Service-Learning in a Capstone Modeling Course

Abstract

A capstone course is often synthetic, bringing together many components of a student's educational background. For this reason, a project-based course in mathematical modeling makes a great capstone, as modeling problems often require a broad collection of mathematical tools for their solution. The addition of a service-learning component can further deepen the capstone experience, as it informs the way students look at a problem and motivates them to create solutions that are both reasonable and implementable. Students also have an added incentive to improve their written and oral skills for their final presentations. In this article, we describe how to build and incorporate a project from a community partner into a modeling capstone course. We include teaching notes and some student responses.

Keywords:

• Service-learning
• modeling
• capstone course

Acknowledgments

My colleague Tom Hill introduced me to the Case Studies in Math Modeling course. His course materials and generous assistance greatly eased my transition into that class. I would also like to thank the referees for their careful reading of the draft and many helpful comments which improved this final paper. The development of the project in Section 2.4 was funded by a Community-Based Learning and Research Grant from Lafayette College.

Notes

¹COMAP maintains a useful website with project ideas in the form of classroom modules, articles from the UMAP Journal (Undergraduate Mathematics and its Applications) and problems from the MCM. There is an annual charge for membership.