Arlington, Va. — Community colleges need to do a much better job of explaining to students how the course sequences in mathematics and science fit together and lead to degrees and careers, said P. Uri Treisman, a nationally recognized, prize-winning advocate for change in education, at the National Science Foundation here.

Mr. Treisman offered a blitz of advice and encouragement during his keynote talk at an annual NSF event highlighting education by community colleges. Mr. Treisman is a professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, and he is known for his scholarly work in identifying factors that help minority students succeed in math courses. (He started his own academic career at a two-year institution, Los Angeles City College, where he was working as a campus gardener and studying landscape design when he overheard a mathematics lecture and became intrigued.)

He has visited many community colleges with NSF-financed projects to improve teaching. Two-year colleges play an important role in educating future scientists and engineers. More than half of minority students who earn bachelor’s degrees in those fields start their studies there. And community colleges are under pressure nationally to produce more technically trained workers who can help drive local economic development.

Mr. Treisman found that many instructors at community colleges were demoralized by their students’ high failure rates. “They’re working in a system that’s somewhat dysfunctional and broken, yet they’re teaching their hearts out,” he said. Effective teaching and career guidance are especially needed in those institutions because many of the students are poor, work part time, and constantly re-evaluate whether their studies will pay off.

However, many community colleges are wedded to traditional course sequences in math that aren’t clearly matched to career paths that might interest students, Mr. Treisman said. Instead of algebra and pre-calculus, he said, a more effective preparation for many jobs would often be a one-year sequence of general math followed by statistics.

Some institutions have succeeded at retaining students in technically oriented training programs — in biotechnology and in nursing and other allied health professions, for example — through some simple steps, he said. Those include enrolling students with similar interests in similar courses, the equivalent of learning communities.

Efforts like those, often financed by the NSF and other external sources, have helped some community colleges build “beautiful islands of excellence” in teaching math and science, Mr. Treisman said. But too often, the projects don’t survive when the money goes away, he said. Community colleges must build on one another’s successful approaches and not continually re-invent the wheel, he said (a challenge facing colleges of all types).

Despite the challenges, he was optimistic. Because of middle schools’ focused efforts at improving teaching, their students’ achievement in math has steadily improved. Why can’t that happen in community colleges? he asked. “Even on a crappy day, we can do amazing things for our students and our kids.” —Jeffrey Brainard