I would love if more institutions offered math courses tailored to specific fields of study.
I can say that as an undergraduate, I did not fair well in my general calculus course because I did not see the application of it for the natural resources realm. I also feel that teachers/teaching assistants play a huge factor. For my one required calculus course, I had a teaching assistant that was not fluent in English that taught my recitations as well as the teacher, and it was incredibly difficult to understand concepts and how they might apply. That opens up a whole different can of worms, but the general principle is that teachers should try to meet students half-way when it comes to enthusiasm and real world applications. I feel that tailored math courses would help many students realize why math is so important in the first place. Rob ________________________________________ From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [[email protected]] on behalf of Sarah Shannon [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, April 12, 2013 8:51 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Calculus for Biology Majors When I was getting my B.S. in Plant Biology at the University of California, Davis, we were required to take a full year of Calculus. They had an excellent course called "Calculus for Biology Majors". It was quite rigorous, and required a lot of work from us, but was the best math course I've ever taken. All questions were in the form of word problems (e.g., given the following information, how often must a patient take the drug to maintain a concentration level above 100ppm in the blood?). I highly recommend courses like this for biology programs. I can think of ways to adapt physics and statistics courses in a similar manner. Sarah Shannon Indiana University
