At its April 4, 2009 meeting the Board of Directors of the Council for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC) voted unanimously to rename its Emerging Scholars Award in honor of Dr. Barbara K. Townsend. An active and long-serving member of CSCC Barbara K. Townsend is Professor of Higher Education in the College of Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Director of the College's Center for Community College Research. She served as President of CSCC in 1999-2000 and received the association’s Senior Scholar Award in 2001. In recognition of her many years of service to CSCC she was awarded the association’s 2009 Distinguished Service Award at its recent conference in Phoenix, AZ.

Over the years Dr. Townsend has mentored many new scholars providing them with guidance and opportunities to further their research. “I’m delighted that the CSCC Board is recognizing the amazing contribution that Barbara Townsend has made to the development of news scholars in the field of community college studies,” states Jan Ignash, Deputy Director of Policy, Planning and Research for the Washington State Higher Education Coordinating Board. “I’m one of the many who have benefited from Barbara’s mentorship. Barbara is one of those rare scholars who enjoys wrestling with the tough questions, those questions we keep coming back to because of their complexity and perennial nature. She has a ‘sixth sense’ of what quality research and writing should be and she delights in working collaboratively with and imparting that wisdom to emerging scholars.” Jaime Lester, Assistant Professor of Higher Education at George Mason University, and winner of the 2009 CSCC Emerging Scholar Award adds, “Barbara Townsend’s decades of research on gender and community college serve as the foundation for much of my research. Her dedication to establishing frameworks to judge gender equity and to giving voice to women, as well as her genuine admiration for community colleges, serves as a model. She and her work have been instrumental in my success and the success of many other community college scholars.”

Townsend’s research has focused on the community college as a major vehicle for facilitating attainment of the baccalaureate degree, with a particular focus on the experiences of women and minorities. She is the editor and author of a number of well respected books and monographs about the community college, and has published over 20 chapters and more than 40 research articles. She serves as co-editor of the NASPA-sponsored Journal about Women in Higher Education and is on the editorial board of the Community College Review and the Community College Journal of Research and Practice. Her current research focuses on the community college mission in the 21st century, transfer and articulation, and community college faculty.

Beginning in 2010 the award will be presented as the Barbara K. Townsend Emerging Scholar Award.