September 2, 2020

Fellows:
Cassie Rickenberg, Northwest State Community College
Melissa Rataiczak, Belmont College
Tom Sutton, Rio Grande Community College
Jason Januszewski, Cuyahoga Community College

Project Advisor:
Stephanie Sutton, Stark State College

Executive Summary:
Student’s struggle to identify a major causing unneeded courses taken, delays in graduation and additional costs to the students and institutions. Through the development of meta-majors institutions can help to better align students into majors based on the student’s interests. The Aspen Institute’s “The Workforce Playbook” defines meta-majors as “the clustering of programs within broad occupational or disciplinary categories, help students explore interests and careers with a lower risk of wasting time or credits. First-term maps organized by meta-major can give students a taste of their potential career path but still leave room for them to change programs in their first year without significant repercussions.” While developing meta-majors / academic pathways is a step to improved student success and completion, simply developing them is likely not enough to change how students interact with the organization. Instead, the development of meta-majors, coupled with a variety of other student centric initiatives, is needed to improve student success and completion.