Curricular Change in Institutional Context: A Profile of the SUMMIT-P Institutions

There is a national call to improve the mathematics curricula in the first two undergraduate years to improve student success and engagement. But curricular change happens in an institutional context: Who are the students, and what do they need to succeed? What is the climate for change? Does the department regularly revise its courses and curriculum? Is it common for different departments to collaborate on curricular change? What supports or obstacles does the department, college, or university have for changing the curriculum? Who are the institutional stakeholders, and what practices build their buy-in? In the SUMMIT-P project, nine different institutions ranging from small private colleges to mid-sized state universities to large public universities and a community college worked on changing the undergraduate mathematics curricula in the first two years. This paper examines the context at each institution in the project. We hope that other institutions looking to follow in our collaboration with the partner disciplines on revising the introductory mathematics curriculum at their institution will find a familiar context in one (or more) of these institutions. We include a list of questions that programs can use to examine their own institutional context