Cornell University has long offered a Calculus for Life Sciences course. In this case study, we report on how a team of pure mathematicians has modernized both the content and teaching methods of this course. The content went from a standard calculus course with few genuine applications in the life sciences to a course focusing on dynamical…

This article describes the authors' experiences developing and implementing an innovative curriculum connecting mathematics and the biological sciences. It describes the original plan, the modifications that were necessary, and some advice to readers who might want to develop comparable programs.

Transforming an observable phenomenon into a tractable model is a challenging process, from determining the appropriate modeling scale to making realistic simplifying assumptions. However, many modeling texts are anchored around problems that have already been synthesized into a digestible format, which inhibits an opportunity to engage students…

This paper introduces a course design for a post-Calculus undergraduate course on mathematical modeling for the life sciences. The course includes differential equations, discrete, and cellular automata approaches (among others) to modeling questions in the life sciences, as well as a variety of biological topics. The course focuses on model…

There is growing awareness of the need for mathematics and computing to quantitatively understand the complex dynamics and feedbacks in the life sciences. Although several institutions and research groups are conducting pioneering multidisciplinary research, communication and education across fields remain a bottleneck. The opportunity is ripe for…

Governmental and educational organizations have pointed out that students coming into the biological sciences require stronger skills in statistics and data modeling that are not usually addressed in typical engineering-based calculus courses. Our work here documents how faculty in biology and mathematics addressed this issue at a large urban…

Finite Mathematics has become an enormously rich and productive area of contemporary mathematical biology. Fortunately, educators have developed educational modules based upon many of the models that have used Finite Mathematics in mathematical biology research. A sufficient variety of computer modules that employ graph theory (phylogenetic trees,…