The Pathways curriculum option offers students the ability to explore other perspectives and expand their own through thoughtfully curated courses that complement each student’s core curriculum.
What’s a Pathway?
Pathways are a series of courses linked by a broad topic. By completing those courses, students can earn a credential.
Pathways courses can fulfill a core requirement and count toward the nine credit hours needed to complete a Pathway. The Pathways credit hours can be completed anytime during a student’s time at the Capstone.
Additionally, students can access the extensive list of Pathways courses that correlate with their studies and easily add them to their coursework from the Pathways website anytime throughout the academic year.
“This is a way to give a skills-based focus and a theme-based focus to your gen ed experience. It’s a way of taking what feels like box-checking and turning it into something that can be transformative,” said Dr. Margaret Peacock, professor in the department of history and director of the Pathways program. “Pathways can give you an additional skill set on top of your major and your minor that you can do without having to take any additional courses. You do it while you’re completing your core.”
Why should students take this step?
The Pathways courses take students beyond the classroom experience in unique ways.
“All of these pathways are proven to teach skills that employers want to see. Whether you’re a nursing major or an engineering major or a religious studies major, everybody’s interested in seeing that you have engaged with innovation, that you’ve engaged with understanding how larger systems function, that you have digital literacy, or that you understand global contexts,” said Peacock.
“And students, when they do complete a pathway, get an extra credential on their academic transcript and they get a really nice cord at graduation for having completed a Pathway. So, it sets them apart from everyone else.”
Pathways is currently open to students in the 2025 academic catalog and later.
Which path should you take?
Each Pathway is designed to encourage students to think beyond their course of study and examine other approaches to learning.
Global Engagement — This Pathway helps students explore how cultures, communities and nations are connected and how these connections shape the world we live in.
Executive Systems — This Pathway helps students explore the big forces that shape our world — like politics, economics, culture, history and the environment — and how they impact communities.
New Pathways added Fall 2026:
Innovation and Creativity — The Innovation and Creativity Pathway helps students develop the skills to generate fresh ideas and bring them to life.
Digital Literacy — The Digital Literacy Pathway helps students become confident, responsible and skilled users of digital technology.
Peacock reiterated that Pathways not only allows students to grow academically but also prepares them for the world beyond graduation.
“All four of the Pathways topics speak to skill sets that we know employers are desperate to see in modern college graduates. They want to see students who can think globally, who have seriously good strategic systems-level critical thinking skills. They want to see students who are able to think outside the box, who can be innovative and creative in how they tackle problems. And they want to see students who have digital skills sort of ingrained in them and to really have a literacy of the digital space, including AI,” she said.
“So those four skill sets, across the board, if you look at LinkedIn, if you look at the hiring spaces, those are the skill sets that underlie almost every job that people want, that employers want to see, regardless of the field that they’re in.”
Explore the courses, add a Pathway and dig deeper on the Pathways website.