Self-Designed Pathway

• Are you interested in taking some deliberate steps to explore a career and develop your professional skills and resume?

• Do you like the structure and support of the Pathway program and the certificate it offers BUT have interest in a career that doesn’t fit into any of the existing Pathways?

• Are you willing to, with help, do the extra work of selecting your own career-related courses? Does that actually sound kind of exciting or interesting?

• Are you willing to, with help, research and reach out to faculty who might know something about your career area?

If the answers to these questions are “Yes,” a self-designed Pathway might be a great fit!

This worksheet is meant to help you walk through the process of designing the most helpful Pathway to meet your goals. It is a resource, not a required assignment, so use it in any way that works for you.

It might be helpful to consider the questions and topics on your own and then meet with a Pathways staff person (student or professional), a professional Career & Experiential Ed (CEE) staff member, and/or a friend with similar interests to discuss and flesh out your thoughts.

Download the worksheet pdf here.

Select four (4) credits of courses that will offer benefits to your career exploration process.

For this Pathway, you will need to identify four (4) academic courses to pursue your development as a professional in a specific industry or career area. Specifically, they should help you gain helpful career-related knowledge, skills, theory, and/or background.

Course Requirements:

• Four (4) total credits – if you would like to use a partial credit course, you will need to take an additional course to equal four (4) credits.
• Courses can overlap with your majors/minors but no more than two courses can belong to one program.
• A maximum of two (2) can be taken before “launching” the Pathway. 
• Courses you haven’t yet taken must be planned by the department to be offered during your remaining time at Wooster. Check with the professor or department chair to confirm the expected timing.

Suggestions:

• Remember that your career will be utilize a wide range of skills and knowledge areas. Therefore, you will likely benefit from coursework covering varied disciplines.
• Therefore, consider:
  • Ethics related to your career area
  • Communication skills needed for your industry or specific type of work
  • Organizational or business related skills needed for the type of work you’d like to pursue
  • NACE competencies you would benefit from developing more fully through coursework
  • Quantitative, research, or methods skills that would advance your career or give you an edge over other candidates
  • Other interdisciplinary concepts or skills that would be valuable in the career you’re considering.

Course Information for Pathway Proposal:

You will need to give the following information for each of the courses you’ve identified:

• Name, course number, credits
• Description of the course copied from Self-Service
• Rationale
  • A short explanation of how you expect the content of this specific course to help you advance your career goals. How will the skills, knowledge, and experiences from this course relate to the career your Pathway is designed around?
• Timing
  • Have you taken this course yet?
    • If so, when did you take it?
    • If not, when are you planning to take it? 
  • Indicate the faculty or staff member who told you when to expect this course to be offered.*
    • *This information must come from a faculty/staff advisor, not from Self-Service.
• Does this course have any pre-requisites? If so, when will you take them?

Your Pathway Advisor must approve your choice of courses before you submit your Proposal.

You will need an official advisor for your Pathway. Over the course of your Pathway, this faculty member will:

• Review & approve your Pathway proposal
• Review and provide feedback on your three reflections (initial, EL, & Final)
• Approve your career experience (experiential learning or EL) plan
• Sign off on any changes you make to your Pathway.

Ideally, this faculty person might have some expertise and/or experience related to your career area. However, any faculty member with strong career advising insights and a willingness to walk with you through this process would be a good fit.

As you begin your proposal, you should also work on identifying a faculty who is willing to serve in this capacity. To identify possible faculty, you might:

• Look at faculty bios to identify folks who might have interests adjacent to your own.
• Ask your professors, advisors, and/or friends for ideas.

Once you’ve identified a possible Pathway Advisor, email them to ask for a meeting to discuss whether they might be willing to serve as your Pathway Advisor. Give a very brief description of your career and Pathway goals and the reason(s) you’re asking them. If you’ve begun work on your proposal, attach that information. Be sure to include this link so they’ll have accurate, up-to-date information about the role of the self-designed Pathway Advisor since this Pathway option is so new.

PATH 11099: Initial Reflection

This course asks you to complete three basic steps:

1. Spend time reflecting on several questions about why you’ve chosen this Pathway, noticing how your experiences and various aspects of your personal identity might play into your career direction.
2. Career readiness assessments – complete a self-assessment of 8 career readiness areas, ask a former supervisor to assess you also, and then compare the two in order to generate goals for growth as a professional.
3. Upload a copy of your Proposal for Self-designed Pathway once you’ve completed and submitted it.
4. Discuss your thoughts with other Pathways students, faculty, and staff.
5. Write about how your initial thoughts, the conversations you had with your Pathway community, and any new or different insights you have as a result.

PATH 22099: Career Planning

For this course, you will explore career and internship resources supported by Career & Experiential Education (CEE) in APEX, specifically Handshake and LinkedIn. You will also craft a career-ready resume. We strongly encourage you to take advantage of the many resources offered by the CEE office to bring your resume to a truly professional level. Booking an appointment with a CEE staff member or peer advisor to go over your resume is strongly recommended.

PATH 33099: Experiential Learning

This course asks you to complete an authentic, hands-on experience in one of the career areas you’re exploring. It is more than simply having an experience, however. In order to maximize the benefits and learning you gain, you will deliberately walk through goal setting, planning, and “preflection” (pre-reflection) before you complete the career experience. During and after your experience, you will spend time considering what you learned about yourself from the experience and how those lessons might impact your next career steps. Completing this thorough, guided process is what makes this “experiential learning” rather than just an experience.

**Note that this course will require you to complete some components BEFORE registering**

Steps to complete PATH 330:

Before Registering:

1. Explore a range of possible experiences that will help you further your career goals.
2. Plan your EL experience, taking advantage of resources and assistance offered by faculty or staff on the Pathway team, someone from APEX’s CEE Office, Wooster alumni working in the career field, and/or your own connections in the field.
3. Complete the EL Approval Form & gain official approval from your Pathway faculty/staff team.

During the Course:

1. Complete your EL experience (can be done before or during PATH 330).
2. Upload your EL Verification Form.
3. Complete a self-assessment of your career readiness as revealed through your EL experience and reflect on any differences with your supervisor’s evaluation in the EL Verification Form.
4. Submit your post-EL reflection.

PATH 44099: Final Reflection

When you’ve completed all the elements of the Pathway – PATH 110, 220, 330 and your chosen topical courses – you will reflect on your total Pathways experience with questions like: What did the topical courses teach you that are relevant to this career area? What are the career lessons from your experiential learning experience(s)? How did your perceptions of this career area and your place in it shift over time and where have they landed for now? When you step back and look at the bigger picture of your Pathways experience, in what ways are you stronger and more prepared to take your next career steps?

You will present your reflections publicly, which both encourages significant reflection and benefits those who are coming behind you on their own career journeys. Generally, students will do this by presenting a poster at a college event.

Other, smaller, components of the PATH 440 course include:

1. Update your resume to be career ready.
2. Create or update your LinkedIn profile.
3. Complete a final career readiness assessment series:
   • Assess yourself, especially observing any growth that’s happened over your time in the Pathway
   • Ask a current supervisor, adult coworker, coach, or your IS advisor to complete an assessment
   • Compare and contrast all career readiness assessments (all your self- assessments plus all your supervisor assessments) to discover areas you’ve grown and determine your next steps for growth in these important areas.
4. Complete a few short end-of-Pathways surveys.

PATH 44599 – Record of Completion: Academic Courses for Career Development

Upload verification that you completed the academic courses agreed upon for your Pathway.

Students in a self-designed Pathway are required to complete one (1) “authentic career experience” through the experiential learning process.

Experiences that fulfill the experiential learning (EL) requirement for this Pathway should give you a career experience in an authentically professional setting that’s highly related to your career of interest.* You will need to complete one experience of at least 45 hours,** though more experiences are highly recommended.

This experience can be through on or off campus jobs, internships, volunteer opportunities, or job shadowing.

In order to meet the requirements of an experiential learning (EL) opportunity, you will need to complete reflections before and after the experience. These reflections are completed and recorded through the EL Approval Form and PATH 330 course.

*Students may not fulfill this requirement with an EL-embedded class. 

**Hours include time spent under direction supervision as well as hours working independently to complete projects for the employer. 

Proposal Details:

The Proposal for your Pathway asks, “What are at least three (3) examples of specific types of experiences you might pursue in an effort to “try out” possible career areas and build your resume and career readiness?“

You won’t need to identify the exact positions you want to consider; you might indicate organizations you’re interested in working with, possible roles within that organization, and/or some job or internship titles that would be of interest.

We recommend that you utilize some or all of these resources* as you develop this list and later when you plan your EL:

• Discussions with your Pathway advisor
• Other mentors or people you know who are knowledgeable about this industry
• Handshake or internet searches for certain job/internship titles
• Wooster alums asked through Ask A Scot
• The experiences of professionals in your field on LinkedIn

*The Proposal will ask what tools and resources you used to develop your list of possible ELs.

Before you submit your proposal, you will need to review your EL ideas with your Pathway Advisor.

Proposal for Self-designed Pathway

• To be completed by the student during the PATH 11099 course. Submission of this form creates an official agreement by the student to complete these components in order to earn the Pathway credential. Once the selected Pathway Advisor submits the form (linked below), the agreement is finalized. Any changes must be approved by the Pathway Advisor and submitted to the Pathways office through the change form below.

Change to Self-Designed Pathway Plan

• Completed by the student for any changes to your original proposal. Keep a copy of each change to upload in your PATH 44599 course when you verify completion of your Pathway.

Advisor Support for Self-designed Pathway

• To be completed by the faculty advisor for this Pathway after they’ve agreed to serve in that capacity and have seen and approved your proposal.

Download a copy of your Pathway’s checklist so you can keep track of your progress: