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Bill Gates Visits Math My Way At Foothill College

Last Updated on Thursday, 12 August 2010 Written by Jen Gednalske Tuesday, 27 April 2010

On April 20, 2010, Foothill College welcomed a visit from Bill Gates, chairman of the Microsoft Corporation and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates visited Foothill to see its exemplary "Math My Way" program in action.

Members of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are touring colleges seeking innovative educational practices. The Math My Way program is considered exemplary among community colleges nationwide.

Rachel Mudge, a mathematics instructor at Foothill College described the program’s new approach to teaching math as “highly-structured, self-paced learning” that allows students to really have the opportunity to grasp one mathematical concept before having to more on to the next.

“Traditionally, a semester long course might spend one week on one topic, them move on to the next the following week,” Mudge said. “Even if you didn’t fully get the last concept, you would still have to move on with the rest of the class.”

“It takes a typical Math My Way student two to three quarters to finish the program. If it may take a student four weeks to fully comprehend fractions, for example. If you move on to adding and subtracting fractions before the student understands the basics, they won’t succeed.”

Rather than just encouraging students to scrape by with a C to meet their math requirements, Math My Way focuses on mastery of concepts. A student needs to have at least an 87 percent on an exam before moving to the next step. This ensures that students are actually building on their knowledge not just struggling to get by and helps encourage confidence in mathematical skills.

Bill Gates

“We get students all the time that have struggled with math their whole lives. Its very difficult for the K-12 system to be able to meet their required standards and benchmarks and still give students the individual time and pacing they need to succeed in math,” Mudge said. “Instead of just trying to pull students through the ranks with no foundation, we wanted to develop a system that encourages students to not fail and to keep practicing.”

Math My Way uses practice, lectures and technology to help students improve their math skills. Because the program allows students to work at their own pace, some students may finish within 12 weeks or take up to two years.

Foothill developed Math My Way in an effort to create more math, science and engineering graduates, especially from historically underserved communities. Many students were arriving at the Foothill lacking basic math skills and the confidence to succeed.

Gates’ visit, along with several members of his foundation, was a special surprise for students who had only been told they would have a guest observer. Gates has been looking for programs that would help resolve American issues with math skills that are leaving the country behind others in mathematics, sciences and engineering.

The Math My Way program was developed by math instructors Mudge, Nicole Gray, Phuong Lam, Faun Maddux, Kathy Perino and Foothill College Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering Division Dean, Peter Murray. In 2007, the Math My Way team received the League for Innovation in the Community College Innovation of the Year Award.

In December 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $3.6 million to Global Skills for College Completion (GSCC) Project. Perino was one of the instructors selected to be a part of the GSCC project’s 26 member “think tank” comprised of outstanding basic skills educators in 16 states on 13 community college campuses.

The GSCC is a developmental math and writing project. The goal of the GSCC is to try out new ideas, develop innovative resources and introduce fresh ways of teaching developmental math and writing to community college students that will consistently increase students' pass rates.<>

Jen Gednalske is a CCC Technology Center and California Virtual Campus Project Manager
and a TechEDge Editor.