John Nunnery, Professor of Higher Education at Old Dominion University, is the lead author of a new article in Innovative Higher Education that challenges how colleges understand student success in gateway mathematics. Co-authored with Charles Mathies, the study analyzes more than 26,000 first-time, full-time students across ten entering cohorts and finds that grades of D, F, course withdrawals, and not attempting credit-bearing mathematics are not interchangeable outcomes, but distinct momentum pathways associated with different retention patterns. Students who earned even the lowest passing grade, a D–, were retained at substantially higher rates than students who failed or withdrew. Students who made no attempt at credit-bearing mathematics during their first year had lower predicted retention than students who failed or withdrew. The authors caution that aggregate DFW rates can obscure these differences and misses the students who have the highest attrition risk of all; those that delay entry into credit-bearing mathematics at all. Current practice limits institutions’ ability to design supports aligned with the specific ways students’ academic momentum is preserved, disrupted, or dissipated.
Nunnery, J. A., & Mathies, C. (2026). Rethinking DFW in gateway mathematics: Preserved, disrupted, and dissipated momentum pathways to student retention. Innovative Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-026-09896-3