When will I ever use this?
IVETTE CHUCA, Mathematics, El Paso Community College"When will I ever use this", is a questions asked by many student. This question occurs frequently and can either encourage or discourage a student from remaining a STEM student. In fact, as an undergraduate and graduate student I too had the same question. I was a student learning mathematics with the goal of becoming a teacher. The answer to this question was simple for someone whose career was to become a Mathematics teacher. As a professor, with many students majoring in different fields the answer is not as simple. Throughout my teaching years my response to this question has changed throughout the years. My responses have gone from you will be tested on this material, you will use these concepts in your STEM classes, to mathematics helps you become critical thinkers, problem-solvers, communicate effectively by pulling out the important information and gain skills that will ultimately be useful to you as a member of this society. I strive to have a better answer for my students and so the way I teach has changed over the years. Problems sets in our textbooks are not enough to engage and spark the curiosity that students have when taking your classes. Students should leave our classes excited and hungry for what they will be learning in their future classes. My biggest obstacle as a professor is not knowing how the mathematics that we are teaching is applied in the engineering, chemistry, or any STEM course. This obstacles has been my motivation to seek opportunities where I can learn how mathematics is used in the STEM courses so that I can then reference examples for my students.
During my last 6 to 8 years of teaching I have focused on more active learning, self-discovery, and assigning problems that require mathematical modeling. To help students become familiar with the city they live in I sometimes use data that is from El Paso https://datausa.io/profile/geo/el-paso-tx/. Students see the need for technology when trying to model problems using data. They learn the concepts in our class and these assignments help students to think critically, make sense of data, and understand the power of modeling. One of the most powerful skills students can learn from our classroom is to be critical thinkers and problems solvers. They should be able to evaluate a set of data and have an idea on how to begin breaking down the data to communicate effectively. Keifer Project is a project that require students to grow kiefer. The students measure the growth every day for 7 to 9 weeks. At the end we usually technology to model the data and answer questions using the data. This project focuses on exponential functions. Another project that I have used is having students design and construct a roller coaster with certain requirements. This project focuses on polynomial functions. I also use a project that requires students to find a parabolic object in their everyday life, find the equation of that object, and construct a parabolic object. There are so many ideas that I am interested in but lack the knowledge of how to carry out the activity. For example, I have seen problems that talk about medication and how it decays. It would be amazing if somehow we could take a pill and collect data as to how much medication is left as it is decaying every hour etc. Then from our data construct a model that would then be used to answer other questions.
My hope is that students are motivated to continue their studies in STEM when they leave my class. Opportunities like these will help me to grow as an instructor and get ideas to make the learning environment for my student awesome. My goal for using Matlab is to introduce students to a program that they will be using in their STEM classes at the community college and at the University.