2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Students from historically marginalized backgrounds – especially low-income students, students of color, and/or first generation in college – disproportionately place below Calculus level math and are often underprepared for direct entrance to an engineering baccalaureate degree curriculum. The Engineering in Context learning community at Whatcom Community College seeks to take a holistic approach to address this challenge by welcoming students into a multidisciplinary cohort experience. This course sequence spans two academic quarters and includes six different courses including a two-quarter contextualized precalculus for engineering sequence, contextualized English composition, Pacific Northwest history, and an existing two-quarter introduction to engineering sequence.
While this approach leverages multiple high-impact educational practices, this work-in-progress paper will focus on the contextualized precalculus component, and specifically the use of hands-on math labs taught using engineering facilities and equipment. The two Precalculus for Engineering courses are taught by mathematics faculty and feature a series of inquiry-based lab activities designed by the math, engineering, and physics faculty to motivate student effort and to provide additional practice with relevant math skills and concepts. These labs use physics and/or engineering applications to introduce key math concepts and develop student buy-in before scaffolding to more abstract math problems representative of what students will encounter in future math courses.
For example, students review right triangle trigonometry and revisit more complex triangle problems in the context of analyzing the kinematics of a robotic arm. In another lab, students explore the concept of composing functions by exploring axial deformation under tension in bars of variable cross-sectional area. The paper discusses these examples and others along with the overall sequence of labs, how they intersect with the concurrent engineering courses or preview future engineering/physics courses, and how they fit together as a whole to support both the precalculus course learning outcomes and the larger goals of the learning community experience. We also share initial student feedback on the lab activities.