Building Capacity: A Faculty Development Program to Increase Students' Quantitative Reasoning Skills

Research Foundation Of The City University Of New York (Lehman), Bronx NY

Investigators

Abstract

The Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (HSI Program) aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI program will also generate new knowledge about how to achieve these aims. This project will advance the aims of the HSI Program by improving the ability of STEM faculty to teach quantitative reasoning skills to undergraduates. This project is a collaboration between three colleges in the City College of New York (CUNY) system: Lehman College, Baruch College, and LaGuardia Community College. The project plans to implement a large scale professional development project to improve the ability of STEM faculty at all 24 CUNY colleges to teach quantitative reasoning skills. The professional development program will provide faculty with knowledge of best practices for teaching quantitative reasoning, so that STEM faculty from mathematics, computer science, life sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences can effectively integrate quantitative reasoning into their courses. As a result, faculty will expand existing STEM courses to include data analysis skills, including the ability to gather and interpret data, draw conclusions based on numerical evidence, and communicate this information to others. Materials developed by the project for use in the expanded courses will be available via workshops or online, for use by other faculty and institutions. The project aims to increase the number of students, particularly those from underrepresented groups, pursuing a STEM degree. The project also aims to enhance student quantitative reasoning skills, so that these students are better prepared to enter the STEM workforce. The first objective of the project is to establish a faculty development program to train instructors at HSIs in best practices for numeracy-building data analysis research. The second objective is to implement a data analysis research experience in STEM courses, designed to support improvements of the quantitative reasoning capabilities, and the STEM education and career pathways of students. Finally, the third objective is to evaluate the program's impact on students' quantitative reasoning skills, their attitudes towards quantitative information, and their subsequent STEM coursework and college success, including their retention rates and their transitions from two-year to four-year institutions. The research plan will include a mixed method study to analyze the outcomes of the professional development activities and to investigate student outcomes from the data analysis research experience. The project seeks to generate new knowledge about best practices for implementing professional development that builds STEM faculty expertise and teaching skills in data analysis, with the overarching goal of enhancing the learning experiences of STEM students. 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.