to lead them, and the circumstance reaches alarming proportions.

This issue of New Directions for Community Colleges brings together various thoughtful perspectives on the nature of leading community colleges over the foreseeable future, and suggestions for specific programmatic actions that community colleges themselves can take to provide the quantity, quality, specializations, and diversity of leaders that are needed.

Community colleges are important. Their leadership is important. Addressing the crisis in leadership now facing the colleges may be the best insurance available to assure the continued contributions to American life made by the nation's community colleges. This volume is offered to that end.

This is the 123rd issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Community College.