Math Courses

The Liberal Arts math pathway offers students an opportunity to increase their mathematical, logical, and problem solving skills.  It is designed specifically for students who are interested in degree paths that only require a general quantitative reasoning course.

In 2013, a group of committed mathematics faculty worked to create a common course description for the common course numbered Math for Liberal Arts (Math& 107) course offered by Washington Community and Technical Colleges.  

The description sets some basic expectations for 80% of the content to be covered in Math& 107 with the remaining 20% to be determined at the level of either the college or individual faculty.  While the underlying mathematical content is outlined, the particular context is not.  A number of colleges offer Math& 107 with particular themes to connect the content to the interests and goals of the students and to provide a cohesive thread through the course.  Some examples include: Social Justice, Early Childhood Education, Games, History of Mathematics, and Current Events.

Many colleges offer students an alternative to the traditional algebra pathway for students interested in the Liberal Arts math pathway.  Within the last couple of years, a few colleges have begun to offer corequisite support for Math& 107 which has allowed most students in this pathway to enroll directly out of high school into the college level course without requiring any standalone precollege coursework.

Resources

• January 2013 Math in Society Course Description

• Mathematics, With, About, and For Social Justice: A Guide for Educators, Carnegie Math Pathways, October 2022

• Math in Society from a Diversity and Social Justice Lens, Sherry-Anne McLean, LWIT

Precalculus should not be merely a sequence of courses that comes before Calculus but should be designed intentionally to be preparatory for the concepts, problems, and techniques that a student will encounter in Calculus and should emphasize problem solving and creative thinking.   

Previous work on the Pathway to Calculus emphasized identifying a carefully aligned, cohesive set of course objectives but did not stop there. Colleges paid careful attention to course design, authentic assessment, engaging and effective classroom practices, and how they are using their classes to offer a meaningful learning opportunity for all of their students. 

From Summer 2020-Winter 2021, a work group consisting of math faculty representing the community and technical colleges and the baccalaureate institutions in Washington created course descriptions for MATH& 141 and MATH& 142 which outline a rigorous two course precalculus sequence prioritizing preparing students for Calculus.

Resources

• Precalculus Course Descriptions, 2021

• SBCTC Issue Brief: Growing Enrollment in Precalculus and Calculus Courses, April 2016

• Dana Center Mathematics Pathways:

  • Driving the Design of the STEM-Prep Pathway, January 2017

  • Reflections on the Pathway to Calculus: Removing Barriers to Calculus, June 2017

  • The Pathways to Calculus: A two-course college-level sequence designed to prepare students for college-level Calculus.

As colleges and universities across the country moved to offer math pathways that were more relevant to student goals, a large number of students who might, in the past, have been directed toward College Algebra or Precalculus were now finding themselves in a Statistics pathways. In Washington Community and Technical Colleges, students in many degree paths including Allied Health and Social Science pathways are being directed toward Statistics.

In 2017, statistics instructors in Washington state from two- and four-year institutions met as part of a working group of the Math Pathways to Completion Project. The work, led by Helen Burn, MPC co-chair, led to a set of content recommendations for Introduction to Statistics (Math& 146). 

💡Updated MATH& 146 Content Recommendations, Nov 2024

Over the last decade, a large number of colleges have invested in redesigning their precollege math courses that lead to Statistics realizing that the algebra intensive coursework that was designed for students on a pathway to Calculus was not the appropriate preparation for Statistics. Some colleges developed these sequences as simply pared down versions of the traditional pathways while others introduced new content based on backward design from statistics and took the opportunity to make significant course design and pedagogical reform.

Within the last few years, an increasing number of colleges have begun implementing and designing corequisite courses for Introduction to Statistics in an effort to even more closely align student supports with the college level Statistics content that students will need to be successful in their degrees.

Resources

• MATH& 146 Content Recommendations, November 2024

• Dana Center Curricular Materials for Statistical Reasoning – An adaptation of STATWAY available through Pearson.

• STATWAY – Statistical reasoning courses offered by Carnegie Math Pathways.

• Curriculum Research Group: Introductory Statistics

• StatPREP.org Teaching Data-centric Statistics

• Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) Reports

The Dana Center's DCMP Issue Brief: Preservice Elementary Education provides a national perspective on work relevant to this pathway.

In July 2017, an Associate in Business DTA/MRP was established. Since that time, CTC mathematics faculty have been involved in an ongoing discussion of whether the prerequisite for MATH& 148 should also be commonly numbered.

Resources

• Prerequisites for MATH& 148 research and survey results