Renovating Calculus through Interdisciplinary Partnerships Using the SUMMIT-P Model

TL;DR

This paper reviews interdisciplinary partnership strategies used in the SUMMIT-P project to enhance calculus education in early college, emphasizing curricular relevance and student transferability.

Contribution

It presents a novel interdisciplinary approach to redesign calculus courses based on collaborative research and implementation in a university setting.

Findings

Improved course focus and relevance at Augsburg University

Enhanced student transfer of calculus to disciplinary contexts

Successful implementation of interdisciplinary curricular changes

Abstract

This review paper highlights research findings from the authors' participation in the SUMMIT-P project, which studied how to build and sustain multi-institutional interdisciplinary partnerships to design and implement curricular change in mathematics courses in the first two years of college, using the Curriculum Foundations Project (CFP) as a launchpad. The CFP interviewed partner discipline faculty to learn about the mathematical needs of their students and how they use mathematics in their courses. This paper summarizes research findings from the CFP and the SUMMIT-P project, and presents a detailed example of how these findings were implemented in the calculus sequence at Augsburg University to improve course focus, increase the relevance of course content, and provide opportunities for student to practice transference of the calculus to disciplinary contexts. This paper is based on the talk "Applied and Active Calculus Built Through Interdisciplinary Partnerships" presented at the 2022 AWM Research Symposium in the Session on "Research on the First Two Years of College Mathematics".