PJ Darcy Dutchess Community College Poughkeepsie, NY

1. A Two Year College Follow-up:Fostering Faculty Collaboration and Launching a New Developmental Course PJ Darcy Dutchess Community College Poughkeepsie, NY

2. Dutchess Community College • Two Year College in the State University of New York Community College system • A high percentage of students enroll needing developmental Mathematics and English courses • Mathematics is a “Service” Department

3. A New Developmental Course • Mostly non-STEM students • MAT091, the developmental mathematics course, is algebra-based • Most non-STEM majors take 100-level Survey of Mathematics or Elementary Statistics • Create an application-based, generally non-algebraic, Mathematical Literacy course

4. Creating a non-traditional Developmental Course • “Service” aspect – we must ensure that the course serves the needs of other departments with a developmental mathematics requirement • Keep the course mathematical while engaging the students and actually teaching them some mathematical topics • Instill a mathematical independence in developmental students

5. Goals of a new Developmental Curriculum • Measurable • Improve retention • Improve pass rates • Improve pass rates in subsequent courses* • Intangible goals • Habits of mind • Students take more risks • De-compartmentalize mathematical skills

6. Putting Together the New Course • Collaborate with other departments in order to finalize topical content • Find or create a text • Write exceptional problems • Not Widgets • Not Percents • Focus on applied student practice and risk taking rather than lecture • Have students think about how they do the math they have always done, then apply those skills to several areas of subject matter

7. MAT092: Mathematical Literacy for College Students • This course ends up being more topical, and has more specific student learning outcomes, than the algebra-based developmental course • Focus on rate of change in several areas of study, units and dimensional analysis • Course comparison • Students build habits and “recover” after mid-semester

8. Math Literacy for College Students: Opening Doors to Cross Departmental Collaboration • Working with other departments to organize subject matter for MAT092: Why not other courses? • “That’s math, you can’t expect me to do that.” (said by the chair of our Faculty Senate equivalent during one of our meetings) • Build on the Math Across the Curriculum idea

9. Why Math Across the Curriculum Now? • Cross discipline collaboration has taken place at DCC, but it was mainly within the same department (MPCS) • The new developmental course showed that there are other areas of subject matter overlap in several other departments • Why not now? • January 2012: Mathematics Across the Curriculum Professional Staff Development Workshop

10. If You Just Schedule It, They Will Not Come • Direct contact now, report the results later • Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Psychology are lined up to go • Yes, we will hold the workshop again next year

11. Why NOT? Why <insert your idea here> now?

12. influence at • Numeracy • Habits of mind • Practice first • Teaching without lecturing • Leadership • Collegiality • Departmental gear?

13. Contact information PJ Darcy darcy@sunydutchess.edu (845) 431-8540 MPCS Department Dutchess Community College 53 Pendell Rd. Poughkeepsie, NY 12601