Thomas Gallagher: The fact is we have a set and limited amount of resources. We have agency, and we have autonomy to decide how we want to use those resources. And guided pathways really helps us put our resources to the things that we think are most important.

John Freer: It helps us to be able to say no to things. And the hardest thing that we have to do is to give ourselves permission to say no. We have industry partners, and faculty, and all of our colleagues, and they have a lot of great ideas.

Building the work around the pathways structure gives us the opportunity to have metrics that we can refer back to. And when we have those things that come up, “Does it fit the metrics?” “Does it lead to a high-demand, high-wage job?” “Are there jobs in the labor market that our students are going to be able to get placed into?”

And if the answer is no, we have that framework and that data to be able to intelligently, thoughtfully say no.

We do get trapped a lot of times in academia, and we we like new ideas are great, they’re exciting. But when you’re off chasing shiny objects in the wrong direction, and you’re not staying true to the mission of what you’re trying to do, it’s a detriment to the students.

And so as hard as it is sometimes, when you have, whether it’s an employer or a faculty member that has what might be a really good idea, you really have to be committed to the pathways and the structure that you build around it. To look at it and see if it does fit what you’re trying to do. And if it doesn’t, you maybe can redirect it in some way or another, but sometimes the answer really does have to be no.

John Freer: The pathways has really become just our guiding star of what we’re doing. And so it’s allowed us to operate a lot more efficiently, to understand what that mission is, who we need to execute it, what those pieces are that we need to put together to move towards where we want to go.

Thomas Gallagher: Rural Guided Pathways has been a wonderful opportunity for our faculty, our staff to grow together and really reinforce the guided pathways principles. We have a shared vision that really seems to resonate with everyone. We’re all very focused on our student success.

John Freer: The word that comes to my mind is focus. It really has helped us dial in on what’s important to our students, what’s important to our faculty, and what are we really working towards.

I think to me that’s the most important thing and how it’s impacted how we do the work. We know what we want to get out of the work, so it makes it easier to know what the next task is at hand and how it impacts the success of our students and the success of our programs.

Christopher Wikstrom: This is the most comprehensive toolbox of resources we’ve ever had in any type of partnership or any type of grant that we’ve had. If we had a question, if we had a need, it was there. And if we didn’t, then Gretchen or Ed, they were one email, one call, Chris was one call away to be able to make that connection and facilitate that conversation to help improvement all around.

Meghan Eggleston: And the coach that we had was always great. He was never one to jump in and say, ”Here’s what you need to do.” He learned the institution, or he learned where we were.

Christopher Wikstrom: He’s going to come to you, he’s going to have outstanding questions. And he’s going to have questions that make you just freeze because you’re like, “Why didn’t I think of that already?” And then he’ll work you through a series of exercises or other questions to really arrive at some things and build that confidence.

We come back here, and it’s a big risk that we took on with what we’re trying to implement. And when you get back here for too long, you start getting a little thin on, ”Oh, should I be doing this or not?”

And then we have the check ins with the coaches. Again, structurally from what everything that, what was given to us through rural pathways to really reinforce, “You’re doing the right thing. Keep at it. Keep pushing through.”

Christopher Wikstrom: We had several office moves, that we had, to try to better align faculty closer to classrooms, supervisors with the units that they supervise and all so that whole restructuring idea I think was a real powerful thing that we had out of the first couple of institutes.

Meghan Eggleston: We’re not a huge campus, but we did have our services in multiple buildings. And so as we had grown and as we began to offer more services, we put them where we had vacant space, which wasn’t always, in hindsight, the best place for it.

And so now everything’s more centralized. So it truly feels like more of a one-stop shop than what we had previously.

Christopher Wikstrom: We had faculty located behind the stacks in the library. How are students going to find the faculty there?

Meghan Eggleston: A huge risk for us too was, when we talk about restructuring, we also moved 50-, 40-, 50-some offices. When you start moving people’s personal space, that’s not always well received, and it was met with some hesitancy.

But I think looking back on it now, it’s really nice to hear people talk about, “It makes sense.”  ”I’m so glad you did that.”

Faculty are having more conversations with faculty. Like he talked about, supervisors can pop in on their folks more to have conversations and to really team build.

But that was a challenge at first. It was not embraced fully at the beginning. And so there were some delicate conversations, and we tried to be very delicate about how we did that.