This course will provide an avenue whereby middle school teachers can experience first-hand the power that mathematics has for solving problems not only in their everyday lives, but in the global world. Participants will comprehend how the process of abstracting a real-world problem to a mathematical formulation helps them to understand more fully the problem itself, and thereby they will discover facets of the problem not yet realized. Thus, they will gain a genuine appreciation for the applicability of mathematics to everything around them. This course has as its purpose that goal: to bring teachers to an awareness of the pervasiveness of mathematics in the lives of people not only in our Delmarva region but also in the global community.

Students will use technology such as STELLA, Excel, and graphing calculators to accomplish the computational aspects of the modeling process. Students' familiarity with models used in other courses will be built upon in this class. The class will utilize group work, written reports (e.g. case studies), oral presentations by students, and interpretive exercises which will stretch the critical thinking abilities of the participants. Relative to the NCTM Standards 2000 (pp. 256-261), the course will emphasize the solving of problems which arise in contexts other than mathematics, applications that involve a variety of appropriate strategies to solve problems, reflective thinking on solutions, and modifications to clarify or correct deficiencies in solutions.