The Associated Students of Moorpark College Board of Directors held their first meeting of this semester on Tuesday Jan. 14. ASMC board president Kris Hotchkiss, a 20-year-old Camarillo resident majoring in Communications, called the meeting to order at 4:09 p.m.
The first item of discussion on the agenda was the Scale of Adoption Assessment for Guided Pathways presented by Moorpark College counselor Traci Allen, also the Guided Pathways faculty lead.
According to the California Guided Pathways Project, the goal of Guided Pathways is to ” … provide students with clear, educationally coherent program maps that include specific course sequences, progress milestones, and program learning outcomes.”
Moorpark College received a five year grant from the state to assist in setting up Guided Pathways. This is year three out of five and the Scale of Adoption Assessment is essentially a progress report that is sent to the state each year. The report covers the different ways that Moorpark will implement Guided Pathways to work with the curriculum.
At its core, Guided Pathways focuses on making the community college experience easier for students to navigate and complete. It is intended to make it easier for students to explore academic and career options, choose a program of study and develop a plan based on the program maps.
The education plans, or maps, simplify the student decision-making process, enabling community colleges to provide students with predictable schedules, frequent access to feedback regarding their progress and counseling to assist students in staying on track for completion.
Following Allen’s presentation, questions arose from ASMC President Hotchkiss regarding how the process worked for students interested in completing Guided Pathways.
ASMC Director of Budget and Finance Sahil Vig, a 19-year-old finance student, asked, “[Is there] a plan for students who are interested in attending multiple colleges, or applying to multiple colleges because the requirements, I’ve found this personally, the requirements vary quite a lot.”
The answer to both questions, Allen elaborated, is that Guided Pathways will provide students with the basic framework they need to select a default semester-by-semester education plan. The goal of Guided Pathways is to be able to create a specialized class by class pathways for students who know exactly what school they want to apply to as well as more generalized pathways that give students the best shot at getting into a variety of schools.
These pathways will not, however, replace the need for counselors, especially in specialized situations such as applying to multiple schools or majors.
Following the Guided Pathways presentation, the ASMC board members then discussed and voted on whether or not to approve the creation of a new club called the User Experience (UX) Design Club. UX Design Club President Justin Label appeared before the board to present his case. The User Experience Design Club was conditionally approved for spring 2020 and students will be able to sign up at the upcoming Club Rush on Jan. 28-29.
For anyone interested in attending an ASMC Board meeting, the ASMC Board of Directors meets weekly on Tuesdays at 4:30 p.m. in the ASMC Conference Room, located in the Student Activities Office.