Tag: Majors

  • Reducing Barriers to STEM Majors With Precalc Course

    Reducing Barriers to STEM Majors With Precalc Course

    Math courses are often a barrier for students seeking to pursue a college credential, and for some, a lack of math curriculum during high school can make a STEM career seem out of reach.

    A new course at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston serves as a stepping-stone for students who may not have had access to precalculus or calculus courses but are still interested in calculus-based learning. The university hopes the program will boost student enrollment and eliminate barriers to access for disadvantaged students.

    What’s the need: The conversation about offering precalculus at Wentworth began in 2019, after university leaders saw that some students, despite having the same GPAs and high school transcripts as their peers, were less mathematically prepared, said Deirdre Donovan, Wentworth’s director of first-year math and interim associate dean of the School of Computing and Data Science.

    At that time, Wentworth did not offer a math placement course, so all enrolled students launched at the calculus level.

    Only four in 10 high school graduates have completed precalculus coursework, according to 2022 data. That number has grown from 36 percent in 2009, but the statistic reveals gaps in availability of the coursework for some high school students.

    Wentworth, like many colleges and universities, requires students to have already completed calculus coursework to enroll in specific major programs, which is “a barrier that can prevent otherwise qualified students from pursuing engineering and computing degrees,” Donovan said.

    To complete calculus by the end of high school, students had to complete Algebra I in eighth grade, and not every student was ready, aware of or offered that course at their school, Donovan said.

    Some high schools also push students to complete AP Statistics in lieu of calculus, and Donovan said this shift “can actually close more doors at STEM schools than it might open, because those AP credits can’t replace the calculus-based statistics required for engineering degrees.”

    Campus leaders at Wentworth opted to review policies that were barring students from participating in STEM programs, starting with creating a math placement process and then developing a precalculus course.

    How it works: In 2024, Wentworth removed precalculus as an admissions requirement for students, paving the way for the college to admit about 10 percent more students who might have previously received a conditional acceptance, Donovan said.

    New students without calculus credit are now enrolled in a four-credit, first-semester course called Foundations of Calculus that helps them get up to speed. The investment in additional content hours is an indication of the university’s commitment to opportunities for students who may not have been able to enroll and succeed previously, Donovan said.

    In addition to two hours of lectures each week, students also participate in two hours of labs that focus on engineering problem-solving skills, using real-world problems that are tied directly to a student’s major.

    The course is also supported by embedded peer tutors who can address student questions, clarify confusing content and facilitate study groups outside of class time.

    It was important to Donovan and her faculty team not to work from a deficit-minded perspective about students’ knowledge gaps. Language regarding the course and its content hours was specifically crafted to help students feel like they’re being guided onto an on-ramp, not held back or punished for not having precalculus experience.

    The results: After the first semester, staff have seen promising results, Donovan said. “We are pinching ourselves that it went exactly how we had hoped it would go.”

    In fall 2024, about 200 students participated in precalculus either because they lacked the course in high school or their placement exam results indicated it would benefit them.

    Approximately 75 percent of precalc students passed their course in the first term, on par with national averages. When they attempted calculus in their second semester, students had similar passing rates to their peers who completed calculus in the first term.

    University faculty and staff were encouraged to see that engineering programs received 20 percent more applications this year, signaling an increased level of interest in rigorous programs, Donovan said.

    Fall-to-spring retention rates were slightly lower for precalc students, but that could be due to other factors, including students re-evaluating their chosen major or deciding whether they want to be at a STEM-focused institution.

    The course has also expanded enrollment opportunities for students who otherwise might not have considered Wentworth. Overall applications were up 25 percent year over year this past application cycle, and deposits were up 30 percent, Donovan said.

    What’s next: Student feedback from the first term has indicated a need for an additional credit hour of in-person, interactive lab work, which will be implemented this fall. The hour, which the university is calling a companion class, will function similarly to a first-year seminar, teaching students study skills and metacognition, as well as connecting back math concepts.

    None of the downstream courses such as physics have undergone a curriculum change, requiring students to get up to speed in their first term to be successful over all in college. Students who complete precalc also may need to take summer classes to ensure they graduate in four years, but the university is looking to offer affordable online courses to accommodate learners, Donovan said.

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  • Waivers Let Some N.C. Majors Keep “DEI” Requirements

    Waivers Let Some N.C. Majors Keep “DEI” Requirements

    Shortly after the second Trump administration began attacking higher education diversity initiatives, the University of North Carolina system ordered its 16 public universities to immediately stop requiring “course credits related to diversity, equity and inclusion.” The system was targeting DEI even before Trump retook office—the UNC Board of Governors repealed the system’s DEI policy a year ago—and its general counsel pointed to the federal government’s newly threatened funding cuts to justify this further step.

    But the system’s kibosh on DEI requirements came with caveats. Majors could continue requiring courses with diversity themes if university chancellors provided waivers.The system gave chancellors the final say on which major-specific courses would continue to be mandated, and chancellors said waivers were needed because state or national accreditation and licensure criteria require diversity education.

    “Approximately 95 percent of the programs identified for waivers at the chancellor level had accreditation and licensure requirements attached to them,” said David J. English, the system’s senior vice president for academic affairs, during a UNC board committee meeting this week. English said these programs are in counseling, education, nursing, psychology and social work.

    According to documents attached to this week’s board meeting agenda and previously reported by Raleigh’s News & Observer, dozens of courses will remain necessary for certain majors in the UNC system, which includes all four-year public universities in the state. Among them are Feminist Theory at UNC Asheville; Multicultural Counseling at UNC Charlotte; Social Work Policy and Restorative Justice at UNC Greensboro; Teaching Reading to Culturally Diverse Children at Fayetteville State University; Inclusion, Diversity and Equity in Agriculture at North Carolina A&T State University; and Diversity in Higher Education at North Carolina Central University.

    The UNC system is one example of universities across the country being asked to comply with vague statewide and national demands to excise DEI. Lacking detailed guidance, they’ve had to define that term for themselves as they seek to show compliance.

    The UNC system never defined for its component institutions what it meant by the verboten “course credits related to DEI.” The universities were left to determine for themselves what they should stop requiring; some administrations used keyword searches of course descriptions, looking for terms such as “cultural” to choose which courses to review.

    The Feb. 5 order from the system said universities’ general education requirements couldn’t include mandates for DEI-related courses at all. A few institutions, such as East Carolina University and UNC Asheville, responded by jettisoning broad diversity categories from their gen ed requirements. At UNC Chapel Hill, College of Arts and Sciences dean Jim White wrote that “Power, Difference, and Inequality”—a category within the gen ed curriculum there—“could be incorrectly read or understood to be ‘related’ to DEI,” so it was “streamlined” and is now called “Power and Society.”

    But when it came to specific majors’ mandates for DEI-related credits, the system let chancellors grant what it called “tailored waivers” to allow these requirements to continue.

    Appalachian State University’s acting provost initially asked the national Council on Social Work Education, which accredits social work programs, to waive accreditation standards that are specifically called “Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” But when the council refused, Appalachian State chancellor Heather Norris gave her university’s social work program a waiver to continue the education requirements.

    Halaevalu Fonongava’inga Ofahengaue Vakalahi, the Council on Social Work Education’s president and chief executive officer, told Inside Higher Ed in an email, “We do not issue waivers except in very limited circumstances as defined by our Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. Those circumstances are not applicable in this case.

    “What we have done, and are continuing to do, is work with programs and institutions to ensure they are both meeting the appropriate standards for accreditation while also staying within the boundaries dictated by law,” Vakalahi wrote. “Social work is about healthy individuals, healthy families, and healthy communities. We value inclusion because we believe that social work is for everyone—no exceptions.”

    While the waiver documents released this week show course requirements that survived, they don’t specify whether universities dropped major-specific requirements—and if so, which ones—instead of having their chancellors grant waivers. Universities didn’t provide interviews this week to Inside Higher Ed for this article. But the fact that the system ordered statewide changes to curriculum rather than have the faculties of individual universities propose them has raised academic freedom and shared governance concerns.

    ‘Faculty Were Not Pleased’

    Wade Maki, chair of the UNC Faculty Assembly, said the faculty senates or councils of all 16 universities, plus the one specialized high school in the system, ratified a resolution calling the order to end DEI course requirements “an unnecessary and intolerable breach of the principle of academic freedom” that “deeply undermines” the system’s mission “to serve the people of our state.”

    Defending the place of faculty in setting curriculum, the resolution says, “Faculty, who are trained at the highest level of our disciplines, collaborate within our departments, universities and communities to design and lead programs—including defining the core curriculum and graduation requirements—to ensure our students’ growth and success.”

    While “faculty were not pleased” about the order, they stepped up to take part in the course review, Maki said. Because the system “did not prescribe how” to comply, “it was up to faculty and administrators to work together to determine what to do,” he said.

    “Each major had to look and say, ‘Do we think we’re at risk of being out of compliance here, and what’s the best course of action?’” he said.

    Herle McGowan, chair of North Carolina State University’s Faculty Senate, said her university dropped a general ed requirement in response to the system’s order—a requirement that had been created by faculty with student input.

    “The fact that it changed without consultation from faculty is definitely concerning to me,” McGowan said.

    She said she personally believes academic freedom rights should cover “the broader curriculum,” not just individual faculty teaching and research. Within majors, she said experts should agree on what students need to learn, and when it comes to gen ed, there should be “collaboration from faculty experts all across the university” in determining what students need to be good, well-rounded citizens prepared for life and work.

    Regardless of her own views on academic freedom, McGowan said, the fact that the system handed down such an order points to a need for constituents—from faculty to board members—to come to a consensus on what academic freedom means.

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