The University has strongly encouraged the development of what are called Quest courses. Such courses are intended to give first year students an immediate introduction to the essential nature of work in an academic discipline. It was immediately realized that the Math Department had been teaching a Quest course all the way back into the 1960s. Its name is Honors Calculus. It was and is a difficult course, requiring a great deal of commitment and intellectual maturity from those who take it.
Many students say that it is the best and most challenging course that they have ever taken.
Many math faculty have contributed to it, among them our current Goergen Award winner, Steve Gonek. In recent years, there has been a remarkable increase in the popularity and enrollment of this course. It is one of the gems in the mathematics curriculum. In order to extend the opportunities for students to take a Quest course, Steve Gonek and others decided to develop another Quest calculus course characterized by creativity and cooperation in problem solving. The course is structured around workshop sessions where students work together with the supervision and assistance faculty and graduate students.