Teaching Performance

In Summer of 2005 I arrived at Texas A&M University Texarkana. Here, I taught more than 80% of the courses, and 100% of the courses directly relevant to the ETS Senior Exit Exam in Biology. Below, are displayed widespread and sustained momentum in student performance under my watch. I focus on this period of my teaching career because it was possible to tease out in great detail how I was impacting the educational experience of students. Enrollment was dominated by first-generation students who transferred from community colleges, transferred from other schools after lackluster performance, or were place-bound to Texarkana. (Scroll down)

Before my arrival at A&M-Texarkana in the 2005-2006 academic year; the composite scores of graduating senior biology majors averaged below the 10th %ile and only 17% of all graduating biology majors found employment in some area of biology, only 8% gained admission to graduate school, and none had been admitted to medical school.

After my arrival at A&M-Texarkana students who enrolled in my courses (Fall 2005-Spring 2006) scored 10 to 30% higher in every category of the 2006 Major Field Exam than those who took the same courses from other faculty (Previously most of these courses were taught by a tenured Dean.). These scores steadily rose every year after my arrival, with 55% of graduating seniors in 2009 having composite scores above the 70th %ile. Student scores rose in every subset of the ETS biology exit exam (ecology [r2 = 0.644], organismal biology [r2 = 0.837], genetics [r2 = 0.318], and cell biology [r2 = 0.675]) during my tenure. About 36% of 2009 graduating senior biology majors scored above the 90th %ile in the ecology subset of the ETS major field exam in biology in the 2008-2009 academic year. About 25% of graduates in 2009 were admitted to graduate school (M.S. = 19%, Ph. D. = 6%), ~8% entered medical school (including a few MD/PHD students), 28% entered allied health fields including pharmacy and dentistry, ~36% of students found jobs in biological fields (instead of graduate or professional school), and ~1% of students left the biology profession. Retention remained at ~90% among biology majors.

Detailed Outcomes

Student Improvement
2005-2006

This graph shows the percentile rank nationally of students at A&M-Texarkana. MLM represents scores by students who took the key courses from Malcolm McCallum. FP represents the scores of students who took the key courses in each area of the ETS Major Field Exam from someone else. Students performed vastly better in sections where they took the respective course from Malcolm L. McCallum

Student Improvement
2005 - 2009

Student raw scores on the ETS Major Field Exam in Biology continued to rise every year. Data in this graph excludes any subset score from a student who never took the respective key core course. For example, if a student took cell biology but not ecology, the student's score for cell biology would be included in the data for cell biology subset, but not the ecology subset? Why? Because the purpose was to determine the impact of the courses on their scores.

Student Improvement
2005 - 2009

Student raw scores on the ETS Major Field Exam in Biology were drastically higher when I taught the core courses than if courses were taken from other professors. In fact, despite the drastic improvements in cell biology and genetics, the students only marginally improved in biochemistry. upon examination of the breakout questions, I determined that the modest rise in biochemistry scores was due to material that crossed over into cell biology. Biochemistry, which was taught by an adjunct, student scores remained at or below the 10th %ile from 2005 - 2009.