01 | TLDR;

Pathfinder was an extracurricular program for first and second year students that help students navigate Northeaster, explore their career and interests, and develope new skills thought and entrepreneurial thinking lense.

02 | UNDERSTANDING WHAT WE INHERITED

In order to start the process of evolving and scaling the program, we need to do a deep dive into anything and everything about the program. We needed to fully understand what the program looked like before us, how it was structured, ran, organized, etc to give us a well-rounded understanding and provide some direction for how we were going to move forward. This meant rewatching old workshops, looking over roundtable material, talking to the old program managers and group moderators, reading student and moderator surveys, and more. This was so important because it was the closest we could get to being in the shoes of our audience and we needed to understand their experience and perspective to produce the next phase of this program for them.

03 | DEFING WHAT BUILDING TO SCALE LOOKS LIKE

One of the main goals we were given at the start was to adapt and evolve the program in a way that it could scale in the future. Our research and audit phase left us with this:

Starting college can be overwhelming, especially in a remote environment. A school like Northeastern is a place for students eager to kickstart their careers and personal development from the moment they step on campus, but knowing where to start, what to do, and where to go can also be a daunting task. The Pathfinder program provides students with foundational skills and support to discover and develop their passions and personhood by providing them with a support system, tools, and resources built through an entrepreneurial lens.

04 | IDEATE PROGRAM COMPONENT EXPANSION

Before us, the program had three stages: weekly moderated roundtable meetings led by upperclassmen or alumni, workshops hosted by university clubs or offices, and "Road to the Makies" students' chosen personal projects. While these three elements worked well during the initial conception of the program, there were a lot of opportunities for us to expand these three sections of the program.

Based on our initial audit and research and talking to students and moderators, we realized that we had the opportunity to:
↳Produce and expand what the program could provide students
↳Equip students with cross-functional skills
↳Expose them to university resources they might not have known existed
↳And play to the strengths and past experiences of our volunteer moderators

05 | PRODUCING PROGRAM ASSETS

Workshops
We expanded workshops outside of the University's Entrepreneurship ecosystem to include other offices and university resources as well as produced content around those workshops to be used a viewed in other mediums for future reference, to market the program, and if people were unable to attend.

Podcast


Youtube Channel


Social Media




Roundtables
We produced topics and slide decks for each roundtable meeting for moderators to use. Relieving some of the burdens that might make on their time outside of volunteering for this program and also making sure all moving at the same pace. Additionally, we would be able to give each group topics specific to participants interests or that related to their specific Road to the Makies subject in addition to the universal routable meeting topic.

Road to the Makies/Project Showcase
We pivoted away from this being about building something to learning to apply entrepreneurial thinking to any aspect of life. Students could choose anything from building a physical product or building a habit and use the tools, skills, resources, and support system we helped them build to do that.

06 | FEEDBACK COLLECTION

We developed a process to continually collect information and feedback that could be considered in what we did moving forward. After each moderator call, both students and moderators gave feedback on how they felt about the week's topic, what they wanted to see next or more of, etc. Additionally, after workshops, we asked hosts and participants what they thought, what they want to see next (for participants), about the planning process and what it was like working with us (for hosts), etc.

07 | FULL CASE STUDY

Below is the full case study on the program, including program metrics & statistics, weekly roundtable & workshop outlines, future applications, marketing information, and ideas to scale the program.

08 | THANKS TEAM!

Cathrine C. (Co-Program Manager), Northeastern University, & Thandiwe Tembo