The Pathways to Academia: Visits and Experiences (PAVE) program served as a complement to the C3-LADO university visits by LADO faculty. During the PAVE visits, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from each of the four C3 partner universities visited one of the partner liberal arts college (LAC) campuses for a two-day event, with a goal of inspiring undergraduates to apply for C3 summer fellowships and to consider graduate school.

Additionally, the PAVE visits provided the visiting graduate students and postdoctoral fellows with information about social, intellectual, and professional life at LACs and helped establish personal contacts between the visitors and LAC faculty. All the participants in these visits were from backgrounds underrepresented in higher education.

2022: In February, five PhD students and PhDs from the University of Michigan visited Middlebury College; and the following month, seven PhD students from Columbia University visited Bates College in Lewiston, ME. In April, five UC Berkeley PhDs and PhD students attended a virtual visit at Connecticut College. A final virtual visit to Williams College by University of Chicago PhD students occurred in May.

2019: Bates College, Connecticut College, and Williams College all held PAVE visits in the Spring semester. On February 21-22, twenty graduate students from Columbia University participated in a PAVE visit at Connecticut. Five students from the University of Michigan traveled to Lewiston, Maine for a visit at Bates on March 7-8. An additional five graduate students from UC Berkeley visited Williams on April 1-2.

2018: For C3’s inaugural PAVE visit, Middlebury College hosted four graduate students and one postdoctoral fellow from the University of Chicago on April 12-13.