Get ready for some fun activities using modeling as we welcome founder and director of the Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities with Differential Equations (SIMIODE), Brian Winkel. We will engage in active modeling of birth and immigration for a population of M&M's (yummy) and collect data from a video on time and height of a falling column of water, with some elementary science development of a reasonable model. Further, we will demonstrate models involving other phenomena (e.g., change in size of a shopping mall due to high speed highway access) and some with efforts to explain collected data from various courses in mathematics. We have found over years of teaching undergraduate mathematics that real world modeling engages students AND faculty, thus we look forward to sharing with attendees.
After completing his Ph.D. in Ring Theory in in 1971, Brian Winkel's first teaching position was at a small liberal arts college, Albion. Drawn by the many applications of mathematics he turned his mathematical life to teaching mathematics through applications and modeling. Along the way he founded and edited several journals, among them Cryptologia and PRIMUS, the former about all aspects of cryptology and the latter about teaching undergraduate mathematics. Both journals are offered by the Mathematical Association of America freely through the their member portal. Winkel has taught at a number of different schools: liberal arts colleges, research 1 universities, engineering institutes and the military academy. In 2011 he founded and directs SIMIODE, Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities with Differential Equations, where one can find hundreds of modeling scenarios for teaching and learning differential equations in a modeling-first approach.
Join us on Monday, Oct. 7, in Hayes Hall 109 for this fun and exciting presentation. We hope to see you there!