Curriculum Research Group

Improving community college math

Curriculum Research Group seeks to improve the community college math curriculum through promoting racial equity, corequisite math, math pathways, and introductory statistics. We disseminate finding from our own research and others’ research to assist mathematics faculty and their administrators to discover and understand trends in community college mathematics and their benefit to students. A primary focus is on racial equity in college math. Despite that equity or opportunity gaps in college math are framed around race/ethnicity, efforts to close gaps tend to take a race-neutral approach that “lifts all ships” but does little to advance racial equity. Ultimately, this concern resulted in the establishment of Transitioning Learners to Calculus in Community Colleges (TLC3), a research project funded by the National Science Foundation focused on identifying successful practices in mathematics programs in community colleges, through a equity-conscious lens. The links below provide direct access to a validated set of equity-minded practices and an institutional self-assessment tool that colleges can use to identify and remove barriers for student of color in the STEM math pathway. We believe that these practices are essential to promoting racial equity in STEM math, but they may also be more widely applicable to other areas of college math.

TLC3 Equity-Minded Practices in STEM Math

TLC3 Institutional Self-Assessment Tool for STEM Math
We also disseminate research on corequisite mathematics and mathematics pathways, two national initiatives currently disrupting the field of college math. The initiatives are related in calling on mathematics departments and mathematics faculty to change the structure and teaching of college math courses inclusive of courses at the developmental level. The end goal of both initiatives is to improve student learning of high-quality mathematics relevant to their programs of study, and to do so in a more effective and efficient manner.

A key driver of both corequisite mathematics and mathematics pathways is introductory statistics. Historically, intro stats is a traditional mathematics course offerings. In fact, relatively few mathematics faculty have either course work in statistics or experience working with data. Yet intro stats has become the preferred college mathematics course for an increasing number of programs of study and is currently one of the highest enrolling courses in community college math. To equip our students with key competencies in intro stats hinges on modernizing intro stats and improving the teaching-learning environment, lest intro stats becomes the next mathematical gatekeeper and barrier to student degree attainment.

• Racial Equity in College Mathematics
• Corequisite Mathematics
• Mathematics Pathways
• Introductory Statistics