"I know I'm at the right place at the right time," she said.ĭyce said more work is to be done in the coming years, but the experiment seems to be successful. Santa Fe faculty have worked with her to help her succeed. "I was bawling my eyeballs all day long." "For her, math is just numbers, and she plays with them," Dickman-Vuillet said. Dickman-Vuillet works with her sister, a nurse, on her homework. "I really don't want to die and go to heaven with a high school diploma."ĭickman-Vuillet says she wants to become a psychologist, but the math requirements are harder than reciprocals of a fraction. "If I'm ever going to do it, it's now or never," she said. Her two sons also attend college.Īfter spending the past 20 years living in Switzerland with her husband, Dickman-Vuillet returned home to Gainesville. Her mother earned a doctorate from the University of Florida. Going to college has always been a dream for Dickman-Vuillet. "In less than 20 minutes, they've totally scrambled my brain," she said. Withdrawal rates are down and success rates were up 9 percent in fall 2010.ĭickman-Vuillet said having access to the computer-based program helps her much more than a lecture class, which speeds through various material. Across all intermediate algebra classes, nearly double the number of students in studio classes passed the common final compared with traditional classes. Students with the same instructor in a traditional course made 64 percent. In fall 2010, math studio students enrolled in intermediate algebra on average made nearly 69 percent on a common final. "If math studio didn't exist, I probably wouldn't make it through college at all," she said.ĭata show the math studio's approach is helping more students get a handle on math. In the math studio, Dickman-Vuillet can spend as long as she needs on common denominators or integers. "In many respects, math has become a barrier for students to achieve their goals, whether it's an AA degree or a certificate," Dyce said. "It's a concern for the two-year schools as well as four-year universities."Īccording to the Developmental Education Institute created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, nearly 60 percent of students enrolling in community college need remedial classes, which cost taxpayers more than $2 billion a year. "Developmental education is almost really exploding," Dyce said. "It gets discouraging like, ‘When is it going to end?' " he said.īut the problem isn't just limited to Santa Fe. In reality, just getting through remedial classes can take two years. In 2007, Santa Fe realized it had a problem with students entering college who were not ready for advanced math, Dyce said.Įducators say there could be several reasons students are ill-prepared, including problems at home, lax school standards or poor understanding of mathematics fundamentals compounded over the years.īy nature, Santa Fe's two-year degrees should take two years, Dyce said.
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"What we're trying to do is to create a very supportive environment where the students feel very free to ask questions," Byron Dyce, a Title III coordinator at SFC, said. The classes also are longer than traditional classes, with one 75-minute focus group at the end of the week.
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Four of the five remedial math classes have been redesigned into a math studio, where students learn using computer software and have access to tutors to assist them.Īs many as six tutors and additional faculty wander the math studio, which can house as many as 150 students, to answer questions. Santa Fe College received a federal grant for $2 million over five years to help students not only pass math classes but succeed. Maybe that is part of the problem."Ī federal grant has made a place for struggling students like Dickman-Vuillet, a place where math is a barrier she hopes to break down. "Not only does math not make any sense to me the methods or ways that it's been taught to me don't make any sense. She writes notes to herself, both encouraging and discouraging. One doodle shows a round hole and a square peg. She doodles in her pre-algebra notebook while working through her course at Santa Fe College. Multiplication tables vex the 50-year-old student, and fractions dissolve her into tears. For Jeanne Dickman-Vuillet, math and numbers just don't add up.
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