Career Roadmaps can be an integral support piece to the Educational Pathways in the Guided Pathways model. The Community College Research Center (CCRC) has found that universally, students have specific things they want to know. You can design your roadmaps to include links and information that answer some of these key questions all in one easy to use tool:

• What are my career options?
• What are the education paths to those careers?
• What will I need to take?
• How long will it take and how much will it cost?
• Will my credits transfer?
• How much financial aid can I get?
• How can I get work experience in my field of interest?

Students that begin with “the end in mind,” in other words, they have a clear vision of the job/career and wages that they want, have higher degree completion rates. Career Roadmaps complement the Educational Pathways and provide the what and why that motivate your students’ success.

Studies show that students that have a vision of the job/career and wages that they want have higher school completion rates. When they begin with “the end in mind” they are more focused and have the perseverance to push through to reach their goal.

Students can get a jump start on their future by knowing which classes have dual credit possibilities. National studies find that dual credit participation is related to

• increased high school graduation/college enrollment rates,
• better college grades,
• college persistence, and
• an increased likelihood of earning a secondary school/college degree or professional certificate.

Students and advisors can both benefit from the roadmaps. Students use the maps for career and education exploration. Advisors can use the maps as a visual to reinforce their efforts with students and help students see the big picture of where they can go in a particular career field. Your advising team and faculty advisors can tell you what key information they need students to know and the links for the online tools they use with students. Incorporating this into the maps creates a tool that advisors can use in student advising sessions. When the student goes home after meeting with the advisor, they can go back to the one page visual roadmap and complete further exploration.

On the college level, some schools have required student success classes where faculty have incorporated Career Roadmaps into their coursework.

Nothing. Thanks to the generosity of grant money from the Carl D. Perkins Act, development and use of the Web Tool and creation of maps is free.

The WACAPA team works with you to design a personalized template. The school is responsible for providing the detailed information and links on a provided spreadsheet for each specific program and the WACAPA team creates the maps. Drafts are made and returned to you until you reach final approval. Your IT team creates pages and embeds OR links the maps embedded on WACareerPaths.com on your website.

Each organization is responsible for monitoring their content accuracy. At minimum, a once a year overall review is recommended. Simple maintenance can be requested through the WACAPA team or Christina can train someone in how to do simple fixes. (ie., contact info update, broken links, etc.)

The overall time varies greatly from school to school. You can save time by choosing to copy another school’s map design as a template and personalizing it for your college or school district. Once the spreadsheet is in the WACAPA team hands, depending on the number of programs being mapped, it can take as little as two weeks for the initial map drafts to be completed.