Teaching First-year University Mathematics Courses: Past, Present, and Future (22w5002)

The Banff International Research Station will host the "Teaching First-year University Mathematics Courses: Past, Present, and Future" workshop at the UBC Okanagan campus in Kelowna, B.C., from August 7 - 12, 2022.

The “Teaching First-year University Mathematics Courses: Past, Present, and Future” workshop brings together a group of Canadian and international university mathematics educators, including the award-winning educators and emerging leaders in the post-secondary mathematics education communities. The workshop participants will examine and debate the challenges and opportunities that students, faculty, mathematics departments, and academic programs will face in the upcoming decade. Our discussions and activities will be, in many ways, driven by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the post-secondary education in general, and on the role of learning and teaching of mathematics in particular.

The workshop’s main objective is to generate specific suggestions for possible large-scale modifications to entry-level mathematics curricula in Canadian universities, given the emergence of the new social, economic, and political environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These modifications will aim to move us onward toward the creation of a curriculum that is rooted in the modern world, which is robust and flexible, and strongly interconnected in numerous aspects. The ultimate goal of the new curriculum will be to meet the mathematical needs of upcoming generations of undergraduate students. This workshop will be a major event, building on the outcomes of several initiatives, meetings, and documents, most notably the First Year in Maths (FYiMaths) project in Australia, the far reaching 2016 U.S. document “Common Vision for Undergraduate Mathematical Science Programs in 2025,” and the “First-Year University Mathematics in Canada” conferences hosted by the Fields Institute in 2018, the University of Alberta in 2019, and, virtually, at the University of Toronto Mississauga in 2020.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada's Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology, and Mexico's Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT).