Faculty at the University of Oklahoma are producing, evaluating, and disseminating an interdisciplinary mathematics course for students whose major does not require calculus. Many of the ideas from calculus such as rates of change are included. The goals are to provide students with an appreciation of the intrinsic worth of mathematics, expose them to real applications of mathematics, and empower them with the quantitative and qualitative skills necessary for analytical and mathematical reasoning. The course is not to be a broad survey of either mathematics or its applications; rather, it focuses on a few significant and timely applications of mathematics provided by professions from agriculture, biology, business, chemistry, engineering, music, physics, political science, and zoology. A key feature of the course is the implementation of modern technology to provide students with fundamental tools such as graphical analysis, which have broad application and allow a diminished role for traditional drill and calculation. One produce of the project will be a commercially published text.
