The information presented is aimed at providing an avenue through which students (particularly first-year college students who are non-mathematics and science majors) can strengthen their mathematical and writing skills. It connects these two disciplines explicitly in order to counter the point of view among students that learning in college is merely the mastery of a series of unrelated skills. By stressing the foundations common to mathematics and writing and by helping students become better mathematicians through writing and better writers through mathematics, two seemingly disparate disciplines will be understood in terms of their common underpinnings.
To do this, we teach a two course "cluster," where one course uses writing as an integral tool for learning mathematics and the other uses mathematics to develop writing. In this course cluster, the same students are enrolled in Excursions in Mathematics I, taught by Dr. Kirtland, and College Writing 1, taught by Dr. Haruta. The students and both faculty attend and contribute in all classes. This link of two classes from different academic disciplines is done in order to promote interdisciplinary thinking and to strengthen the objectives of a liberal arts education. Excursions in Mathematics is a nontraditional mathematics course designed to develop better logical and mathematical thinking in the students who take it. It focuses on teaching the mathematics necessary (modulo arithmetic, basic number theory, vectors, permutations, symmetries, and some simple group theory) to understand, develop, and apply check digit schemes. Check digits are appended to identification numbers (Universal Product Codes, ISBN numbers, etc) to check for errors when the number is transmitted. In addition to teaching the application of mathematics to identification numbers, the students also learn about the application of mathematics to other academic disciplines as well. As each mathematical topic is developed, its application is discussed. For example, while developing the concepts of permutations and symmetries, we discuss their applications to art and nature. Throughout the course, the students use writing to investigate all areas.
College Writing I is a first year writing class instructing students in the character and convention of academic writing at the college level. Students develop their writing skills by regularly composing and revising relatively short expository and argumentative essays. The topics covered in the mathematics course give content to the essays the students writing. In addition, using the structures set up by mathematics, the students learn to write clearer and more effective arguments. By learning to read more critically and with greater understanding, students will continue to improve their writing skills. Learning to apply these higher-order critical thinking skills in their college writing and mathematics classes will encourage students to apply them deliberately as they read and write in other academic areas as well.
Listed below are four content areas from which some of our writing assignments come from. Each topic area lists a preliminary activity, presents the content, and then gives possible writing assignments.
