Broadening Narratives about Math Majors: Investigating the Needs and Experiences of Community College Mathematics Majors

This project will directly investigate which factors impact student decisions to enroll and persist in mathematics majors in the two-year college context. Given the fact that half of all mathematics majors are enrolled at two-year colleges, these institutions are a critical learning context to investigate. Further, the experiences of two-year college students are often significantly different from university students, and the retention models developed with four-year students are unlikely to translate directly to the two-year college context. This project aims to identify factors that influence student retention among two-year colleges and to develop a model of retention in the two-year college setting. In particular, this study has several aims: 1) to analyze trajectories that mathematics majors at two-year colleges to understand the diverse paths students take to complete the major, as well as the diverse paths that students take prior to leaving the major; 2) to uncover various factors that have influenced the decisions of students at two-year colleges to choose a mathematics major and/or to remain in the major from term to term; and 3) to develop a model of mathematics major retention in the two-year context. This research will include extensive quantitative analysis of existing data, qualitative analysis of in-depth longitudinal interviews, and both quantitative and qualitative analysis of longitudinal survey data, at one of the largest and most diverse urban university systems in the US: the City University of New York. This research will fill a critical gap in the existing literature and pave the way for future studies and interventions aimed specifically at recruiting and retaining mathematics majors from the two-year college population. The research will focus on the resources and strengths that two-year college mathematics majors bring to college regardless of their access to prior high-quality mathematics educational experiences; and elicit two-year college mathematics majors’ perspectives on the ways that existing instruction, college culture, and institutional structures do or do not provide them the resources needed to obtain a mathematics degree. This project is supported by NSF's EDU Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.