Overall Rating Silver
Overall Score 49.64
Liaison Adam Maurer
Submission Date March 31, 2021

STARS v2.2

Seattle Central College
IN-50: Innovation D

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.50 / 0.50 Adam Maurer
District Sustainability Coordinator
Office of Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Name or title of the innovative policy, practice, program, or outcome:
Seattle Pathways Program

A brief description of the innovative policy, practice, program, or outcome that outlines how credit criteria are met and any positive measurable outcomes associated with the innovation:

Seattle Pathways is a deliberate and comprehensive approach to achieve two Seattle Colleges strategic goals; 1) student success, and 2) diversity, equity, inclusion, and community. It is an institutional mechanism used to achieve equity and builds upon Seattle Colleges’ ongoing Strategic Enrollment Management, Guided Pathways, and related student success and equity initiatives.

Led by the Vice Chancellor, the Seattle Pathways leaders are committed to the advancement of racial, social, and economic equity as the foundation for our guiding principles. As we become more aware of the depth and history of inequitable policies and practices, we can clearly see how the lack of leading with racial, social, and economic equity has impacted our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students in drastic ways and caused major achievement and opportunity gaps. We acknowledge inequities that have occurred in both the past and the present. We recognize that correcting these imbalances will take intentional action immediately and over time. These actions can be seen as we lead with equity-minded competency:
• Being race conscious and aware of racial identity.
• Using disaggregated data to identify racialized patterns of outcomes.
• Measuring success based on the success of our students who face the greatest systemic barriers to completion.
• Engaging the voices and actions of students, faculty, staff, and community members to lead to sustained systemic change.

The Seattle Pathways directly relates to advances in our Curriculum, Campus Engagement, and Diversity and Affordability priorities by engaging stakeholders from staff, faculty and student groups to design and implement innovative practices aimed at furthering student success for our underserved populations. This initiative has resulted in the creation of a common eight Areas of Study across our three colleges which have also recently been adopted by our local school district which provides students with a clear path for their education beyond high school. We have also recently revamped the methods by which we are doing English course placement with students giving them a stronger voice in their own educational journey while working to ensure our placement methods are based in anti-racist practices. Other recent successes under our Seattle Pathways umbrella include a reorganization of our advising departments to be more aligned with students’ areas of study and a complete overhaul of our websites by these same areas of study.

We are deliberate in our use of data to measure the success of these initiatives and have been nimble in our ability to pivot when strategies are not achieving the desired results. Having the Seattle Pathways structure in place prior to the pandemic has also allowed us to accelerate our work in a variety of ways that we did not foresee. Our work continues to expand with numerous submissions of innovative proposals from faculty and staff to further our goals of improving outcomes for underserved students. We have prioritized these activities in spite of the challenging budgets situation we are facing.


A letter of affirmation from an individual with relevant expertise or a press release or publication featuring the innovation :
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The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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