[RUME] Harvard Study of Factors Influencing College Success in Mathematics needs your help

[Charity Watson]

Why do many students arrive in college without adequate mathematics
preparation?  What can be done at the level of high school mathematics
education that makes students’ success in college calculus more likely?  Our
research addresses questions of this kind, and you can support it by filling
out a very brief web survey.



Calculus courses are not only important for mathematics students, but also
crucial gatekeepers for students in many other fields--in the sciences,
engineering, technology, and even in business.  Improving high school
mathematics teaching so that more students will be able to succeed in these
courses is therefore an issue of wide-reaching relevance.



The Science Education Department at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, recently received a grant from the National
Science Foundation to study this important topic in a systematic way.  A
3-year project, titled “Factors Influencing College Success in Mathematics
(FICSMath)” and headed by Dr. Philip Sadler, will collect and analyze data
from approximately 12,000 students in calculus classes at 40 colleges and
universities, with the goal of identifying the factors within their high
school mathematics experience that help them perform well in these classes.



In the initial phase of the project—where we generate testable hypotheses
about factors influencing success in college calculus courses—we wish to
look beyond the hypotheses that we find in the scholarly literature.  We
believe that mathematicians, especially those who teach at the college
level, have a tremendous amount of insight into this issue.  Hence we turn
to you, asking you to respond to our web-based survey, which will take only
a few minutes of your time:
http://mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/FICSM/SurveyMathematicians.html



Thanking you very much for your consideration and help,



Sincerely yours,


Gerhard Sonnert, Ph.D.
Project Manager

Charity N. Watson
Predoctoral Fellow





Charity N. Watson
Clemson University
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Martin Hall E-1A
cwatson at clemson.edu
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