STEM. All the push and pull.

Friday, December 5, 2025

Dedicated students, distinguished colleagues and dear friends,

Happy Friday!

I grew up in inner city Tehran where for the school kids like me, summers meant either catching up or jumping ahead, depending on your performance during the previous nine months. You see, every school kid had the opportunity to successfully complete the eight or nine subjects in each grade in the normal nine-month academic cycle. But if you needed more time to satisfactorily complete the difficult subjects — math, physics, chemistry and biology — August exam retake was your last chance. Otherwise, you had to repeat the entire slate of subjects, even those you had successfully completed during the previous academic year. Talk about incentive to get things done!

For those who needed to catch up, concentrated four-week summer classes offered the opportunity, as it did for those who had successfully completed the previous grade but wanted to get a head start for the coming year. So, summer courses were commonplace regardless of your level of aptitude on any topic. I was surprised to see some but not much of the same effort when I came to America and enrolled as a freshman at LSU. I felt that I had a leg up in math, physics and chemistry, thanks to all the push and pull of my previous summer years. In fact, at LSU, as a freshman, I served as an instructor for remedial math courses offered to freshmen who had catching up to do.

Fast forward to today when 1 in 8 college freshmen lack rudimentary high-school math skills. The problem manifests itself in substandard graduation rates, particularly in rural America where nearly 10 million students, 1 in 5 public school students, attend rural schools. Rural high school students are more likely than city kids to earn their diplomas, but they remain less likely to go to college, especially into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programs.

Here at S&T, we are no exception. According to a recent student success report, less than half of our students entered as freshmen at the appropriate math level in their program. In engineering or math-dependent majors, 49% entered at the appropriate level, while in less math-dependent majors, only 42% entered at the appropriate math level. And yet, thanks to our thoughtful programs, dedicated faculty, tutors, counselors and advisors, the great majority of our students graduate and enter high-paying and rewarding careers.

Interestingly, 20 years ago, U.S. higher education institutions were alerted by a wake-up call when the National Academies released its influential report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. The report was emphatic in highlighting that the United States’ competitiveness in the global marketplace was at risk due to lack of broad-based STEM education. The report called for more undergraduate and graduate science scholarships, new programs to train science teachers, and more research funding, among other initiatives. It also pointed to the need to engage more children in STEM activities at a younger age.

The good news is that here at S&T, a team of our faculty and staff has been working to ensure that our applicants are ready for college and placed in the appropriate math classes to enter and stay on track in their STEM academic programs. This dedicated team represents our student success, mathematics and statistics, online learning and education innovation, institutional effectiveness and information technology teams.

As a result, and as a part of our new Momentum summer program, we are revitalizing our Fast Track for Math program in 2026 to help incoming students start in the correct course sequence, build a stronger foundation and improve their four-year graduation rates right from the start. The program is open from the end of March to the beginning of August as a self-paced, asynchronous course. Courses include fundamentals of algebra, college algebra, trigonometry and pre-calculus. The Momentum courses will be offered on campus and online in a self-paced manner with full faculty, tutoring and advising support. Participating students will receive college credit and build confidence for their first-semester courses here at S&T. Further, these courses will help reduce the need for remediation or schedule changes during students’ later college years.

Finally, to all rising high school juniors and seniors, I say, thanks to our generous alumni donors, our summer Momentum courses will be affordable and available to all college-bound, STEM-minded students, and will help families navigate the college-readiness journey.

Warmly,

-Mo.
 
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Mohammad Dehghani, PhD
Chancellor
mo@mst.edu | 573-341-4116

206 Parker Hall, 300 West 13th Street, Rolla, MO 65409-0910
chancellor.mst.edu