Mathematics For Scientists And Engineers Ii At The Colorado School Of Mines

Colorado School of Mines (CSM) is in the process of a major curriculum revision as a response to the changing world for today’s science, mathematics, and engineering graduates. An integral part of that revision is the development of new mathematics courses to better prepare students for their studies in science and engineering. Mathematics for Science and Engineering II is a four hour course which addresses the concerns of faculty from other disciplines who comment that students finish their calculus and differential equations courses unprepared or under prepared to do the mathematics in their courses. These same faculty claim that students are unable to translate the calculus they know into new concepts where problems appear to be different. This input led to the idea of developing a set of problems based on the concepts from these various disciplines. By having students work through these problems, students begin to understand the necessity of their mathematics studies, the connections of the mathematics to other subjects, the richness of the other disciplines, and the underlying mathematics beneath the disguises imposed by the variations in terminology in the disciplines.