If anyone doubts Dr. George B. Vaughan is the nation's leading expert on the community college presidency, the publication of this new book should lay that to rest.

The Community College Presidency at the Millennium, co-authored by Dr. Iris M. Weisman, is the latest contribution to research into the important roles of chief executive officers of our nation's two-year colleges.

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to become a community college president. Its contents of wisdom and practical advice, drawn from sitting presidents across the country, can give the aspiring college chief executive officer a great deal of insight.

The book's first chapter presents an effective overview of the history of the community college presidency. The authors bring this background into sharp focus in a brief presentation on the formation of many new colleges during the boom years of the sixties and seventies. This helps establish a basis for understanding the changing roles of community college CEOs as these unique institutions of higher education were coming into their own. They point out that during some years of the 1970s, a community college opened each week.

But there are regrets.

"Unfortunately for those who would like to know more about presidential life in the 1960s and early 1970s, much of the intimate history of the boom years of community college development is lost, for it was never recorded," the authors write.

Perhaps the most useful chapters are those that contain presidential "profiles." The information comes from "the most recent iteration of [Vaughan and Weisman's] Career and Lifestyle Survey," a questionnaire in which "community college presidents were asked a series of questions regarding their personal backgrounds, their education and experience before becoming president, their personal and professional lifestyles as president, and their future plans."

The answers to these questions are illuminating and often inspirational. However, the in-depth interviews with selected community college presidents, presented in chapters four, five, and seven -- according to Dr. Donald E. Puyear's forward -- "are the heart of the work; here one gets the sense of what is really important to today's community college presidents."