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Autism is the fourth-largest disability category in the US, and autistic high school students' expectations for college education in a wide variety of fields have been ever-growing. This paper focuses on the pursuit of STEM-related education for students with autism and the unique needs of these students and techniques to improve outcomes. Although the potential to diversify the current STEM workforce is evident, college enrollment trends and STEM employment rates do not reflect the increasing interests and needs of autistic individuals. This systematic literature review aimed to understand the current knowledge about autistic students' pathways from high school to STEM employment and examined associated educational practices promising to improve their STEM career outcomes. After reviewing 5,620 articles, our search yielded seven eligible articles. Findings demonstrate the prevalence of articles landing in autism journals and possessing limited demographic diversity, as well as the featured programs improving autistic students' developmental skills while participating in STEM programming. Additionally, autistic students are increasingly pursuing STEM programs in postsecondary education. Implications point to the necessity of elevating representation among diverse autistic individuals in scholarly research, offering further guidance to autistic students in following STEM career pathways, and expanding opportunities for them to enroll in STEM fields in postsecondary education institutions.

Representations of disabled students -- by both disabled and abled people -- are vital to disabled futures because they hold important implications for how abled people conceive of, and thereby support, disabled students. For years, scholarship on disability in postsecondary education has failed to interrogate the problematic narratives perpetuating inequities for disabled students. In this study, we used critical concepts of place and techniques of diversity management to analyze how disability is represented in existing scholarship. We engaged in a systematic literature review to locate 72 articles on disability and 2-year colleges and then selected 15 articles as data for a Critical Discourse Analysis. Our findings surfaced four themes that enable scholars to determine what narratives are given legitimacy: "justification stories; disability as binary; localized power asymmetries;" and "accommodations as solution." Our findings suggest that existing scholarship uses justification stories to reinforce the idea that smartness is property leaving the pattern of disproportionate disability enrollment unexamined. We extend prior critiques of legal accommodations to include the idea that accommodations are a process by which institutions absorb, and thereby manage, disabled bodyminds. We also demonstrate how ableism happens within existing scholarship through silence (e.g., lack of positionality statements) and binaries (e.g., constructing disability as a dualistic experience). Ultimately, we lead scholars to engage in many actions, including reflecting on the roles they possess to disrupt normative narratives about disproportionate representation of disability on 2-year college campuses, interrogating limitations for disabled individuals engaging in waged labor, and elevating disabled perspectives.

Objective/Research Question: The purpose of this grounded theory study is to explore how community college CTE faculty members aim to support disabled students in their career pursuits. Methods: This constructivist grounded theory study entailed interviewing 20 faculty members across two southeastern United States community colleges. Results: Findings unveil the prominence of community college faculty holding mixed perceptions and limited understandings of disabled individuals' experiences in CTE fields, tending to weed disabled students out of these professions, and possessing various ideas for how to better enable disabled students' success, including bolstering disability awareness and acceptance. Conclusions/Contributions: These insights contribute to the formation of the 3Ps Model of Faculty Professional Engagement with Minoritized Students that will guide researchers in how to understand the processes that shape faculty engagement with minoritized students. The study also reveals opportunities for growth in how community college faculty and practitioners address issues surrounding building up disabled community college students' employment pathways.

Community colleges have long responded to local workforce needs through assembling programming and alliances aimed at reducing workforce gaps while concurrently training the next generation of industry professionals. The emergence of the North Carolina Community College System's NC Career Coach Program, stemming from North Carolina General Statute 115D-21.5, is one such illustration. Through situating career coaches -- community college staff -- in local high schools to provide students with resources and opportunities for academic and professional growth, the NC Career Coach Program is meeting the needs of the state and its stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to explore how North Carolina career coaches use career capital to support high school students' career and college goals. This study proposes a conceptual framework grounded in social and career capital. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, we drew on surveys, interviews, focus groups, and documents to understand how coaches serve students in their professional and/or postsecondary pursuits. Findings indicate that career coaches serve as a connector among students, the college, and industry employers, forming relationships with each group, and importantly, developing trust with students and their families to support students' college and career goals. In so doing they bolster students' social and career capital, as well as honor the NC Career Coach Program's mission to serve under-resourced communities across the state. Finally, we offer implications for research and practice that highlight the capacity of community college career coaches to support high school students with career and college objectives.

Objective/Research Question: For decades doctoral community college leadership programs have prepared students for the challenges and rewards in steering community college campuses, yet minimal scholarship has explored these programs' efficacy in serving their students. This study explores community college leaders' motivations in starting, learning experiences during, and takeaways following participation in doctoral community college leadership programs. Methods: This narrative inquiry study draws on action learning as the theoretical framework and entails interviews with 19 community college administrators who graduated from doctoral community college leadership programs. Results: Findings are threefold, each related to the distinct pieces associated with the research questions at hand. Students' motivations for enrolling in programing stem from financial and geographic accessibility, institutional credibility, personal fulfillment, and desires to advance their careers. During their time in programs, students benefited from curriculum that prepared them for their dissertations, cohort-based approaches that afforded community, and applicable assignments and activities that directly related to their roles as community college practitioners. Following their doctorate, students reflected on the value of having this degree for propelling their careers and recommended opportunities for programmatic improvement. Conclusion/Contributions: These findings offer new perspective into what doctoral community college leadership programs accomplish in supporting students' objectives and professional practices, and also unveil ideas toward programmatic adjustments.

As more autistic students enroll in postsecondary education, they embark on a journey that leads them to not only process their identities as college students but also as autistic individuals. This social constructivist grounded theory study elevated autistic college students' perspectives as they made sense of their identities while participating in an autism-specific college support program. The study presents a new conceptual framework: the Nachman Autistic College Student Identity Development Model. This model relays three key stages that influence the sense-making of autistic college students: (a) discovering their disabilities, (b) approaching independence, and (c) determining autistic affiliation. Scholars and practitioners can draw from this model and the study's findings to inform how to account more holistically for autistic college students' iterative identity development.