Equitable Calculus for Life Sciences

Serving students who are overwhelmingly low-income, minority, and first-generation, CSUN, LAMC, and LAVC seek $1.16 million over three years to develop, implement, and evaluate a novel calculus for life sciences course that supports the elimination of equity gaps in STEM. The new course will embrace culturally responsive pedagogy, contextualization of mathematical content, active and adaptive learning, gamification, and will identify and integrate factors related to increasing student academic motivation. A key project component is fostering underrepresented students? motivation and STEM identities. A near-peer mentorship program across the three institutions will be developed to build student communities and to strengthen the STEM transfer pipeline. Additionally, summer bridge programs will be designed and implemented that will pair mathematical training to biological sciences training and teach students study skills, skills to overcome math anxiety, and to foster a growth mindset orientation. Use of multiple technology tools are planned to mitigate symbolic manipulation. The developed curriculum materials, interventions, and resources will form an open-source course. Professional development resources will be designed to train faculty members in the participating institutions in equitable and inclusive teaching, active and adaptive learning, and in using motivation data to monitor student success.