1. Seattle Central Home Page
  2. About Us
  3. Guided Pathways

Guided Pathways

Welcome to Seattle Centrals College's Guided Pathways page.

Guided Pathways in collaboration with colleagues across Seattle Colleges, centers student voices through an aligned, comprehensive, systemic approach to student success and anti-racist work. 

Guided Pathways Principles:

  • Addresses the urgent large-scale changes needed to improve student success, learning, retention, completion and closing equity gaps.
  • Promotes accountability through continuous reflection, assessment, and organizational improvement.
  • Engages collaborative interdisciplinary and interdepartmental approaches.
  • Redesigns structures, practices, and policies to improve students’ experiences and educational outcomes.
  • Advances student success by removing barriers and confusion through a strategic integration of our systems, services, and instruction.

The Guided Pathways approach has been championed by the American Association of Community Colleges and by the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges. The Washington State Guided Pathways Advisory Committee's vision is to implement Guided Pathways in order to "advance racial, social, and economic justice by achieving equitable student aspiration, access, economic progress, and educational and career attainment."

The reason why so many colleges are adopting the Guided Pathways approach is simple: many of the students who attend our schools do not complete their programs. This reality disproportionally affects students of color, first generation students, and students from historically underrepresented communities. 

Seattle Central is using the Guided Pathways approach to achieve the Student Success and Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Community goals in our strategic plan. We center racial equity in our work through the Black Solidarity Think Tank framework and Student Voices. The goal of our work is to dismantle racist and inequitable policies and practices by implementing equity minded, college-wide changes that lead to systemic transformation.

Our interim president, Dr. Bradley Lane, explains Seattle Central College's goals and approach to Guided Pathways in this video:

Please visit the pages linked in the left column for updates and informational resources about this challenging and important endeavor.