The Furman Advantage: A Four-Year Pathway

Brad Harmon, Ph.D., Assistant Dean for the First-Year and Second-Year Experience, Furman University

Furman University is a private co-educational liberal arts university of approximately 2,300 undergraduate students from 44 states and 55 countries located in upstate South Carolina. Furman requires students to live on campus all four years and has consistently been ranked as one of the “Most Innovative Schools” by U.S. News and World Report. This article will offer information on the development of the four-year pathway model and implementation of the innovative Pathways Program^® for first-year and second-year students. Information on “Purposeful Pathways” programming for third-year and fourth-year students will also be shared. Key assessment results from the first year of scaling the program to all students will offer context on the impact of the program.

The Four-Year Pathway: From Vision to Implementation

In 2016, Furman announced The Furman Advantage, a bold vision that,

“guarantees every student an unparalleled education that combines classroom learning with real-world experiences and self-discovery. This integrated four-year pathway, guided by a diverse community of mentors, prepares students for lives of purpose and accelerated career and community impact — demonstrating in concrete terms the value of a Furman education” (TFA Talking Points, 2019).

Campus wide project teams of faculty, staff, and administrators were tasked with implementing the vision. Each of the project teams was co-chaired by a member of Academic Affairs and Student Life at Furman.

The Integrated Four-Year Pathway project team was charged with determining how to best structure the four-year experience to offer a common developmental experience and determine what programming and support structures were needed (Charge to Strategic Vision Advisory Council, 2016). What emerged from this group was a model (see Figure 1) that emphasized each year as its own developmental experience.

Figure 1. Four Year Pathway Model^®

Classroom learning as well as mentoring and advising were viewed as crucial to guiding students through their four-year journey. As demonstrated by dotted segments in Figure 1, the introduction and exploration of engaged learning experiences (internships, study away, and undergraduate research) and career/post-graduate exploration and preparation begins as soon as the first year of college, and comes to full fruition during the third and fourth years. Teaching students to intentionally reflect throughout their four-year experience was viewed as central to their preparation in the pursuit of meaningful lives and careers post-graduation.

A separate Enhanced Advising and Mentoring project team was charged with developing a new advising approach reflective of the four-year developmental pathway while being sensitive to the diverse needs of students and the circumstances from which they came (Charge to Strategic Vision Advisory Council, 2016). Results from ten years of advising surveys consistently revealed high levels of satisfaction with major advising, which typically occurs in the third and fourth years and is managed by faculty in academic departments. However, lower levels of satisfaction were reported with academic advising during the first and second years of college. Qualitative data indicated students received inconsistent advising experiences. While some students received rich guidance and mentoring over their first two years, others received little.

Each project team separately reached the conclusion that Furman needed to significantly enhance its advising and mentoring approaches, especially during the first and second years of college, to help students fully achieve The Furman Advantage. In addition, at that time Furman lacked a true first-year experience program. Thus, the two project teams proposed the development of a new first-year and second-year experience program. This led to the creation of the innovative Pathways Program^®. The program was in a pilot phase for five years (2017-2021) before being formalized as a graduation requirement and scaled to all students beginning in fall of 2022.

Overview of the Pathways Program^® (Years 1 & 2)

The Pathways Program^® is a required two-year advising and mentoring program where students meet once a week in a class format for their first four semesters to discuss topics relevant to their thriving and success. Students earn one credit per semester for a total of four letter-graded credit hours over two years. In year one, the course is co-facilitated by a Pathways Advisor and an upperclassmen peer mentor, while in year two only the advisor facilitates the class. Pathways Advisors are recruited each year through an open call on campus. Any member of the faculty, staff, or administration is eligible to serve as an advisor, pending completion of advisor training required of all new advisors at Furman. Advisors must have the approval of their department chair, supervisor and/or vice president for their division in order to teach in the program. Advisors are compensated via stipend or course credit toward their teaching load if they are faculty with approval by the Dean of the Faculty. Peer mentors are selected through a robust recruitment process and are compensated via a yearly stipend.

Students are randomly assigned to a cohort class that stays together for two years. Program objectives were adapted from the revised definition of student success articulated by Upcraft, Gardner, and Barefoot (2004), with the specific curricular program content set by the Academic Advising Committee, a campuswide committee comprised of faculty, staff, and students. Each semester has a theme (see Figure 2) with developmentally appropriate modules created by campus experts that guides the overall arc of the semester. Each module has defined learning objectives that guide facilitators. Students complete a weekly reflective assignment that applies class content to their own individual journey. Over 80 faculty, staff, administrators and student peer mentors have contributed to module development and curricular revisions since the pilot launched during the 2017-2018 academic year.

Figure 2. Pathways Themes for Years 1 and 2

The first semester features modules focused on the transition to college with an emphasis placed on academic adjustment. At the start of the semester, students are asked to consider their values. Academic topics that follow include academic integrity, academic success skills, using scholarly books and journal articles, time management, and spring course planning. Students are taught how to practice empathetic listening when communicating with others who have different perspectives than themselves. Holistic wellness also serves as a key framework as students are asked to consider how they manage stress and set boundaries.

The second semester teaches students about holistic well-being. Students are encouraged to think about different dimensions of well-being and the intersections between those dimensions. Topics include physical, academic, emotional, social, financial, and career well-being. Students take a CliftonStrengths assessment and consider the ways their top five strengths impact how they interact with others. An out-of-class individual well-being week allows students to engage in a holistic well-being activity related to an area that they want to develop. As part of Furman’s On Discourse initiative, students are asked to think about what inclusive community means and how they can contribute to building such a community. Finally, students are required to attend Furman Engaged, an annual celebration of engaged learning where they interact with peers and identify engaged learning experiences that fit within their own path.

During the sophomore year, the first semester asks students to engage in career exploration and introduces students to on-campus career resources. Students revisit their top five CliftonStrengths and consider the ways they can apply those strengths toward engaged learning experiences. They consider their career competencies and how to demonstrate those skills on a resume. The curriculum also focuses on professionalism, networking, and navigating workplace environments. All students conduct an informational interview coordinated by campus partners with an alumnus in a career field of their choosing to gain insight into the field and inform the next steps on their undergraduate pathway toward their future goals.

The final semester of Pathways challenges students to consider what it means to be a leader. Students reflect on their values and purpose and think about how these connect with their future goals. Students select out-of-class individualized experiences tied to their future goals and reflect on what they learned from these experiences. The semester ends with a discussion of storytelling, managing communication apprehension, and culminates with students sharing a story of an impactful moment during their final Pathways class together.

Assessing the Pathways Program^® (Years 1 & 2)

The Pathways Program^® began as a pilot program in 2017. During the pilot phase, assessments compared outcomes for students who were in the pilot program to a control group of non-Pathways students. Early assessment results, while not significant given the small sample size, indicated that students experienced a higher level of satisfaction with advising, an increased sense of belonging, a greater appreciation of the importance of reflection, and increased post-graduate preparation. After five years of the pilot, in the spring of 2022, the Furman faculty voted to require Pathways as a graduation requirement for all students starting with the incoming class of 2026.

Pathways students complete weekly short “snap” evaluations regarding whether that class content was helpful, what was most engaging about the module, and what could be improved. In addition, students complete regular program assessments. End of semester reflections are qualitatively analyzed, and all data and feedback are shared with the Academic Advising Committee who uses that feedback to discuss and approve ongoing updates to the class curriculum.

After one year of a fully scaled program of 652 first-year students, assessment results revealed:

1. First to second year retention increased by 3% overall, with a 6% increase for those who identify as first-generation college students, thus returning our retention rates to pre-pandemic levels.

2. 88.1% of first-year students reported being very satisfied or satisfied with the quality of the academic advising relationship compared to 85.5% in 2019, the last pre-COVID year. Only 4.7% of students reported dissatisfaction with first-year advising in the first year of the Pathways Program^® at scale.

3. 86% of first-year students reported that Furman cares about the long-term success of its students, up from 77% of first-year students pre-pandemic.

4. Sense of belonging increased 9-10% among first-year students when compared to pre-pandemic levels, on the items “I feel like I belong at Furman” and “I feel like I matter at Furman.”

5. 79.2% of all Pathways students wrote about experiences that led to belonging in their final reflections and 46.5% overall attributed that belonging to elements of the Pathways Program^®.

Beyond Pathways: Institutional Enhancements to the First-Year Experience

An innovative first-year experience cannot rely on a singular program or initiative alone to make an impact but instead must be aligned with other academic and curricular activities (Koch & Gardner, 2006). Instead of being reliant on one ‘star’ program, it requires an institutional effort to develop a “constellation of support programs” that make the greatest difference to the student experience (Greenfield, Keup, & Gardner, 2013). In addition to the implementation of the Pathways Program^®, Furman instituted enhancements to new student orientation, which included developing its summer orientation model to introduce students to the concept of college student thriving, (Schreiner, McIntosh, Nelson, & Pothoven, 2009) and its importance during the first year of college, adding an academic pathways fair to help students better understand available academic opportunities, and reimagining opening convocation. During fall 2024, orientation groups were formed based on Pathways cohorts for the first time with the goal of building a stronger class community. We also significantly revised our advisor training and development model and implemented a peer mentor training program to ensure everyone who teaches in Pathways is well prepared to guide and support first-year students.

Purposeful Pathways – Years 3 and 4

Concurrent with the development of the Pathways Program^®, we also began developing the integrated pathway for students in their junior and senior years. The approach for years 3 & 4 was to directly engage academic departments to develop initiatives within their majors that would continue to build from the foundation that Pathways started. Each academic department identified a representative to design major-specific programming that would best serve their students and reflect their disciplinary expectations and needs. These representatives were encouraged to partner with offices across campus who were involved in the design of the year 1 & 2 program, such as the Malone Center for Career Engagement, the Center for Engaged Learning, and the Cothran Center for Vocational Reflection, in order to create initiatives that would extend the Pathways Program^® in meaningful ways. Each department has taken on different approaches, with some providing regular optional programming and others incorporating their programming into their capstone courses or other courses within their curriculum.

Assessing the Purposeful Pathways Program (Years 3 & 4)

Our Purposeful Pathways program appears to be having positive impacts on items related to career engagement for our juniors and seniors. The following Gallup items showed increases in Juniors and Seniors relative to pre-pandemic when we did not have a Pathways Program^® and the Purposeful Pathways program was just beginning. (*Note: A small subset of juniors and seniors may have participated in the Pathways Program^® pilot phase, but the program was not scaled at this time. Therefore, a majority of juniors and seniors have only been exposed to Purposeful Pathways programming within their major.)

1. Furman is passionate about the long-term success of its students increased from 56.2% agreement in fall 2019 (pre-pandemic) to 74.8% agreement in fall 2023 among juniors, and from 60.9% agreement in fall 2019 to 72.2% in fall 2023 among seniors.

2. I am confident I will graduate from Furman with the knowledge and skills to be successful in the job market increased from 62% agreement in fall 2019 to 75.8% in fall 2023 among juniors and from 63.1% agreement in fall 2019 to 77.3% in fall 2023 among seniors.

3. Furman clearly communicates resources available to help students prepare for life after college increased from 52.8% in fall 2019 to 68.5% in fall 2023 among juniors and from 50.2% in fall 2019 to 70.5% in fall 2023 among seniors.

Conclusion

Furman’s four-year pathways approach is innovative in its design and collaboration, individualized to each student’s experience, comprehensive in meeting students where they are developmentally, and unique in terms of American higher education. The Pathways Program^® was recently recognized as the 2024 recipient of NACADA’s Innovation Award, and Furman was also the recipient of the 2024 John N. Gardner Institutional Excellence for Students in Transition Award for its development and implementation of the four-year pathway model. These accolades are representative of truly collaborative efforts campus-wide to improve the four-year experience for our students and ensure they thrive in college and life.

References

Furman University (2016). Charge to the Strategic Vision Advisory Council. Internal Document. Unpublished.

Furman University (n.d.) Furman-Gallup Study. https://www.furman.edu/about/furman-gallup-study/

Furman University (2019). TFA Talking Points [Infographic]. Retrieved December 18, 2024, from https://www.furman.edu/offices-services/university-communications/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2019/12/TFA-Talking-Points.pdf.

Greenfield, G.M., Keup, J.R., & Gardner, J.N. (2013). Developing and sustaining successful first-year programs: A guide for practitioners. Jossey-Bass.

Koch, A. K., & Gardner, J. N. (2006). The history of the first-year experience in the United States: Lessons from the past, practices in the present, and implications for the future. In A. Hamana & K. Tatsuo (Eds.), The first-year experience and transition from high school to college: An international study of content and pedagogy. Maruzen Publishing.

M.L. Upcraft, J.N. Gardner, B. Barefoot, & Associates (2004. Challenging and supporting the first-year student. Jossey-Bass.

Schreiner, L.; McIntosh, E.; Nelson, D.; & Pothoven, S. (2009, November). The Thriving Quotient: Advancing the assessment of student success. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Vancouver, British Columbia.