Where To Begin? Prerequisites, Corequisites, and Calculus Success

More than a decade of research from multiple states and systems supports the replacement of stand-alone remedial courses with corequisite approaches that provide additional support for students in gateway math courses such as Statistics, Liberal Arts Math, and College Algebra. For students in STEM pathways requiring Calculus, the question is more complicated: Colleges often have credit-bearing prerequisites before Calculus, though the sequences vary by college and by state. Research is just beginning to examine this issue. Are students best served when they are defaulted into a Calculus course with support, regardless of their high school records, or should one or more prerequisites be available for select student populations? In this session we looked at how some colleges are updating their on-ramps to Calculus, including through corequisite supports, with a goal of closing institutional performance gaps in STEM math pathways.