Adapting Math Ed to the Needs of Future Biologists

June 10, 2008

Mathematician Claudia Neuhauser of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities stresses the need to teach students quantitative mathematical skills—but within a biological context.

"The math we teach biology students," she observed in a recent interview, "is not the math they need." Most students take calculus, but the typical course is usually geared more toward engineering than it is to biology.

Neuhauser has designed a calculus course based on biological scenarios that, she said, undergraduates "may encounter later in school or once they graduate."

"After I did that, I started working with other faculty members to make math—especially data analysis—part of their own courses," she said. To work with the latest data systems, such as sensor networks and genome sequencers, which produce huge quantities of data, she argued, students require a "good grounding in statistical analysis and computer science tools like data mining."

Neuhauser also stressed that students interested in the health sciences should be offered a curriculum in which the quantitative, life, and physical sciences and the humanities are taught in modules. Then, she said, students have to combine what they learn in integrative lab courses.

The goal, "is to give students the quantitative tools they'll need in 10 to 15 years, when they finish their schooling and take jobs," she reiterated. "We know it's going to be a data-intensive world, and we know that the standard tools we currently teach them are not good enough."

Source: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, May 2008.