As community colleges around the country move toward eliminating developmental education, students are increasingly eligible to take a college-level Statistics/Liberal Arts Math (SLAM) OR Business and Science Technology, Engineering and Math (BSTEM) courses. This project will investigate the extent to which students are tracked into SLAM and BSTEM pathways along racial/ethnic, gender, first generation status and family income lines, as well as determine successful methods to encourage students enrolled in SLAM courses to enroll in BSTEM math courses in subsequent semesters.

“Increasing Community Colleges STEM Opportunities” is a partnership with the Los Angeles Community College District and LACCD’s Pierce College.

With this project, researchers hope to learn more about whether offering SLAM courses as a course default may inadvertently track racially-minoritized students and women out of STEM fields. In addition, we’ll review casual evidence on the potential effectiveness of nudging students to explore their STEM interests, and develop a model for a statistics-to-STEM bridge experience that community college math departments can adopt.