Guided Pathways
About Guided Pathways
Guided Pathways provides a supportive college environment that allows students to confidently and successfully achieve their academic goal in a timely manner by providing a clearer path to a career of value.
What is the “California Guided Pathways Model?”
The California Guided Pathways Model is a way to help students succeed in college. It gives students a clear plan from the day they start until they finish and are ready for a job or further education.
The model uses program maps, which are like roadmaps. These maps show students exactly which classes to take, what progress they should make, and what skills they'll learn. The maps are designed to match what employers and universities will expect from graduates.
When students start, counselors help them explore different career options and choose a program. Then students follow their program map, which makes decisions easier. The college can also give students regular feedback and extra help when they need it to keep them on track. This helps students finish their programs faster and be better prepared for jobs and future schooling.
Four Pillars of Guided Pathways
Pillar I - Clarifying the Path:
Simplify students’ choices with default program maps developed by faculty and advisors that show students a clear pathway to completion, further education and employment in fields of importance to the region. Establish transfer pathways through alignment of pathway courses and expected learning outcomes with transfer institutions, to optimize applicability of community college credits to university majors.
What is Santa Ana College doing to clarify the path for students’ end goals?
| Integration | Collaboration | Engagement | Outreach | Visuals | Assistance | Communication |
Career & Academic Pathways (CAPs)
Our programs are now organized and marketed in broad career-focused academic communities or “meta-majors”.
Career Exploration* (*click here for upcoming events)
Our Guided Pathways Success Teams in collaboration with our Career Center now create events for prospective and current students to explore careers and pathways. Populations include high-school students, incoming freshmen, students from the school of continuing education and the main SAC campus.
Our entering students are invited to a two-day, college-readiness workshops that incorporate Career and Guided Pathways (CAPS).
Success Teams
CAP Success Teams support the following activities:
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College-wide SACDAYS and CAP Discovery Fest events
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Career Exploration events that highlight a specific CAP campus-wide, in collaboration with the Career Center
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Our Starfish tool assists in identifying, contacting, and tracking students who need additional support to successfully complete their educational journey
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Interdepartmental and campus-wide collaborations
Pillar II - Enter the Path:
Bridge K12 to higher education by assuring early remediation in the final year of high school through the application of courseware technology in strong K12/higher ed partnerships, such as the TN SAILS model. Redesign traditional remediation as an “on-ramp” to a program of study, which helps students explore academic and career options from the beginning of their college experience, aligns math and other foundation skills coursework with a student’s program of study, and integrates and contextualizes instruction to build academic and nonacademic foundation skills throughout the college-level curriculum, particularly in program “gateway” courses. This overview is excerpted from a longer unpublished document developed by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) and the AACC Pathways Project. 2 c). Provide accelerated remediation to help very poorly prepared students succeed in college-level courses as soon as possible.
What is Santa Ana College doing to help students choose and enter the pathway?
| Exploration | Promotion | Consistent Communication | Support | Utilization of Technology | Early Interventions |
Success Teams
- Helping students explore career/college options, choose a program of study, and develop a full-time program plan as soon as possible.
- Monthly career exploration events
- Implementation of Canvas shells related to CAPs
- Marketing of Career Center workshops for career exploration
Onboarding
Early decision and orientation(s) (SACDay)
Using Students' Strengths
- Develop education plans that align with career goals
- Use SuperStrong Matrix in assessing students’ strengths alignment with careers and meta-majors
- Starfish and Self-service tools assist students with visualizing their journey and
monitoring progress
Intensive Supports
- Provides intensive support for specialty programs such as TRIO, EOPS, Veterans
- Starfish as our early intervention tool connecting students with their Success Team Success Coaches
- Creation of Co-requisite courses to help students in gateway math and English courses.
- Dual-enrollment and Promise program
Pillar III - Stay on the Path:
Support students through a strong advising process, embedded and ongoing in the pathway experience and supported by appropriate technology, to help students make informed choices, strengthen clarity about transfer and career opportunities at the end of their chosen college path, ensure they develop an academic plan with predictable schedules, monitor their progress, and intervene when they go off track. Embed academic and non-academic support throughout students’ programs to promote student learning and persistence.
What is Santa Ana College doing to help students stay on the path?
| Tracking Student Progress |
Provide Resources |
Develop Tools |
Foundations for Success |
Community at-large Involvement |
Retention |
Support and Interventions
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Success Teams track student progress to comple program requirements.
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Success Teams cross-collaborate teams of academic and student support services.
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Students in their college journey are provided with a digital education plan
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Exposure to Career Exploration workshops and activities, FAFSA, and are enrolled in Math & English
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Creation and publication of 270+ Maps
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‘At scale’ monitored early alert system and progress monitoring
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Over 200 faculty utilize Starfish in academic concerns, tutoring referrals, attendance concerns, non-academic concerns, kudos
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Action-plans and goals related to additional support measures and interventions
Pillar IV - Ensure Learning:
Establish program-level learning outcomes aligned with the requirements for success in employment and further education in a given field and apply the results of learning outcomes assessment to improve the effectiveness of instruction across programs. Integrate group projects, internships, and other applied learning experiences to enhance instruction and student success in courses across programs of study. Ensure incorporation of effective teaching practice throughout the pathways
What is Santa Ana College doing to ensure students are learning?
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Technology Integration
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Equity-Centered |
Student-Focused |
Interdisciplinary |
Campus-Wide Initiatives
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Nuventive and Curriqunet integration
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Connecting outcomes to program review
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Curriculum development
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Equity engagement - personal reflection, professional practice and policy implementation
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Data-informed practices and responsiveness
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Career Coaches and Learning & Engagement teams
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Alignment of SLOs, PLOs and ILOs to Guided Pathways
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Uses Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE) and Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) to assess institutional effectiveness
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New Faculty Institute
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Using student feedback to develop professional development opportunities
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Works closely with student leaders to ensure student representation