Partnership aims to make early math more accessible

Two Central Michigan University colleges are partnering to redesign courses in a way that boosts student success and retention.

The College of Business Administration and College of Science & Engineering are redesigning an economics course and two early math courses to make them more applicable to non-STEM disciplines.

Students in every major need math skills, but the way students use those math skills doesn’t perfectly align with how they are taught, said Heidi Mahon, director of student services with the College of Science & Engineering.

Because students are taught math designed for STEM fields, it can create a skills obstacle for students who need them for other fields.

‘We’re trying to make math more applicable to students’ programs so they retain more of it,” she said.

It’s also an opportunity to boost student retention. Students who have difficulty retaining math skills can face challenges in their journey to earn a degree, said Misty Bennett, associate dean of the College of Business Administration.

For students working on business degrees, it’s especially crucial for them to develop math skills that help them understand data.

“The heart of this project is helping students be successful in their academic career,” she said.

CMU recently improved its retention rate from 74 to 78 percent, she said. Redesigning university core courses to make them more broadly applicable can improve that even more.

Plans were already underway to look at the courses when grant money became available through the Michigan College Access Network, Mahon said. CMU received $10,000 from MCAN and is part of its Gateway Course Redesign Faculty Academy’s inaugural group.

MCAN is part of the state of Michigan’s 60 by 30 initiative. The initiative’s goal is to help at least 60 percent of the state’s population attain a post-high school education credential by the year 2030.

The redesigned math courses could be open for enrollment for the Fall 2026 semester.

The two courses are the start of an answer to the question of how CMU can improve student success rates. The partnership committee is also analyzing other introductory math courses and could start working on areas of improvement in the spring.

“We’re in the infancy of what this all looks like at CMU, but it’s a good question to have,” Mahon said.