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This study of the relationships between mathematical ability and success and retention in a general chemistry course was conducted at an open‐enrollment university whose mission is to provide a quality education to a culturally and economically diverse student body. We studied the correlation between the demonstrated level of mathematical ability and success in chemistry and the correlation between the demonstrated level of mathematical ability and retention in chemistry. After the chemistry department implemented a mathematics prerequisite for the chemistry course, data were examined to compare success and retention prior to and after the adoption of the prerequisite. Analysis showed that success and retention in chemistry increased after the adoption of the mathematics prerequisite.

In this mixed-methods study we identify situations that impact students' decisions to withdraw from a course and examine their affective reasoning and attitudes toward course withdrawal. Exploring students' decision-making processes through the lens of self-authorship, we show that students frequently seek information from people with whom they have a personal rather than academic relationship, make decisions with little awareness of academic consequences, and often experience a feeling of dissonance when withdrawing from courses, even describing themselves as “quitters.” Our results lead to recommendations that can assist academic advisors in developing meaningful interventions that advance students' decision-making abilities and intellectual development.

Every invertible n-by-n matrix over a ring R satisfying the first Bass stable range condition is the product of n simple automorphisms, and there are invertible matrices which cannot be written as the products of a smaller number of simple automorphisms. This generalizes results of Ellers on division rings and local rings.

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