See what advisors using Pathways have to say about their experiences with the program.
"Pathways has made life in Advising easier in several ways. Because of the automatic reminders that students receive, we have had far fewer missed appointments, which has likely been a cause for increased retention. Students are able to select their own appointment time, which automatically takes into account their class schedule. Students are no longer missing appointments because they forgot they had class, or skipping class to make an appointment in Advising. The appointment summaries in Pathways help keep a streamlined note system which, being visible to all faculty/staff users, is helpful to keep everyone on the same page. The Campaign statistics show us what percentage of students we've met with, which students have not yet made appointments; we can resend a campaign to those who have not yet made appointments, and students can write notes to us about what they'd like to discuss in their meetings.”
— Karen Ricco, Academic Advisor, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg
"The Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Department is the largest engineering department in the Swanson School of Engineering and with this size comes a lot of advising appointments. As the Advising Coordinator for the department, I typically advise around 250 students in a given semester.
"Before Pathways, tasks like scheduling meetings, organizing files and tracking students was tedious and time consuming. Not to mention I was using multiple software programs and at times had numerous files open during my advising meetings. Pathways provides a one stop shop for most of my advising needs. I can schedule advising appointments, send reminder emails, look up student information, document meetings, upload pertinent files and keep track of important statistics. All in one place. The mobile app also provides advising information while I am on the go.
"Not only has Pathways saved me a lot of time and frustration, but my advisees have also provided positive feedback. One of the most common comments that I hear from them is that they like when Pathways reminds them of scheduled advising meetings. This feature has greatly reduced the number of missed meetings from my perspective too. My experience with Pathways has been nothing but positive and I look forward to learning about and integrating other capabilities into my daily workflow."
— Tony Kerzmann, Associate Professor & Associate Director of Undergraduate Academics
"Here in SCI, we were fortunate to be able to adopt Pathways as part of the development of our new Advising Center. During a time of transition that could have been confusing for students, we were glad to offer them a system that made their advisors so easily accessible.
"I have especially appreciated the campaign feature, and the sync with my Outlook calendar. I can target specific student groups, invite them to schedule an appointment, and they are provided with my accurate and up-to-date availability. I also maintain general availability, so students can schedule an appointment even if they aren’t in a campaign. Either way, I never have to worry about scheduling conflicts!
"We are excited to learn more about what Pathways can do, and continue integrating it into our practice".
— Rachel Parkes, Director of Advising, School of Computing and Information
"In general, the Pathways software has definitely helped me as an advisor to stay organized and document the interactions I have had with my students. After a large number of students were added to my advising case load, I was able to use the notes the previous advisor entered in Pathways to become informed about the students. Also, the software gave my students the autonomy—and the responsibility—to schedule an appointment with me when they needed me. This gave the students a chance to learn when they needed me, but also know that there was someone there to help.
In one specific instance, the Pathways tool helped me to keep documentation of the interactions I had with a student who was struggling academically during the semester. Using the case/alert functionality, I was able to contact the student’s resident director, who was able to have the resident assistant check in with the student. I was also able to add reminders and notes for the different interactions the student had with me. It was helpful to have multiple checkpoints. Plus, I was able to use the system to schedule appointments with the student when I knew we were both available, rather than having to email back and forth several times."
— Devin Ulm, MEd, Interim Director of First-Year Advising, First-Year Programming Office, Swanson School of Engineering
