Higher Education Professional Learning

We offer task force, team, and individual professional learning supports that are customized to meet participants where they are. We provide ongoing interactions (both virtual and face-to-face) that build capacity and sustainability.

We advocate for active collaboration in all of our work with task forces and with classroom faculty. We walk the talk during our professional learning sessions by providing facilitated experiences in which the participants do the work and leave with action steps, tools, and resources needed to engage in continuous improvement.

Supporting All Levels of Work

• Statewide, Systemwide, or Regional Work

  We engage in multi-year work with state-level task forces including members from both two- and four-year public higher education institutions. A series of interactions with various stakeholders supports the implementation and scaling of multiple, transferable mathematics pathways. These pathways enable students to complete a college-level mathematics requirement aligned to their program of study within one year, regardless of their initial level of preparation. The entire process is designed to unfold in four phases: (1) Building urgency and intrinsic motivation by empowering mathematics leaders; (2) Enabling scale by creating policy and practice conditions for system-wide implementation; (3) Enacting DCMP principles at institutions; and (4) Providing support within institutions and sustaining new normative practice.

  This work may include, but is not limited to:

  • Creating the policy and practice conditions for statewide implementation and scale.
  • Creating working groups to develop student learning outcomes for mathematics pathways courses.
  • Convening a transfer and applicability working group in facilitated experiences that support stakeholders in correcting local transfer misalignment and ensuring applicability to programs of study.
  • Surveying non-mathematics faculty on mathematics competency needs within programs of study.
  • Coordinating activities with initiatives focused on developmental mathematics, including co-requisite and placement reforms.

  Across these efforts, we provide a framework for task force members that includes deliverables, suggested timelines, and processes for convening stakeholders and maintaining momentum toward project goals. These processes are detailed, but intentionally flexible so that teams can adapt them to their own contexts.

  In some locations, customizing the pathways work on a regional basis is more feasible than gaining statewide consensus.

  To learn more about engaging our team for state, system, or regional work, contact Paula Talley. 

• Institutional Work

  Ensuring that students have equitable access to rigorous, relevant mathematics and associated supports requires the engagement of a variety of stakeholders across an institution. We offer ongoing interactions (virtual and face-to-face) to support mathematics faculty, advisors, administrators, K-12 representatives, and institutional researchers. These interactions create enabling conditions to implement and continuously improve upon mathematics pathways.

  A few of examples of our workshop offerings include:

  • Designing Math Pathways: supports college and university teams to begin and/or deepen work in developing and implementing math pathways
  • Co-requisite implementation: helps guide teams in building an effective action plan to implement co-requisite offerings
  • Advising: helps institutional teams to create action plans to ensure all students are well-served by mathematics pathways programs
  • Transfer and Applicability: explores regional strategies to solidify mathematics pathways, align mathematics courses to programs of study between transfer institutions and to address advising, policy, and implementation challenges.
  • K-12: explores tools and strategies for aligning high school senior-level transition courses in mathematics (Transition to College Mathematics and other college prep math courses) to multiple mathematics pathways in college mathematics.
  • Change Management: assists leaders at all levels of the organization to become adept at responding to rapid and systematic change.
• Mathematics Department/Faculty

  While the institutional team works to ensure equitable access to relevant mathematics and associated supports, math department faculty work to design rigorous, engaging classroom experiences. We offer ongoing interactions (virtual and face-to-face) for math chairs and faculty in the following areas:

  • Curriculum: Engage with tools, resources, and facilitated experiences that transform textbooks and other resources into a rich, rigorous, pathways-aligned curriculum.
  • Dana Center Curricular Materials: Engage with the complex design and thorough instructor supports of the DCMP curricular materials.
  • Pedagogy: Deepen understanding of active and collaborative learning, student discourse, classroom culture, identity, and belonging.
  • Learner development: Boost student achievement by developing their strategies as learners and introducing them to the importance of a growth mindset and other non-cognitive factors.
  • Combinations of the above.

  Each custom series is designed to support departments in engaging in a cycle of reflection and continuous improvement.

  We also occasionally offer open sessions (virtual and face-to-face) so that individuals or representatives of small departments can work together with peers on curriculum and pedagogy issues.