New Approach Needed to Help Latinos in STEM Fields
By Ana Beatriz Cholo on April 7, 2010 7:59 AM
For transfer rates to improve, colleges and universities must dramatically reshape how science and mathematics is taught, according to a report released by the USC Center for Urban Education at the USC Rossier School of Education.
In addition, National Science Foundation funding should be directed toward research and experimental programming that involves new curriculum in mathematics education.
The report was the primary focus of a conference call co-hosted by the Campaign for College Opportunity, an advocacy organization whose mission is to ensure that California produces 1 million additional college graduates between now and 2025 to meet the workforce demands of the future.
The recommendations in the report emphasize that faculty from community colleges and four-year universities should be brought together to plan and implement curricular innovations.
“In California, perhaps more than anywhere else in the country, we are losing far too many Latino and Latina community college students to what is undeniably a long, drawn out, skills-based remedial mathematics curriculum,” said Alicia C. Dowd, co-director of the Center for Urban Education and an associate professor of higher education. “We need a fundamentally new approach.”
The report also highlights the need to expand access for Latino transfer students to bachelor’s degrees in biological and environmental sciences and in engineering.
Hispanic serving institutions outperform non-Hispanic serving institutions in terms of awarding transfer students bachelor’s degrees in computer science, mathematics and STEM-related fields,
