Ask a physicist, a humanist, a biologist and a historian and you might hear four different answers, but you also may find a common thread running through them.

Young scholars will get the opportunity to ask all those folks such questions this fall, thanks to a new two-year curriculum program, named Pathways, developed by collaborative faculty teams this past year. Each of three Pathways offered for the first time this fall can register 50 students in two sections of 25 students each.

Early registration returns show Pathways is proving to be a very popular freshman option. The Human Nature Pathway filled early; the Law, Science and Culture Pathway had only a few openings left by the middle of the first week of classes. Only the Language and Culture Pathway, which requires some foreign language skills, had significant space remaining.

What is the attraction?

Pathways not only helps new students organize their course schedule for the first year or two of college so they can graduate in four years, but also means they can avoid getting stuck with a class schedule filled only with large impersonal survey courses, says biology professor Karen Sprague. She heads the Task Force on Undergraduate Education that oversaw the Pathways development.

Opportunities for students to have serious and in-depth discussions with faculty members from a variety of fields and with fellow students is a central feature of this approach. Discussion seminars, hands-on experiences and field activities outside of class are built into the program. Year-end retreats, community activities and even research projects are included.

The Pathways approach allows a student to meet general requirements for the bachelor’s degree in a more coherent way than is usual with the traditional approach to a university curriculum, explains Sprague.

"It will allow students to see the connections between ideas," she adds. "And by looking at the ways that different disciplines approach the same idea, students should find it easier to grasp difficult concepts."

On a less abstract level, Sprague says, right from the beginning of their college careers students will have close contact with professors who both teach and advise their Pathways cohort of students who go through the two-year Pathways program together.

"Our faculty believe that the Pathways approach will intensify students’ opportunities to develop essential skills in communicating and in thinking analytically and critically," Sprague says. It is part of a cascade of big and little changes prompted by the UO’s Process for Change, a two-year university-wide effort to transform the university for the new millennium.

"The two faculty members who chaired the committee, Dick Koch and Jim Crosswhite, deserve special credit for their leadership in this effort," Sprague said, "They did amazing things."

Pathways are an extension of the very popular Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs), Sprague explains, where a cohort of entering freshmen take the same set of courses and participate in a small-group seminar during their first year. Follow-up studies have found that FIG students are more likely to complete their program and earn a degree than students introduced to university work in a more traditional manner.

Of 17 Pathway proposals submitted to the committee, three were chosen as having both intellectual merit and a "readiness to run" this fall, Sprague said.

"Many of the others were wonderful, reflecting the diversity and creativity of our campus, and these are being further developed for possible introduction later. We will probably add three new Pathways next fall; and if the program proves worthy, we will add more in the following years."

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