Our students read and write about weather, disease, finance and arms races-all in the language of calculus. They talk calculus. They work in groups, discussing, questioning, guessing, testing, persuading. The course is designed so that in a 13-week semester students learn enough to discuss their major disciplines in the language of calculus. The mathematics department is also experimenting with a 12-credit intensive course, like those in French, Italian and Japanese.
Students feel at first as if they are in a strange new land.
But like students in a Spanish immersion class, they quickly adapt. Our calculus students study a language. They become literate. Sometimes they write term papers in lieu of taking exams. This past year they wrote on toxic waste, Third World development, retirement planning, cancer cell growth, automobile skidding, the psychology of baseball and other topics.