The S-STEM Program in Mathematics and Its Impact on Student Success
- Conference
- Location
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Virtual On line
- Publication Date
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June 22, 2020
- Start Date
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June 22, 2020
- End Date
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June 26, 2021
- Conference Session
- Tagged Topics
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Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session
- Page Count
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19
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--35369
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/35369
- Download Count
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449
Paper Authors
Tuncay Aktosun
University of Texas at Arlington
orcid.org/0000-0003-1094-5676
Dr. Aktosun is a professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research area is applied mathematics and differential equations with research interests in scattering and spectral theory, inverse problems, wave propagation, and integrable evolution equations. He is involved in various mentoring and scholarship programs benefiting students. He has been the GAANN Fellowship Director in his department since 2006, the NSF S-STEM Scholarship Director in his department since 2008, and he also acts as the Project Director for the NSF Bridge Program in his department. In the past he served as the Graduate Director and as the Undergraduate Director in his department, and he directed the NSF-LSAMP program on his campus during 2009-2014 and also directed the NSF-LSAMP Bridge-to-Doctorate program on his campus during 2010-2013.
Yolanda Parker Tarrant County College
Dr. Yolanda Parker’s education includes earning a Bachelor of Science from Texas A and M University in Applied Mathematical Sciences, a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Dartmouth College (New Hampshire) and a Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from Illinois State University. She has held a university faculty appointment at Texas A and M University-Commerce and University of Texas at Arlington, where she taught undergraduate, Masters and Doctoral level courses in Education and Mathematics Education. She is currently a Professor in the Mathematics Department full-time at Tarrant County College-South Campus. Her current research interests include algebra teacher efficacy, manipulatives with adult learners, and culturally relevant pedagogy in mathematics.
Jianzhong Su
University of Texas at Arlington
orcid.org/0000-0002-6103-3936
Dr. Jianzhong Su is professor and chair of Mathematics at the Department of Mathematics, University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). He received his Ph.D. in 1990 from University of Minnesota under Professor Hans Weinberger and he has been in higher education for over 29 years. He is an applied mathematician with research areas in partial differential equations and dynamical systems, with a particular interest in problems from computational neuroscience. He is an experienced researcher, educator, and administrator. He has served as PI/co-PI on over $10 million federal research, education and training funding from National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Education, US Department of Agriculture and other agencies, published over 70 peer-reviewed journal papers and been invited to over 70 seminars and conferences, and advised over 10 math students who attained their Ph.D. degree. He is very involved student mentoring of undergraduate students and high school students. He has been leading the development of the UTA learning communities and tutoring program for undergraduate and graduate students and has provided space and travel funds to enhance the UTA model. He is an active member of Gulf States Math Alliance and serves on its board of directors and co-organized the annual Gulf States Math Alliance conference in 2017-2020. Currently he is the PI on an NSF Math bridge to doctorate program at UTA. He also serves as a PI on a large UTA USDA-HSI collaboration project on smart agriculture data and mentoring students to research in data science and to pursue agricultural related career.
Abstract
Our S-STEM program in mathematics has been supported by the NSF-DUE since 2008. Using the data available, we describe the effect of our S-STEM program on student recruitment, retention, graduation and indicate how we manage and make improvements to increase student success. We show how our S-STEM program helps broaden the participation of underrepresented minority students in the mathematical sciences. We also indicate the effect of our S-STEM program on our mathematics graduate studies and our other student mentoring and scholarship programs at the graduate level.
We describe the impact of the program on involvement of our students, including peer mentoring, participation in undergraduate research, organizing activities for middle and high school students, fund raising activities, participation in conferences and giving research presentations. We also indicate how our students gain leadership skills by involving in various mathematics organizations in our department and in their regularly scheduled activities.
About half of our mathematics majors are transfer students from the two large community college systems in the region. This creates challenges and opportunities to improve student success. We describe how we collaborate with faculty from those two community college systems to make improvements. We also indicate efforts to improve ties to former S-STEM scholars, local industries, community organizations, other institutions in the region, and other organizations working to improve student success in mathematics.
We also describe how we deal with various challenges such as the optimal management of faculty time to run the S-STEM program effectively, securing further external funding to continue and expand our mentoring and scholarship programs, to improve academic advising and timely graduation for our undergraduate mathematics majors.
Aktosun, T., & Parker, Y., & Su, J. (2020, June), The S-STEM Program in Mathematics and Its Impact on Student Success Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35369
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