The department was excited to participate in the Maryland STEM Festival by hosting Mathstravaganza 2016! There were many math activities and games set up as booths and all run by our math and math education students along with some faculty. We had a lot of local children attend and learn how math and logic are fun and an integral part of their lives. Special thanks to Dr. Ben Wilson for organizing this event! We're looking forward to doing this again next year!
Five Stevenson Applied Mathematics majors, Dalis Carter, Rebecca Gruver, Courtney Hohn, Brooks Holloway, and Gerald Roman-Gonzalez, and professor, Dr. Benjamin Wilson, visited Johns Hopkins University for the Fall 2016 Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Maryland-DC-Virginia (MD-DC-VA) Sectional meeting. The students got a chance to learn about mathematics research and teaching from math professors and graduate students from the around the country. The conference featured a morning address titled Extreme Calculus, given by Paul Zorn of St. Olaf College and an afternoon address titled Euler in Two Acts, given by William Dunham of Bryn Mawr College. It was a great conference and experience for the students.
A popular course for non-science majors is PHYS 115, You are Here: Earth and Space Sciences. This course studies aspects of astronomy, geology, hydrology, and meteorology, and how these fields are part of our daily lives. The focus of last week's lab, in Dr. Candice Duncan's class, was to learn the importance of contour maps and the information they provide, particularly, understanding that the numbers on contour maps represent elevation, and how to read a topographic map. The students identified the highest and lowest elevation on the map and explained what the values meant. Finally, they were asked to create their own contour lines given a map with streams and select elevations recorded.
Starting in the summer of 2016, all first and second semester Calculus classes at Stevenson adopted a new textbook and teaching method moving away from the traditional lecture style in favor of an active and engaged classroom experience. The textbook, Active Calculus, by Matthew Boelkins, David Austin, and Steven Schlicker out of Grand Valley State University, is free for download by students and instructors and is written to require students to be active learners. Students in Dr. Wilson's classes this semester sit at round tables in groups of 3 or 4 in the SoLVE Center and work on problems together. They then present their solutions to the class.
Happy Halloween from the Math and Physics Department! It was a fun day on campus!