PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #21: Education.
Wednesday, August 8, 2001. Presentation from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM. Exhibition Hall

Quantitative Environmental Learning Project.

Hull, Joseph¹, Langkamp, Greg¹, ¹

ABSTRACT- How do we attract and retain potential science and mathematics majors? QELP is an NSF-funded initiative to provide resources for college teachers to integrate mathematics and environmental science instruction at the introductory level. The goals of QELP are to promote numeracy among liberal arts majors and beginning science and mathematics students, and to increase retention and interest in these disciplines. A hierarchy of strategies to reach these goals ranges from team teaching interdisciplinary courses to using examples of applied mathematics in traditional stand-alone courses. Integrated resources that readily bridge these disciplines, and that are modular, flexible and authentic, are not widely available. At the QELP website (http://seattlecentral.org/qelp), teachers can find real data sets illustrating a variety of environmental and mathematics topics combined, sample classroom exercises using applied mathematics to analyze and model environmental problems, and other quantitative environmental resources. We've used these materials to develop and teach a linked environmental science and algebra/statistics course which has been successful as a capstone course for liberal arts majors and as a model course for apprentice science and mathematics majors. Approximately two dozen faculty, primarily from our principal outreach area in the Pacific Northwest, have obtained our complete set of exercises, and are establishing partially and fully integrated courses at their institutions.

KEY WORDS: education, interdisciplinary, mathematics, environment