Math Course Redesign in a Private Four Year Hispanic Serving Institute to Address Diverse Equitable and Inclusive Issues

TL;DR

This paper presents a case study of a college-wide redesign of math courses at a Hispanic Serving Institute to improve equitable access, retention, and success in STEM pathways by addressing foundational math skills and instructor stability.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive approach to redesigning math education to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion at a four-year Hispanic Serving Institute.

Findings

Improved student success rates in College Algebra and Calculus.

Increased retention of STEM majors.

Enhanced instructor stability and student learning experiences.

Abstract

We identified three most challenging points related to diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) issues. First, the majority of our students entering the College lack the math skills essential to success in Calculus, as basic as College Algebra, some others have a multi-year gap after graduating high school. Almost all but a few STEM students must start from College Algebra before they can move on to Precalculus and then Calculus. Secondly, we noted that many students who planned to pursue STEM dropped out of their majors because they couldn't obtain the required grade in College Algebra to move forward. This is one of the main reasons that the enrollment of calculus classes is consistently low. Lastly, a large portion of basic math classes are taught by adjunct instructors, the turnover ratio among adjunct instructors is not small. One such consequence is that many students don't have equitable learning experiences and some students are still struggling with College Algebra even in the calculus class. In this paper, we describe an illustrative case study of a college-wide initiative to tackle the DEI issues.