Cleveland State Community College was awarded the Tennessee College Access & Success Network (TCASN) grant “Bridging the Math Divide.” This $40,000 grant project will redesign the fourth-year high school math bridge course for students who have not yet demonstrated college readiness and have an ACT score of 19 or below at the end of their junior year. This project will introduce a redesigned methodology into high school classrooms while providing curriculum for the fourth-year high school bridge math course. The program will be implemented in high schools in McMinn, Meigs, Monroe and Polk County Schools.
Cleveland State Community College has demonstrated college access and success in its nationally recognized Math Redesign program. In August of 2010, President Obama specifically mentioned Cleveland State Community College Math Department’s Redesign program in a speech at the University of Texas at Austin.
“And that means looking for some of the best models out there. There are community colleges like Tennessee’s Cleveland State that are redesigning remedial math courses and boosting not only student achievement but also graduation rates. And we ought to make a significant investment to help other states pick up on some of these models.” - President Barack Obama.
CSCC is a pioneer in the redesign of Developmental Mathematics. The college has received national recognition of the Developmental Math Redesign Project called “Do The Math.” In 2009, the college’s program won the prestigious Bellwether Award, which recognizes outstanding community college programs that are at the forefront of innovation throughout the United States and Canada. The program was also recognized nationally in an article that was published in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Kevin Carey entitled “Introducing a Remedial Program that Actually Works.”
In 2007, Cleveland State’s Math Department received a grant from the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR), which was based on the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) emporium model of redesign. The Developmental Studies Program (DSP) Redesign Grant enabled the Math faculty to redesign six courses using the NCAT emporium model. Each of these six courses (three developmental and three college level) was established using a mathematics curriculum with a 1+2 format. This involved a one hour class meeting and two hours of additional lab work each week, instead of the typical three hour class meeting format. Since this time, college faculty members teach almost all of the Math courses using this format.
The overall goal of the project is to ensure that a significant number of high school seniors with currently inadequate Math knowledge and skills acquire the Mathematics proficiency and confidence to succeed in college and, therefore, in the workforce or in a career—by creating effective high school fourth year Math bridge courses. Not only will this course satisfy their high school math requirement, but it will fulfill the state’s learning support competencies. Upon successful completion of this bridge math course, students will be provided the opportunity to take their college math elective course at Cleveland State during the following semester through dual enrollment. For students who receive college math credit in high school, this will provide them with the incentive to remain in college as they have already begun earning college credit and have satisfied their math requirement.
Karen Wyrick, CSCC Math Department chair, will be actively involved in the redesign program through assisting in implementing the math faculty training. She has been involved in the redesign process since it began in 2007. Ms. Wyrick is a National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) Redesign Scholar, speaking frequently at national conferences on course redesign. She has also been working with colleges around the nation to improve student learning and student success through course redesign. Serving as a faculty member at Cleveland State since August 1992, she has been teaching math and developmental math for 19 years, taking over as department chair in August 2009. As department chair, she works to improve success rates at Cleveland State and is also working with local high schools to implement course redesign in their dual enrollment classes.
Paul Puckett, assistant professor, and coordinator of the math dual enrollment courses, will be implementing the program at the various schools. He has been teaching math at Cleveland State since August 2010.
For more information about Bridging the Math Divide, contact Karen Wyrick at 423 472-7141, ext. 322 or email her at kwyrick@clevelandstatecc.edu.