Dear Colleague,

I am pleased to announce important progress on a signature element of Shoreline’s Guided Pathways (GP) efforts. A key tenet of GP is to make it easier for prospective students who visit a college website to find an academic path they wish to pursue. 

To this end, over the past two years, Amy Kinsel, Maya Smorodinsky, and Ann Garnsey-Harter have led a team that conducted extensive research, engaged interest holders, and gathered feedback to determine how best to group Shoreline’s academic degrees into categories that are meaningful to prospective students. Thank you to the faculty, staff, administrators, current students, and demographically appropriate prospective students who participated in this process.  

Based on research results and with the approval and support from VP-SLES Phillip King, the College now will implement nine (9) Shoreline Pathways. In the new design, seven (7) pathways contain college-level degrees and certificates, one (1) pathway contains pre-college degrees, and a final pathway is devoted to students who need time to explore their academic options before they settle on any one path. 

The College’s website will be revised to reflect this new model during the AY 2022-23. This pathways redesign is a critical step in rethinking how Shoreline engages new students as they join our college. Our overall GP goal includes revising student onboarding, intake, advising, placement, and degree planning to support students to find their academic paths and complete Shoreline degrees. 

You can learn more about this effort and the specifics of the new model by reading the announcement in DAAG or visiting the GP informational site in Canvas. 

Sincerely,

Steve Hanson
Interim President
Office of the President

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

www.shoreline.edu

Tuesday June 6, 2022. Sixth edition

What is this Newsletter for? 

This newsletter is an effort to keep campus employees informed of our Guided Pathways-related efforts, to share stories from projects, and address questions. It is intended to complement our Canvas site, our update reports, and any webinars that we may offer.

Spotlight: Future Career and Transfer Center

There is some common agreement that our college should provide career services to our students. Likewise, that we help transfer students with their preparation and transition to Bachelor-granting schools. We do these things currently, but in a distributed and uneven fashion. To meet our obligation to all students, and ensure we provide easy-to-access support, there is an emerging desire to create a centralized unit dedicated to these services is the next step in our college’s development. The desire to help students identify their ultimate goals (why they are here) so that we can help them identify the educational path that will serve their aims, aligns well with the GP framework.

In the winter, Brigid interviewed diverse internal stakeholders to get a sense of what we currently offer, and to develop an (initial) aspirational vision. 

This spring, a small workgroup is developing recommendations for “Year 1” of our effort to grow a Center for these services, and we’re starting with career exploration and job-seeking services. 

Plans for Year 1 (2022-23) include

• A dedicated, easy-to-find physical space on the main floor of the PUB
• An online tool that prospective and current students can use to explore their interests and potential career paths (PathwayU)
• A full-time (temp) academic advisor who is especially skilled in working with undecided students in determining their career aspirations and academic pathway. Welcome Matt Allen!
• Amplifying the valuable skills of our WorkSource employment specialist, Laura Aunan. (She works with the Employment Security Dept of the state, and can help students with resumes, interview preparation, and more.)
• Hiring a dedicated Internship Coordinator, using Perkins funding
• Identifying leadership needs and planning Year 2!

Co-leads: Brigid and Lauren Hadley

Spotlight: Getting involved next year

In the previous edition of this newsletter I described many ways to get involved in the coming year.

I linked this grid of projects and all the different ways faculty can contribute to the work. There have been operational delays in getting opportunities formally posted. 

If you are keen to apply for a role, please contact me directly and I will get you an unofficial (unposted) version of the job announcement so that you can prepare your letter of application.