About the Webconference
Financial pressures due to dwindling enrollment and increased competition from two-year, four-year, and certificate-based education programs continue to squeeze community colleges. Performance-based funding models focused on student completion, successful transfer, and eventual job placement have only heightened these pressures. While Guided Pathways was billed as an opportunity to improve student completion and community college sustainability, implementation of this model varies widely.
In introducing Guided Pathways academic reform, colleges need to strike a balance between exploration and structure within their curriculum. Program maps offer students structure in the form of a clear and direct path to graduation, while meta-majors allow for student exploration within a given field of interest without excess credit accumulation.
This resource is part of the Design Student-Centered Guided Pathways to Achieve Strategic Goals Roadmap. Access the Roadmap for stepwise guidance with additional tools and research.
Community colleges know the first step to beginning pathways reform is addressing the lack of structure of their program maps. While the theory of how to do this is abundant, most leaders confess that the operational challenges in creating program maps and meta-majors is still quite real. And while conceptually straightforward, the creation of program maps and meta-majors can be difficult and time consuming due to departmental politics and historical scheduling norms. To address these challenges, design program maps and meta-majors with student goals in mind.
This presentation will teach step-by-step guidance on working with faculty senate and student services productively in order to create program maps and meta-majors with student outcomes at the center of their design. This webconference is meant for presidents, provosts and VPs of academic affairs or student affairs.