Thursday June 16, 2022. Seventh edition
Spotlight: Unveiling Shoreline Pathways
A signature element of Guided Pathways (GP) is making it as easy as possible for prospective students to find and understand the academic pathways available to them at each of Washington’s community and technical colleges.
Since 2019, Shoreline has grouped its disciplines and degrees on the College website into five (5) areas of study. These categories represent an early effort to use basic Guided Pathways principles to organize academic information.
The Work of the Past Two (2) Years
Starting in 2020, members of Shoreline’s GP team have applied a methodical and systematic approach to Guided Pathways work, including re-examining our areas of study.
For two years a small team, led by Amy Kinsel, Maya Smorodinsky, and Ann Garnsey-Harter, has been researching best practices in designing and implementing academic pathways, reviewing models at peer institutions, running workshops with faculty and staff, developing and testing prototypes, listening to student voices, and collecting and assessing feedback from demographically appropriate prospective students. This extensive research has informed a regrouping of the College’s discipline and degree categories from five (5) “areas of study” into nine (9) “Shoreline Pathways.”
Shoreline Pathways
We will soon begin the work to redesign the College website to display nine (9) Shoreline Pathways. Each Pathway will contain a set of degrees and certificates grouped in ways that make sense to prospective students.
Functionally, these are still categories of degrees and certificates. These changes do not reflect nor affect how we organize our people and departments and divisions internally.
In the new design, seven (7) of the Shoreline Pathways contain college-level degrees and certificates, one (1) pathway contains pre-college degrees, and one (1) pathway is devoted to students who need time to explore their academic options before they settle on any one path.
Our nine (9) Shoreline Pathways are:
Business & Management
Healthcare & Wellness
Industrial Technology
Languages & Communication
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math
Social Sciences & Public Service
Visual & Performing Arts
+
College Readiness & ESL
Exploratory
For an idea of the degrees that fit into each Shoreline Pathway, see this chart of the new Shoreline Pathways. (It does not include certificates, as it is proof of concept. We will include certificates in the final public-facing version.)
We want to thank the many faculty, students, and staff who have contributed their ideas and feedback on this project so far and ask you to participate in next steps.
Next Steps
Starting in Summer 2022 and continuing through the next academic year, we’ll be working with the College’s web team to revise our web pages and web architecture to reflect the new pathway structure.
Building Shoreline Pathways includes creating sample quarter-by-quarter course sequences for prospective students for each degree and pre-major. Over the next 9 – 12 months, the College will invest heavily in developing course sequence “maps” for approximately 60 degrees and pre-majors with input from academic advisors, program leads, and instructional faculty. We invite faculty to apply to serve in leadership roles for this project.
We are excited to have reached this milestone and looking forward to implementing this new model.
-B
BRIGID NULTY
She/Her
Director of Guided Pathways
Shoreline Community College
Day at a Glance 
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