Pathways is designed to help students most effectively navigate their Pitt journey and promote student success by offering a central location and structure for advisors and other staff to share important information about students across offices at Pitt. The ease with which advisors and other support staff can message students and view students' progress in Pathways is a strength.
To protect your information while maximizing the ability of University employees to support you, we have limited the information to which University employees have access based on their job responsibilities. For example, academic advisors and their supervisors (including staff in the Dean’s offices) have access to detailed academic information (e.g., course grades), summaries of advising/tutoring/career/etc. appointments and your academic calendar, etc. Career consultants, in contrast, have more limited academic information and are able to view summaries of advising/tutoring/career/etc. appointments and your academic calendar. The webpage Who Sees What in Pathways provides detailed information about who can see information about you and what information they can see.
What this means for you is that notes from an advising session you had with an advisor will be available to a staff member supporting you in another unit and vice versa. So don’t be surprised if your academic advisor asks about something you talked about with your career counselor or if your career counselor is already aware of your extracurricular and academic interests.
In addition to facilitating the sharing of information about students, Pathways is a tool for University employees to communicate academically relevant content to students. University employees in advising and other support offices will use Pathways to send emails and text messages to do things like:
- Schedule advising or tutoring appointments
- Alert you to resources about which you requested information or could help you on your academic journey
- Alert you to scholarships or awards for which you might be eligible
- Check on you and or follow up on recommended actions
- Nudge you if you are close to achieving important milestones, like graduation
University employees should not use Pathways for any purpose other than their immediate advising and support responsibilities. For example, faculty members should not contact you via Pathways to invite you to participate in a research project, advertise an event they are sponsoring, or encourage you to enroll in a particular course. If you receive an email via Pathways that you think is inappropriate, please send an email to PathwaysHelp@pitt.edu and we will take appropriate action.