At Chico, faculty, students and administrators met and provided input on the Pathways project and what its themes should be. In the end, they settled on 10 pathways, including: diversity studies; gender and sexuality studies; great books and ideas (which Loker said was a faculty favorite, if not a student one); science, technology and values; and food studies.
Loker said the collaborative design process ensured a certain amount of faculty buy-in. Students also appreciate that the nine-credit requirement in an upper-level pathway leads to a minor in that pathway – what Loker called “value added.” The bigger challenge is maintaining that sense of buy-in, along with faculty identification with the program, he said, as the program goes on. With just three semesters down, and a whole scale assessment planned for 2017, it’s hard to know yet if Pathways is doing what it set out to do – make general education better.