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CEPC 04/05-7
March 30, 2005

To: St. Olaf College Faculty
Fr: CEPC
Re: Proposed Revisions to the Requirements for the Mathematics Major

At the April faculty meeting CEPC will move the approval of revisions to the requirements for the Mathematics major.

Requirements for the Major

Students arrange a major in mathematics by developing an IndividualizedMathematics Proposal (IMaP) tailored to their particular interests. The courses that are a part of an student’s IMaP are determined through consultation with a MSCS faculty member, and approval by the department chair.

A student’s IMaP normally includes two semesters of calculus, one semester of linear algebra and at least seven intermediate or advanced mathematics courses. The intermediate courses should include two transition courses (from among Math 244, Math 252, and Math 2xx), and courses from at least three different mathematical perspectives (modeling, continuous, algebraic, discrete/combinatorial). Students must take at least two Level III courses. One of the advanced courses must be part of a designated Level II-Level III sequence.

Table 1 below categorizes many mathematics courses into perspectives. Topics courses will adopt different perspectives from semester to semester depending on the material presented.

Table 1: Examples of Perspectives

Table 2 below gives examples of sequenced courses in mathematics.

Table 2: Examples of Sequences

Students may include up to two related courses, from Statistics or Computer Science, as part of their ImaP.

Mathematics majors who intend to teach grades 5-12mathematics must meet the above requirements (see also the Department of Education description and the mathematics licensure adviser). Their IMaPs must include Mathematics 232, 244, 252, 262, 356, a course in statistics, and Education 350 in order to meet the State of Minnesota licensure requirements. Students wishing to add grades 5-8 mathematics licensure to a non-mathematics teaching major should also submit an IMaP. Courserequirements include calculus, linear algebra, statistics, geometry, and a course in the nature of mathematics, as well asEducation 350.

Rationale:

While the basic structure of the mathematics major has not changed in decades, mathematics itself has changed dramatically, as has the role of student research. The need for theory and computation in fields as diverse as biology and political science has brought mathematics into the forefront of interdisciplinary work. Currently, St. Olaf’s pure and applied mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists continue to do disciplinary research, but also work alongside bench scientists and social scientists to address a wide variety of research questions; and students are included at every stage.

The proposed revisions to the mathematics major will preserve a strong foundation in traditional mathematical theory, incorporate more modern and interdisciplinary mathematics, promote undergraduate research, and allow students the flexibility to design strong majors which fit their educational needs.

The proposed revisions constitute three principal innovations:

1. Transition courses: In courses that help students move from lower-level computational courses to upper-level theory courses, students will have more flexibility, and the option to develop tools for interdisciplinary applications of mathematics. Students will be required to take two of three transition courses (Elementary Real Analysis, Abstract Algebra, and a new course, Modern Computational Mathematics).
   
2. Perspectives: In recent years, mathematicians have developed more finesse in partitioning the field of mathematics. Beyond the distinction of pure and applied mathematics, it is now common to identify different viewpoints in mathematics. To insure students have appropriate encounters with the breadth of mathematics, the proposed major asks students to take one course from each of the following viewpoints:
   
   a. Modeling : In this perspective, students model, simulate, and analyze physical, bilogical, and economic phenomena.
   
   b. Continuous : In this perspective, students explore theory and applications of the continuous functions they first learn about in high school mathematics.
   
   c. Discrete/Combinatorial : In this perspective, students study topics ranging from graph theory to the development and efficiency analysis of algorithms.
   
   d. Algebraic : In this perspective, students learn about the power of abstraction via axiomatic systems.
   
3. Sequences: Students will achieve depth in the major through two Level III courses, in contrast to the current requirement of one, and at least one Level III course must be part of a thematic sequence directly linked to a Level II prerequisite.