Dana Center Higher Ed In Brief â€“ September/October 2017

September/October 2017

A Message from Uri

I am honored to welcome Dr. Martha Ellis as the Center’s Director of Higher Education Strategy, Policy, and Services. Martha is widely known as a leader who rises above short-term politics, cares about the deepest purposes of higher education, and knows what it takes to bring about lasting change. We are fortunate to have her as our colleague.

Our work in higher education is about helping colleges remodel themselves to be more responsive to their students’ needs and hopes. We are incredibly privileged to be able to serve as a support for a growing number of postsecondary leaders and leadership teams working to strengthen teaching and learning at their institutions. To do that, we need a leader whom campus and system leaders can trust, call on for advice, and count on when they’re trying to get something done that is delicate, political, conceptually difficult, or hard to enact. A lot of people call on Martha. We are lucky that, when we called on her, she said yes!

Martha has been president of two colleges. She has been a senior administrator at the University of Texas System. Her expansive professional network is a testament to what we now know at the Dana Center—that in addition to her experience, her integrity, and clarity, she’s fun to work with!

Please join me in welcoming Martha. We look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration.

Uri Treisman
University Distinguished Teaching Professor
Professor of Mathematics | Professor of Public Affairs
Executive Director, The Charles A. Dana Center

What We Are Doing

DCMP Provides Critical Support for Co-Requisite Implementation

With recent work in California and Texas, the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) team continues to actively support the growing national trend toward using co-requisite course sequences in developmental education. In this approach, underperforming students are placed immediately into credit-bearing classes while simultaneously receiving rigorous, “just in time” support designed to bring academic skills to the required levels.

In Texas, the passage of HB 2223 in June 2017 means that all public institutions of higher education must implement developmental course sequences adhering to co-requisite models. To help Texas institutions meet this exciting yet challenging mandate, the DCMP is conducting a series of interactive webinars and in-person workshops to assist in planning, team building, and execution. So far, nearly 300 faculty, mathematics chairs, deans, vice presidents of instruction, advisors, and other critical stakeholders from a wide range of institutions have signed up for October’s workshops.

Learn about DCMP support for Texas co-requisite implementations.

Read about the Dana Center’s co-requisite work in California.

Accelerating Mathematics Pathways

The Dana Center has received a grant for $850,000 from the T.L.L. Temple Foundation. This grant is intended to support students in Deep East Texas by accelerating the impact of Dana Center Mathematics Pathways.

College completion rates in this region are far below Texas and national figures, and mathematics is a particular challenge. The DCMP aims to help institutions in Deep East Texas close those gaps. Our team will provide professional learning experiences in areas such as policy, advising, faculty capacity, and school district collaborations. This work seeks to improve the implementation of the DCMP model and its alignment to the K–12 sector with the goal of increasing the number of high school graduates ready for college math and improving their college success.

Read more about DCMP acceleration in Deep East Texas.

Renewing Introductory Mathematics

Michael Oehrtman, Dana Center Mathematics Pathways Leadership Fellow and Professor of Mathematics at Oklahoma State University, joins the Dana Center’s own Rebecca Hartzler in having an article featured in MAA FOCUS, the official newsmagazine of the Mathematical Association of America. In his article, Oehrtman surveys the principles and challenges that characterize the burgeoning, nationwide mathematics pathways movement. He also explores the role of College Algebra, accelerated and co-requisite models of developmental education, and pedagogy.

Read more here.

The Dana Center is hiring for the position of Director, Marketing and Communications. The successful candidate will have 10 or more years’ experience in developing strategic communications and marketing plans and five years’ background leading diverse, multitalented teams of designers and content producers.

Come help the Dana Center increase its impact and reach.

What We Are Reading...and Watching...

Eliminating the “Math Pipeline of Doom”

KPBS, San Diego Public Radio and TV, covers the co-requisite overhaul efforts underway in Cuyamaca College’s introductory and developmental mathematics courses. “…[B]efore eliminating traditional remediation classes, just 10 percent of students who came to campus needing to catch up on high school math made it through a college-level course and were eligible for a degree.” Now, the college sees a one-semester passing rate of 67 percent for transfer-level classes.

Read more about Cuyamaca College’s transformation of developmental mathematics education in this report from the California Acceleration Project.

Mathematics As a “Gatekeeper”

This Daniel Douglas and Paul Attewell article in the August 2017 edition of The Sociological Quarterly examines the gaps between “school math” and actual workplace use of that mathematics. (Subscription or institutional access required for full article.)

Spotlight Resource

DCMP Implementation Guide Goes Digital
Audience: Institutional Leadership, Math Departments, Advisors and Coordinators, Leadership

The Institutional Implementation Guide is one of the most widely used tools in the DCMP arsenal. Its practical, direct, and action-oriented content draws on data and experience gained from numerous implementations of mathematics pathways. Not only has the publication received an end-to-end revision and redesign (to be released later this month), but it is also going online!

The online version of the Institutional Implementation Guide will provide an interactive means for institutional teams to access critical information and guidance and to track progress through the steps and dependencies in any DCMP implementation. The online Guide will be launched in November 2017.

Follow us on Twitter (or watch for email updates) to learn when it is available.

The success of Dana Center Mathematics Pathways relies heavily on the work, experience, expertise, and dedication of our DCMP facilitators. These seasoned educators and leaders provide much of the national-level capacity we need to deliver professional learning experiences to states, systems, and institutions working to implement pathways models.

We welcome the 2017–2018 DCMP Facilitators (including the return of a few familiar faces).

Learn More About the DCMP

Visit the DCMP Website

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