Biology students need analytical and critical thinking skills to analyze data and apply their knowledge to real-life situations. To meet this growing need while helping students to discover the relevance of learning through applications, we created an academic learning community (LC) between Ecology and Biostatistics courses. Selected case-studies…

Inspired by the approach first employed by C.S. Holling in his classic "disc experiment," this article provides a sequence of learning activities that increase students' understanding of the mechanisms behind saturating effects in predator-prey scenarios. The proposed lesson is recommended for inclusion in courses that address…

This article describes a computational project designed for undergraduate students as an introduction to mathematical modeling. Students use an ordinary differential equation to describe fish weight and assume the instantaneous growth rate depends on the concentration of dissolved oxygen. Published laboratory experiments suggest that continuous…

The concepts presented in this article represent the cornerstone of classical mathematical biology. The central problem of the article relates to enzyme kinetics, which is a biochemical system. However, the theoretical underpinnings that lead to the formation of systems of time-dependent ordinary differential equations have been applied widely to…

The simplest age-structured population models update a population vector via multiplication by a matrix. These linear models offer an opportunity to introduce mathematical modeling to students of limited mathematical sophistication and background. We begin with a detailed discussion of mathematical modeling, particularly in a biological context.…

As technology and science advance, the boundary between the disciplines begins to blur, emphasizing that it is now, more than ever, a requirement to have a solid background in multiple fields to fully understand emerging scientific advances. As faculty, we need to equip our undergraduate students not only with an introduction to these modern…

Louisiana Tech University has an integrated science curriculum for its mathematics, chemistry, physics, computer science, biology-research track and secondary mathematics and science education majors. The curriculum focuses on the calculus sequence and introductory labs in biology, physics, and chemistry. In the introductory biology laboratory…