Maui Community College Hires Empirical Education for an Evaluation of NSF-Funded Project
In Hawaii, Ho’okahua means “to lay a foundation”. Focusing on Hawaiian students over multiple years, the Ho’okahua Project aims to increase the number of Maui Community College (MCC) students entering, persisting, and succeeding in college level science, mathematics, and other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) degree programs. Several strategies have already been implemented, including a bridge program with the high schools from which the MCC student community is largely drawn.
The Maui Educational Consortium provides leadership for this work and has been instrumental in a number of other initiatives for increasing the capacity to achieve their goals. For example, the implementation of Cognitive Tutor for Algebra 1 was the subject of a related Empirical Education randomized experiment. Another important capacity fostered by the Educational Consortium, working with the University of Hawai’i Office of the State Director for Career and Technical Education, is an initiative called HI-PASS, which aggregates student data across high school and community college. Initially in its evaluation, Empirical Education will be using information on math courses developed through the HI-PASS project to follow the success of students from the earlier study.