Piedmont Technical College's challenge is to help entering students develop increasingly strong mathematics proficiency in order to meet the expectations of senior institutions and area employers. "Tweaking" the mathematics program has not helped sufficiently. The problems seem to lie with an emphasis on number-crunching rather than application and meaning, problems and data lacking interest and relevance, and a teacher-driven pedagogy. This project is infusing parallel strands of activity across some 18 mathematics and 24 related science and technology courses, to place students, realistic applications, and the use of mathematics at the heart of learning. The Computer-Based Laboratory (CBL) system is being infused into 25 courses as a way both to bring math to life and to focus on analysis and use of data rather than on its calculation. With this technology, student teams are designing and implementing their own experiments, adjusting variables, raising and testing hypotheses, and seeing mathematics as a tool for inquiry and understanding, not a topic for memorization and rote processing. A dedicated mathematics computer lab allows for the introduction of Minitab statistical software. This application is shifting the focus from monotonous calculations and number crunching towards experimentation, hypotheses testing, use of real-world data sets, team assignments, and mathematical displays not now possible in our program. Cumulatively, these initiatives are being used by some 50 faculty in 300 sections of 40 different courses, affecting over 2,000 students over the two-year grant period. Dissemination focuses on internal and area groups as well as state and national conferences and associations, with a particular focus on the participants in South Carolina's 16-college ATE Center for Excellence.
