Confusion Surrounds Pathways
By Angeles Oviedo
This past Monday marked the soft deadline for the Pathway Reflection Essays, and roughly half of the graduating class has yet to submit their work.
According to Assistant Provost for Undergraduate Studies Phyllis Brown, 270 students submitted their assignment over the past weekend and on the day of the deadline, joining 265 others whose assignments have already been approved and 36 who are expected to revise and resubmit their essays.
Last week Associate Student Government Representative Jesse Wackerbarth met with Brown to discuss postponing the deadline due to students' concern with the deadline date. According to Brown, the deadline remained unchanged in order to avoid further confusion among seniors, but that there would be no penalty for missing the deadline.
"The deadline was set very explicitly to help students," said Brown. "We knew that it will work best for students to have completed the requirement when they petition to graduate and so we set if far enough ahead that if they need to revise and resubmit, there'll be time for the readers to read the essays, get it back to the students, and for the students to revise and resubmit."
This year's graduating class is the first class required to fulfill the Pathway requirement, which was established as part of the new core in 2009 and is why there have been difficulties surrounding the process, from submission problems to deadline confusion.
"The huge difficulty for this graduating class has been that when they were freshmen, we still hadn't figured out how we were going to do this," said Brown. "The big change for next year is the seniors this year have helped us work through and improve our processes."
Brown explained that future classes' Pathway process will be much more clearly explained.
She encouraged students who have not yet submitted their assignment to aim for submitting before Feb. 22, when petitions for graduation are due. She said that students who are currently taking Pathway courses or will take Pathway courses next quarter can still write their essay now, as long as they have work from two other Pathway courses.
"We found from our pilot (program) last winter and spring that it works best if students focus on two assignments," Brown said.
Brown recommends students to seek help from writing partners at the HUB Writing Center if they are having trouble with the essay.
"Writing partners have practiced writing the essays themselves," said Brown. "They've read a lot of essays as part of training. They're in a terrific position to help people figure out how to write a really good essay. We're looking for ways to make this work as easily as possible for the students and for the readers."
Contact Angeles Oviedo at aoviedo@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.