UW System Growth Agenda Grant

Kavita Bhaita & Kirthi Premadasa. UW System Growth Agenda Grant: ““An Alternate Math Pathway for Non-STEM Majors” for 2014-15)

In 2014, Kavita Bhatia and I applied and obtained a growth agenda grant (of 136392 US$ value ) for the creation of a five credit single semester pathway for developmental mathematics, quantitative literacy and intermediate algebra. This was the only growth agenda grant given this year to the UW- Colleges. The project itself was a very ambitious project designed to reduce a large number of (almost 90% for the UW Colleges) number of students who start the developmental sequence but fall short of passing college algebra. Our job was to create a new pathway to essentially replace MAT 091, MAT 105 and MAT 108 with a single 5 credit course. The point was rather than simply to cut or chunk together material but to completely redesign using AMATYC guidelines. The course that was developed is running into its third capacity section in three years with pass rate over 50%. Results also show that students who passed this course passed their next college-level math course with an almost 90% pass rate.

Click here to see more details of the pathway