All faculty teaching these courses at Lehman College must distribute the official syllabi at the beginning of the semester. Copies will be made by the department and available in your mailbox the first week of class. See the Lehman College Calculus Webpage for these syllabi and other online resouces. During the second and third week of classes their will be review sessions advertised around the department.

The following suggestions are basically a compilation of methods used by faculty in our department. Obviously some approaches don't mesh with others. Please review the ideas and feel free to suggestion your own by emailing the calculus webmaster (sormanic @ member.ams.org).

Some suggestions to instructors:

• Insure that all students have the correct prerequisite courses as our computers do not verify this.
• Offer a quiz or assessment test within week so students can assess whether they are prepared for the course.
• Exams should cover material from the current course incorporated with material from prior courses: factoring, trigonometry and exponentials should be reinforced in each course.
• Let students know if they should drop the course next to their first exam grade and recommend a course of action. Students might be recommended to repeat the previous course, either officially or unofficially, or continue to sit in on your own course, or just to work their way through the previous course's syllabus doing all homework. Warn students not to just drop the math altogether. You may also send the student to discuss the situation with the math advisor and recommend they show the advisor the exam and any assessment tests they've taken.
• Strongly encourage students to work together, go to the Math Lab in groups and to come to office hours.
• One approach to teaching is to start each lesson with a review of the crucial prerequisite material needed in the lesson. Then introduce the new theory (possibly including proofs) and then do examples. Then have the students do similar examples and walk around the room helping them out. Since our students are at many levels it helps to put up 5 problems to work on and give the students enough time so that most students have done at least one problem. The fifth problem should be hard enough to challenge the best. It can lead into the next topic. Extra Credit might be offered as an incentive to motivate students.
• Many students are foreign, so write as much information as possible on the board about everything from the Math Lab to the reasoning behind each step in an example.
• Many faculty like to offer regular quizes to give students feedback and to push the students to do more work.
• As at all universities, we need to avoid cheating on exams: be cautious of blue booklets students may sneak into the exam, make sure all bags are closed, give multiple versions of exams when the room is crowded, check students have only simple calculators or disallow use of calculators, do not allow cell phones or any electronic devises, do not tell the students a short list of exam problems as students will be inspired to sneak solutions into the room in one of the many ways describd above.
• Many faculty give exams with one problem per page printed on the top of the page. This makes grading easier.
• Students who are in danger of failing should be warned to register for the course again in the next semester so they don't have difficulty registering for a full section last minute. Students who are likely to pass should be reminded to take their next math course immediately in the subsequent semester. Summer courses should not be recommended to students unless they are retaking a course they've failed or seen before. It is very difficult for students to learn Precalculus or Calculus in 6 weeks.
• The final should be thorough, covering all skills needed in subsequent courses, including skills from prior courses.
• Passing a student who is really not ready to pass is not doing the student a favor. If you are concerned about the exceptional circumstances of a few students who have worked really hard on a course, speak to the math department chairman about the students and what might be done for them.
• Remember a grade of F is not averaged into the overall GPA if the course is retaken and a new grade is earned. It does remain on the transcript. Officially students who pass a course cannot retake the course for a better grade even though this might be the best course of action for such a student. You may wish to talk to the Department Chair about such a student or refer the student to a math department advisor.

Lehman College Calculus Webpage

Please send webpage comments to sormanic @ member.ams.org