The Academic Senate is considering visual Curriculum mapping charts and Guided Pathways for students.

On Feb. 6, members of the Academic Senate held their tri-monthly meeting, in the BFL Community Room; on the agenda was talks of a new curriculum mapping, guided pathways.

These all seem like promising tools for students who are overwhelmed by the expansive curriculum offered by the school, as well as the requirements for school degrees.

The new Guided Pathways program includes tools like Curriculum mapping which will give students a visual idea of what classes they will need to take to be successful and when to do them.

“College initiatives to date have not have not solved this problem, we recognize that there are a lot of fine initiatives on campus,” said Lupe Dannels, Guided Pathways co-coordinator.

“But the idea of really making across the board to have all students to participate in successful strategies is not there,” said Dannels.

The mapping is broken up into different phases, or phase maps, starting with phase 1, phase 2, etc. What is required in each phase is up to the department’s discretion.

“This grew out of our summer conversations when counseling and faculty were talking about how a lot of our students walk in, feel behind” said Becky Opsata the other Guided Pathways co-coordinator.

“They look at the big long list of the classes they have to take and they realize oh my goodness this going to take me forever to do it, so we created this concept of phase maps,” said Ospata.

“Thinking about how to deal with the big picture issues that come up or relate to Guided pathways. I would like to use Academic Senate as a forum to discuss some of those issues,” said Professional Development Coordinator Kris Koblik.

The Academic Senate is going forward with more meetings on the guided pathways approach to help students; the next meeting will be on Feb. 13.