MATH:EAGER Understanding faculty barriers in adopting evidence-based integrated mathematics curricula

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Successful experiences in mathematics during the first two years of college are critical to students' persistence and learning in engineering. There is a need within engineering to examine courses in the engineering program in order to both provide appropriate learning experiences that increase students' knowledge and retention of content and support their persistence in engineering. This project will address this with an integrated mathematics and engineering course that connects the mathematics students need to engineering tasks and contexts. The goal of the project is to explore an engineering mathematics course designed within the college of engineering. The first objective is to design and teach the course while collecting data about students' performance, persistence and their mathematics understanding. The second objective is to investigate faculty perceptions of students' knowledge of mathematics to understand the structural barriers that may prevent the adoption of such a course. The EHR Core Research program, which supports this work, 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.The integrated engineering and mathematics course is important for supporting students' learning and application of knowledge from mathematics within engineering. Each mathematics topic in the course will include an engineering perspective and tasks. The project will specifically investigate the perception of students' mathematical maturity by mathematics faculty. The research design includes a case study of the mathematics department using interviews with faculty and students as well as the collection of other documents that describe the context. The case study data will also include clinical interviews with students from the engineering mathematics course and a comparable course to document their mathematical understanding and beliefs.