The southwestern-most partnership in the PROSPECT S-STEM collaborative is in Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW). The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) is fifth in the nation for transfer student enrollment as rated by U.S. News and World Report. The bulk of students who transfer to UTA come from our regional two-year college systems, Tarrant County College (TCC) and Dallas College (DC). TCC has five campuses, together with an online campus. Dallas College has students at seven campuses. UTA shares thousands of students with TCC and DC, students who are at some point in a transfer pathway that includes coursework at both a two-year school and coursework at UTA, which is an R1 research university with an undergraduate enrollment of over 30,000.
In an effort to work on student success issues related to mathematics courses in the transfer pathways, in 2019, mathematics leaders from UTA, TCC, and DC began meeting annually every spring semester to share challenges and work toward initiatives that can remove barriers for transfer students. The meetings include Mathematics Department Chairs from all the campuses of TCC, DC and UTA, together with campus level administration. At each meeting, the agenda includes presentations on the state of affairs in mathematics courses by deans from the two year colleges and UTA Mathematics Department leadership.
In the first two years of these DFW Regional College Mathematics Leader meetings, the group collaborated to create a Culture Comparison document which details the typical experience that students may have in mathematics courses at their Texas high school, compared with the instructional experience in mathematics courses at TCC and UTA. The Culture Comparison includes the categories of student responsibilities, instruction, classroom schedule, class structures, technology, homework and grading, attendance, and assessment. This document is shared with advisors at TCC and UTA.
Another outcome of the DFW Regional College Mathematics Leader is a mutually beneficial Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that allows for data sharing across TCC and UTA. The MOU allows for TCC to share information about UTA students who took mathematics courses at TCC. For such students, TCC provides to UTA the math course(s) in which that student enrolled at TCC, the campus(es) the course(s) were completed, and the grade(s) received, together with the total semester hours in which the student was enrolled that semester. To enable reverse articulation of TCC students who transferred to UTA, UTA provides the name and current address of those students to TCC. Key to the creation of this MOU were Tommy Awtry, Dean of Math and Science at TCC Southeast and Shanna Banda, Assistant Chair of Mathematics at UTA.
During COVID, these annual meetings moved online, however this past spring, the mathematics leaders from DC, TCC, and UTA were able to meet face-to-face once again, and decided that connecting more frequently throughout the year would help our student success initiatives. So the partners will be meeting in early November to continue their collaborative work.