Presentation for Evaluation 2011, from Session 492 - Methods I: New Approaches to Assessment in Higher Education - Currently, institutional research (IR) offices in community colleges nationwide are collecting and reporting on extensive data sets. Colleges are especially focused on studying student retention. This paper discusses how external evaluators can work with IR to provide a deeper understanding of program successes and challenges in improving retention. We will present a case study of an evaluation of learning communities (LC) in two community colleges. First, we provide the context of the cases and describe what data the colleges were already collecting. Then, we discuss the evaluation study we designed, which included a retrospective analysis of student level data and student and faculty interviews. The presentation focuses on how the evaluation contributed to a more comprehensive understanding of how LCs affect student success. Lastly, we will discuss how the colleges have applied these findings and some challenges we faced as external evaluators working with the colleges' IR offices.#highereducation #Learningcommunity #externalevaluation #2011Conference #AssessmentinHigherEducation