Challenges Facing Undergraduate Mathematics

Friday, March 20

Speaker: Dave Bressoud

Title: Challenges Facing Undergraduate Mathematics

Abstract: Ever more high school students graduate having completed ever more mathematics, yet the number of students pursuing mathematics at the level of calculus or above in college has been in decline over the past quarter century. As a percentage of total undergraduate enrollment, the drop-off in the fraction of students who take high level mathematics is alarming. This talk will explain what we know about the demographics of the transition from high school to college mathematics as well as what we do not but need to know, and it will explore some of the problems arising from the rapid growth of calculus in high school that exacerbate the difficulties of this transition.