Rowan College at Burlington County President Dr. Michael A. Cioce and Vice President of Enrollment Management and Student Success Dr. Karen Archambault were among a select group of community college leaders chosen to participate in separate Aspen Institute fellowships in summer 2023. 

While analyzing student success outcomes, the data clearly indicated that first-year math blocked students' success.

This data prompted a complete math redesign that focused on: 

• Reducing the number of students placed in developmental math
• Increasing first-time, first-year math success rates

This initiative was a collegewide effort with the assistance of Dr. Kathy Almy from Almy Education. Key participants included Associate Science, Technology, Engineering and Technology (STEM) Dean Dr. Taziah Kenney, seven full-time math faculty members, more than 40 adjunct faculty, and representatives from registration, advising, OIT, and marketing.

Since the first year of the redesign, Dr. Kenney and Dr. Almy have met monthly with the core team, beginning in October 2023. Additionally, math faculty have met with Dr. Almy and Dr. Kenney each month to discuss pedagogical implementations.

Beyond these monthly meetings, Dr. Kenney held over 30 additional meetings with key departments to address specific barriers and implementation strategies and led five mandatory professional development training sessions for all math faculty, focusing on pedagogy and active learning techniques. Dr. Kenney and Dr. Almy also met monthly with Assistant Professor Jianene D'Alterio, a key faculty leader of the Developmental Education Task Force. Collectively, these efforts amounted to more than 150 hours dedicated to the math redesign.

Key accomplishments of the math redesign included:

• Redesigning four 100-level courses and four accompanying clinic courses.
• Creating four brand-new program-based 100-level math courses, each paired with a corequisite support course known as a clinic.
• Proposing over 120 programmatic and curricular changes, which were reviewed by RCBC’s curriculum committee in spring 2024.
• Fully rolling out the redesigned courses at scale in fall 2024.

In addition to the academic and structural changes, the college developed a marketing campaign to support the new math pathways introduced through the redesign. The following infographic will summarize the key course offerings and structural changes implemented in the math redesign.

Overall, we observed an increase in enrollment in college-level math courses (both clinic and non-clinic) and a decrease in the number of students placed in developmental courses, meeting one of the primary goals.

Note: The decrease in the overall percentage of students enrolled in developmental math courses coincided with the introduction of MTH 085: Thinking Algebraically, a 4-credit course. This course replaced two separate developmental courses, MTH 055 (Pre-Algebra) and MTH 075 (Elementary Algebra).

Math Student Success (Fall 2025 Cohort Data – One Semester into the Math Redesign)

We observed notable improvements in student success following the implementation of our math course redesign:

• Developmental Math: Pass rates increased by 6% when comparing our former highest-level developmental course, Elementary Algebra, to our newly redesigned course, Thinking Algebraically.
• Non-STEM, Education, and Business Pathways:
  • Introduction to Statistics saw an average pass rate increase of 2%.
  • Modern College Math pass rates increased by 10%.
• STEM Pathway:
  • Our college-level STEM courses (Accelerated Precalculus, Precalculus A, and Calculus) experienced an average pass rate increase of approximately 5%.
• Business Pathway:
  • Business Calculus pass rates increased by an average of 7%.
  • Our newly created Business Algebra course had a pass rate comparable to the previous College Algebra course. This reflects a solid start for the redesigned curriculum.
• Education Pathway:
  • The college-level course pass rate for Education majors increased by 6%.

Student Feedback on the New Courses and Clinics:

The math redesign is making significant progress, but most importantly, let’s hear directly from our students about their experiences with the updated courses and clinics:

“I love the clinic! It makes me feel so much more confident in my 100-level course! The smaller class size feels comfortable and I can ask for help at any time. I actually have talked to those close to me about how much I really enjoy having the clinic this semester!”

In its first year, the data suggests that the extraordinary effort by faculty and staff, and our students was worth it:
Success inspires imitation. 

Since the math reform, the college has attempted smaller initiatives to improve the successful completion of other general education courses, such as English, biology, and chemistry. 

Quantitative and qualitative evaluations were conducted in partnership with Dr. Dawn Coleman of Coleman Evaluation.