Introduction

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) offers a first year mathematics course that is taken annually by approximately 2100 students and has the goal of making an important contribution to the quantitative reasoning abilities of these students. While no one course alone can create a quantitatively literate citizen, and many courses and programs should contribute to this development, mathematics departments can take the lead by assuring that their own courses, indeed, make a strong contribution to developing student quantitative reasoning abilities.

History of Development of Course

VCU has had a mathematics requirement in place for all undergraduate majors since the creation of the university in 1968. Until the early 1990s this requirement was fulfilled by students completing College Algebra. This course also served as a prerequisite for statistics and for pre-calculus.

In 1990, our colleague Reuben Farley was chair of the mathematics department. As he relates the history, every time he saw Ann Woodlief, Professor of English and lead advisor for English majors, she would say “tell me again why an English major needs to take your College Algebra course to graduate.” In direct response to this question, a new course, Contemporary Mathematics, was created.

The department set the goal of developing a course that: would continue to serve as a prerequisite for statistics; could be taught by large numbers of different individuals, including part-time instructors and graduate students; and would provide an answer to Dr. Woodlief's question.