More Than a Pathway: Creating a Major and Career Ecology That Promotes the Success of Low-Income, First-Generation, and Racially Minoritized Students

• Published in: About campus 2021-01, Vol.25 (6), p.4-12
• Main Authors: Kitchen, Joseph A., Kezar, Adrianna, Hypolite, Liane I.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Career Counseling; Career Development; College Transfer Students; First Generation College Students; Low Income Students; Majors (Students); Minority Group Students; Program Evaluation
• ISSN: 1086-4822; 1536-0687
• DOI: 10.1177/1086482220988670

In this article, the authors describe how college transition programs and campuses can go about creating and curating a major and career ecology to support at-promise students and their major and career success. They review literature about the systemic barriers and lack of institutional support for at-promise students as it relates to their major and career development, describe the college transition and success program they studied, provide evidence about how it helped increase at-promise students' confidence in their major and career path, and then detail the role of offering a major and career ecology in developing at-promise students' confidence in their major and career trajectory. They end by comparing the major and career ecology approach to guided pathways--an intervention mostly implemented in community colleges intended to lay out structured paths toward degree completion--offering the major and career ecology approach identified in their study as a viable alternative for supporting at-promise students' success.