EDUCATING FOR THE FUTURE: MATHEMATICS FOR UNDERSTANDING THE NEW SCIENCES
David C. Arney · PRIMUS · 1998
New courses should be designed for the future needs of our students. This paper presents the historical development of required undergraduate core mathematics courses and suggests that a new core course, discrete dynamical modeling, is needed to prepare students for success in the information age. Topics associated with dynamical systems have previously been taught in upper-level, after-calculus courses. Discrete dynamical modeling is accessible to all first-year students, who through this course obtain the foundation for the reasoning, modeling, computation, and language of the new sciences of the 21st century. We propose that now is the time for this course to enter the core program for first-year students.