Black River Technical College’s Math Department Chair Daphne Perkins participated in the Strong Start to Finish AR Math Education for Nurses Task Force.
Representatives from the Arkansas Department of Education and Arkansas Association of Community Colleges, along with one nursing instructor and one math instructor from 32 Arkansas Community Colleges stewarded by representatives from the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas, Austin and the Mathematical Association of America, and Quality and Safety Education collaborated through a series of virtual meetings and completed offline tasks between January and June of 2022 in an effort to improve mathematic training provided to nursing students.
“My role was to provide input on mathematics/health care content for the development of a quantitative reasoning course relevant to healthcare professionals,” said Perkins. “I served on the Measurement Domain Math Ed writing team. Our team also reviewed the recommendations of the Algebra Domain Math Education writing team.”
The team of nursing and math instructors dissected the criteria for math taught within the nursing program, deemed what pieces were necessary and unnecessary, reevaluated the curriculum and produced a document outlining recommendations for changes in the curriculum that would improve both transferability and reliability. The final document produced will be distributed to nursing programs/learning institutions statewide.