2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Norwich University, the First Senior Military College in the nation and the first private U.S. institution to teach engineering, has a residential program for approximately 2,100 primarily undergraduate students in both the Corps of Cadets and civilian lifestyles. Norwich secured a National Science Foundation S-STEM award in the beginning of 2020 to develop a program to attract and retain highly talented, low-income students in STEM. One of the aims of the project was to support students who enter college with less experience in mathematics as these students were significantly less likely to graduate with a STEM degree.

In the fall of 2020, as a result of the S-STEM award, the mathematics department offered a pilot corequisite calculus course to STEM majors requiring calculus their first semester but placed into precalculus by the mathematics departmental placement test. The corequisite calculus course includes content from precalculus into a one semester calculus course that meets daily for 6 contact hours rather than a standard 4 credit hour calculus course. The Norwich University Civil, Electrical and Computer, and Mechanical Engineering programs are accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, placing restrictions on the 8-semester engineering degree pathway. The added credits to the first semester corequisite calculus course fit the constraints of the first semester engineering course load and this course has enabled engineering students that place into precalculus to complete an on-time degree plan without taking summer courses. The corequisite course has been approved by the university curriculum committee and is a regular offering at the institution.

The initial offering of the corequisite course occurred during the COVID pandemic necessitating the use of additional instructional technology. There was also an increase in low stakes assessments to encourage students to engage in the material. The added credits also increased the regularity of student interacting with calculus. Since the implementation of this pilot course, there have been several similar changes in other courses required by engineering majors. The pilot corequisite course has become institutionalized and even is now scaling, with the engineering department requesting the course to be offered each semester to benefit students who are out of sync with the intended curriculum pathway.
This project examines how the corequisite calculus course may have influenced changes in the general education courses and engineering first year sequence. Outcome harvesting as well as process tracing are used to determine the strength of evidence linking the corequisite course to institutional change. Qualitative and quantitative data will be examined as well to understand how the S-STEM award contributed to breakdown of the resistance to curriculum change and the readiness to implement and scale corequisite course in other areas. It is important to understand the mechanisms used for building capacity at the institution to transform STEM education in higher education.