Number Crunching Expertise Helps Freshmen Succeed

When math placement score data revealed that math achievement levels could present significant obstacles to students’ success, UHD faculty members sprang into action, adding extra mathematics laboratories, tutoring options and a supplemental math course.

Professor Gary Greer, assistant dean of University College, helps guide such support strategies. University college serves as the academic home of undergraduates before they declare their majors. Greer is particularly interested in research leading to the improvement of the freshman experience and uses his doctorate in educational psychology with a focus in educational measurement to help UHD provide a variety of programs to assist students.

“We can measure the effectiveness of our programs. Data analysis helps identify a problem, come up with a strategy and test our results,” he said. “It’s a good closed loop. We can see whether students pass a course, increase their grade-point average, re-enroll for another semester, declare a major—all the way up to whether they graduate or not.”

The research is part of two key UHD programs—the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) and Achieving the Dream. The QEP emphasizes active learning. Achieving the Dream, a national initiative, focuses on opening doors of higher education to underserved populations.

Greer has been an invited speaker annually at national and international conferences where he shares information and UHD’s results. His expertise in data collection and interpretation strengthens his work with students as they enter and move through University College.

“I am honored to accept invitations to talk about what we do, but I’m always in a hurry to get back here, to walk in the door and be with smart people who have smart problems and who figure out smart solutions,” Greer said.

After 20 years at UHD, Greer says he still jumps up in the morning, excited to face the day helping his students. He teaches a course twice a week, and gives students an understanding of the role of an educated person in modern society.