Planning

(1) One of the things that we’ve promoted with this particular part of the work is that it’s not something that colleges are doing, but rather it’s something that colleges are becoming. And when you kind of change the mindset that this isn’t just another initiative, it’s not another project, but it’s the way that we’re fundamentally changing the processes and the procedures and the programs at our college to improve student retention, credit accumulation, and ultimately completing their programs.

(2) The guided pathways idea is moving from a model where we’re attracting students by offering a lot of choices of courses at low cost to we’re attracting and retaining students by offering programs that clearly lead to where students want, which is efficient advancement with no excess credits to majors in bachelor’s degree programs in a timely and affordable way.

(3) Building the right infrastructure around the guided pathways is really necessary to make sure that there is engagement across the entire college. So the important thing for us is that we help employees, faculty and staff, understand where their — the work that they do every day, the processes they run, the behaviors, their actions, that they understand where that work fits within the overall structure of the framework.

(4) And so we work with our team intentionally about having them understand that our students come from different backgrounds, that they’re really ingenious and innovative but sometimes they don’t — they have to get through tomorrow, so they don’t see the bigger picture of attending class. And so some might need to meet with you more often, and some might need that support all the way through to completion. But giving them that support doesn’t make them less effective. It really just helps them complete.

(5) One of the really subtle cultural shifts is thinking about change not only of our own programs, but our own programs in concert with the other programs that they interact with. The internal version of that is we have worked with K–12, with adult basic education, with workforce programs, and we see enormous duplication of services across those efforts that started as special entities with particular populations. We need to rethink all of those in the context of today’s fiscal environment. And the starting place for that is the student.