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Moderator: Matthew Salomone, Bridgewater State University

BEAR Exam: Toward a (More) Equitable Math Placement Test

Matt Salomone, Bridgewater State University

Inequitable outcomes for students of color are a well-known bug (feature?) of most standardized tests, and higher education has begun to dismantle math placement policies that rely on such tests to limit new students’ access to credit-bearing math courses. Yet, the holistic measures of student readiness typically used in their place, such as high school grades, offer little insight into students’ specific math content skills. We present a placement policy that aims to address both concerns. Bridgewater’s locally-developed “BEAR Exam” replaced standardized Accuplacer exams in 2020, and initial findings show its placement rates are similar to Accuplacer’s - but BEAR dramatically reduced the non-credit placement rate gap for our students of color in 2021.

Teaching Data Science to Early College High School Students: A Head Start for STEM Equity in Massachusetts

Russ Orwell, Merrimack College

Joanna Blanchard, Merrimack College

Data Science has been a growing field in higher education, and a growing career field across many industries. While higher education institutions have created graduate degrees, majors and certificates for these programs, many young people know little about the field and the opportunities therein, particularly students from low-income and minoritized communities. To address these inequities as the field scales up, Merrimack College has offered an introductory data science class for students at Lawrence High School as part of its early college program. These students are in a standard introductory class alongside undergraduate peers, and complete all the same work, projects and presentations. Initial data indicate that students in the class gain a broader perspective on data science as a potential major and career field, and also are able to see more real world applications for their coursework. These factors would all argue for far more data science coursework offered at the high school/undergraduate level, particularly for students unlikely to be exposed to this field through family or community connections. Students and/or undergraduate teaching assistants will participate in this session as well to give their first-hand perspective.

How Covid-19 Taught Us to Reform our Teaching of Mathematics to Promote Equity and Inclusion

Angie Hodge-Zickerman, Northern Arizona University

Brian Beaudrie, Northern Arizona University

Barbara Boschmans, Northern Arizona University

The Covid-19 pandemic brought forth a lot of forced changes in the ways both teaching and learning occur. Many discuss the challenges of these forced changes, but what did we learn from these changes that can make our classrooms more equitable and inclusive? Our mathematics for elementary teachers working group taught our mathematics for elementary teachers’ classes in a variety of modalities during the pandemic including fully remote and in a hybrid manner. We learned that many of the changes made in our teaching actually helped us to be more inclusive of students with different learning styles and learning preferences. In this session, we will share the changes in teaching practices that we will keep as part of our teaching going forward. Changes in classroom notes, lessons, group work, assessment, and differentiated instruction will be shared with the attendees of this session. Time/space will also be left for audience members to share any additional reform to teaching practices that they learned with each other.

Governors State University Serving the Underserved and Promoting Student Success through a Statistics Lab

Andrae Marak, Governors State University

Chris Tweddle, Governors State University

Shukmei Oh, Governors State University

Governors State University (GSU) is a regional comprehensive Minority Serving Institution (MSI) and an emerging Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). GSU’s first-year students – largely first generation, lower socio-economic status, and students of color – have a first-year retention rate of 52%, well below the Illinois average of nearly 80%. A major obstacle to first-year student success at GSU is the high DFW rate of students in our General Education Mathematics gateway course – MATH 2100: Elementary Statistics (3). MATH 2100 had a DFW rate over 40 percent with even higher rates among our non-Honors eligible students. We created a team within the mathematics program that designed a co-requisite laboratory – MATH 2101: Elementary Statistics Lab (1) - that provided additional support and application of mathematical concepts for students who arrived at the university underprepared for success in Mathematics and quantitative reasoning. The goal of MATH 2101 was to reduce DFW rate of our non-Honors eligible students to match that of our Honors eligible students (from approximately 45% to 25%). This proposal explores the ways in which the creation of the co-requisite built a cross-university collaboration involving our Center for the Junior Year, Academic Resource Center, and Mathematics program and deployed Peer Mentors, Supplemental Instructors, Graduate Assistants, and Program Faculty to improve student success. These cross-departmental reforms to our teaching practices vis-à-vis an important Mathematics gateway course promote equity and inclusion by enhancing student success for our students who come from largely underserved communities.