This project is developing, implementing, evaluating, and disseminating materials and practices for an interdisciplinary mathematics course that is run in collaboration with local industries and government organizations. The course is built around mathematical problems of current local and national interest. In the course, small teams of students are learning and applying mathematical modeling skills through class meetings and close interaction with business partners. In the course, students are developing a better understanding of how mathematics is used to understand current major societal issues and to inform policy decisions, strengthening their oral and written communication skills, and developing their abilities to work effectively in teams. In addition to preparing students to be competitive in non-academic work environments, the project is providing materials and resources to instructors at other institutions to support the development of similar courses in other environments. To that end, the principal investigators are developing and actively disseminating an instructor manual and a student handbook. The instructor manual includes best practices for running the course, a list of suggested project topics, content on mathematical modeling, and specific mathematical background necessary for the suggested topics. The student handbook includes discussion of the roles and responsibilities of individual students working as part of a team, tips on time management, and suggestions about writing for different audiences. The materials will be freely available on the web and will be distributed at workshops held for instructors who are interested in developing similar courses.
is an interdisciplinary course in which students engage in a hands-on learning experience using mathematical modeling to understand current major societal issues of local and national interest. The course is run in collaboration with local businesses, research centers and government organizations that provide data and act as consultants throughout the course thus creating strong connections between academia and industry, while engaging students in a learning and discovery process. In contrast with other university-industry partnerships, the design of the projects and the choice of topics and problems is primarily student-oriented. The instructor for the course will choose a relevant and timely topic of national and local interest. Such topics frequently appear as "front page news" and generate strong interest on the part of the students. The relevance of the topic is important both for recruiting students to enroll in the course and to maintain high motivation levels throughout the semester. The students work in teams of 3--5 students, meeting weekly with the instructor. The students also meet with the local business partner at his or her workplace and keep in regular contact by phone and email. Each team constructs a model that captures the salient features of the proposed problem; populate the model with the data provided by the local collaborator, transformed as necessary; analyze the model using appropriate computer software; and draw conclusions from the model that addresses the proposed problem. To conclude each project, the students communicate their results in both written and oral form. Each team prepares a detailed written report describing the problem, the team's model and analysis, and the conclusions that they reached. At the end of the semester, each team gives a public presentation describing their work in front of an audience formed by mathematics faculty members, undergraduate and graduate students, the local collaborator and other members of the business community. Students present posters explaining their model and conclusions at UNL's Annual Research Fair held every spring, and/or present posters at regional or national conferences (such as the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings and the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women). This NSF award supported the development of the course to ensure its sustainability. Previous offerings of the course required substantial instructor effort and time, so with this support the PIs developed a structure of the course and materials for the course to make it sustainable. All materials have been made publicly available on the course website at www.math.unl.edu/~math-mitc. The award also supported the dissemination of the course to other institutions through annual workshops where interested instructors were provided with a roadmap and materials for offering the course at their institutions. Each workshop included presentations about running the course, choosing the business collaborators, working with students, while outlining the benefits of hands-on, project-based experiences. During the workshops, students in the course gave the final presentations about their projects. Students also presented their results at the University Research Fair and at other local conferences. Workshop materials and participants are posted at www.math.unl.edu/~math-mitc. Outcomes of this NSF award include: - 50 students have taken the Math in the City from 2010 to 2013. - 13 student projects were produced on diverse topics that included: optimizing routes for recycling companies, budgeting and investment for the City of Lincoln Finance Department, groundwater levels for Nebraska's aquifers, analysis of the real estate market for the Lancaster County Assessor. - 9 student presentations about the work done in the course at the university Research Fair, and local conferences (including the Nebraska Conference for Women in Mathematics). - we have produced 8 guidebooks and reference materials for students and instructors - we have had over 40 workshop participants from institutions across United States - 16 talks and posters about Math in the City presented at universities and local and national conferences Additionally, several students have obtained jobs in industry using the course experience, the network of course collaborators has increased, and more instructors have taught the course at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and other institutions.
