Meeting the Challenges: Education across the Biological, Mathematical, and Computer Sciences
By Victor Katz 


Are the mathematics and biology communities "meeting the challenges"? That was the basic question for the conference of that title held in Bethesda, MD from February 27 to March 1, organized by the MAA, in conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society for Microbiology, and with support from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. As we know, mathematics is becoming increasingly important in biological and biomedical research, but the education of biologists frequently contains little mathematics, while mathematicians, who usually know little biology, have a difficult time incorporating biological examples into mathematics courses. The "challenges", then, are the difficulties inherent in integrating biology, mathematics, statistics and computer science more effectively in undergraduate curricula. 
The MAA Committee on the Undergraduate Program's Subcommittee for Curriculum Reform Across the First Two Years (CRAFTY) held one of its Curriculum Foundations Conferences on the Mathematical Curriculum for Health and Life Sciences Students in May, 2000 and shortly thereafter issued a report that addressed this issue. (A summary of this report appeared in the November 2002 issue of FOCUS.) In particular, agreement was reached that core topics for biology students should include the basic notions of calculus, probability, approximation, logic and mathematical thinking, and deductive reasoning, as well as some work with statistics and computers. Courses containing these topics should put special emphasis on the use of models, both as a way of organizing information about and providing intuition into systems that are too complex to understand otherwise.
From the biology side, the Committee on Undergraduate Biology Education to Prepare Research Scientists for the 21st Century, organized by the National Research Council, issued a report entitled BIO2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists. It suggested even more mathematics, including aspects of probability, statistics, discrete models, linear algebra, calculus and differential equations, modeling and programming. And in computer science, although many universities now offer courses on the computational techniques needed to deal with the data generated by current biological research, the challenge is to convince biology majors to enroll.
One of the purposes of the "Meeting the Challenges" conference was to bring together mathematicians, biologists, statisticians, and computer scientists to try to come up with models for the mathematical education of biologists for the twenty-first century. In addition, the participants were charged with proposing solutions to the twin problems of biology faculty without strong mathematics backgrounds and mathematics faculty without strong biology backgrounds. Finally, they were to look at methods for attracting more students into the biological sciences, students who would become the researchers of the future.
One solution to the last challenge was described by Michael Summers, of the University of Maryland Baltimore County in the opening plenary address of the conference. Summers described the Meyerhoff Scholars program of UMBC, in which bright high school students, mostly from minority backgrounds, are recruited to come to the University, major in a scientific field, and commit to going on for a Ph.D. These young men and women are mentored on a continuing basis throughout their undergraduate years to make sure that they succeed, beginning with a summer bridge program before their freshman year. They also participate fully in on-going research problems with senior faculty. This program has had great success since its founding in 1988, with a very large percentage of those accepted either having completed a Ph.D. or being actively at work toward the degree.
Although most universities and colleges will not have grants from the Meyerhoff Foundation, they generally have little trouble in attracting and retaining biology majors. What is difficult, however, is retaining minority students and insuring that biology students, whether at UMBC or elsewhere, understand and act on the need for more mathematics in their courses. Thus UMBC's method of involving students early in research projects was discussed frequently at the conference, with the additional suggestion that these projects themselves use mathematics. There are many aspects of introductory biology courses that lend themselves to such projects, so faculty, whether in biology or in mathematics, will need to inform themselves of the possibilities available for student support. Another frequent suggestion was that, because numerous job opportunities in mathematical biology are becoming available, students whose interests are in mathematics should be introduced early to the applications of mathematics in biology. Also, even at the high school level, faculty making recruiting visits should use the occasion to introduce students to these new career opportunities. In particular, it is important to show students contemplating medical school that there are amazing opportunities in biomedical research to solve some of the basic questions about the nature of life, questions that will lead to new methods of eliminating diseases that affect so many. But these opportunities are only available with a sufficient knowledge of mathematics.
Participants in the conference considered carefully the issues of faculty development. After all, how can mathematics faculty be enthusiastic about opportunities in biology unless they are themselves conversant with the subject? How can they introduce biological examples in mathematics classes if they are not comfortable with the biology? Thus it is imperative to introduce programs to educate mathematicians about biology. The MAA is already attempting this, through some of its professional development workshops under the PREP program. But there is certainly room for much more. The important ingredient for success in faculty development, it was agreed, was to bring biologists and mathematicians together to discuss their subjects. Summer institutes are useful for this purpose, but so are joint mathematics-biology colloquia, especially if they are held regularly. Perhaps we need also to look at the IFRICS model of the 1970s, the Institutes for Retraining in Computer Science. At that time, there was a shortage of computer scientists to meet the demand for computer science courses, so many mathematicians participated in these institutes to learn how to teach computer science. This program helped bridge the gap until the supply caught up with the demand. Today, given the shortage of biologically trained mathematicians ready and able to teach biological applications in mathematics course, it may be worthwhile reviving that model for the next decade or so.
Of course, not only must mathematicians better understand biology, but also biologists must better understand mathematics. Many current biology faculty had very little mathematics in their own education, and sometimes even claim that mathematics is unnecessary in their particular biological specialty. But what is becoming increasingly clear is that virtually every area of modern biology requires mathematics, and the level of the mathematics required is increasing rapidly. A glance through biology journals will confirm this. Thus biologists need to participate in the same institutes as the mathematicians, where ideas can be shared in both directions and even where new ideas for joint research projects can be developed. 
A point that was made consistently throughout the discussions at the conference was that biology courses need to incorporate the mathematics that we insist that biology students learn. Too many introductory biology texts today, and the courses that depend on them, leave out the mathematics, or discuss it only peripherally. To help students understand the relevance of mathematics to their future careers in biology, it is necessary to incorporate mathematics at even the earliest level of biology. If the textbooks do not do so, then it is imperative that faculty supplement their texts with some of the modules that have been developed for just this purpose. (See http://www.bioquest.org for examples of modules and other educational materials.) An ideal situation, of course, would be to have mathematicians and biologists teach some of these courses jointly. As we know, however, interdisciplinary courses are frequently difficult to implement. Yet they have had success in some universities, and if faculty push hard enough for them, they can be taught.
Interdisciplinary courses, of course, reflect the model of much current research, namely that it is done in teams. Thus, it is not necessary for everyone in a course or in a research project to know all the mathematics or all the biology. As long as the participants can communicate with one another, a mathematics-biology research project can be accomplished with each participant using his or her own knowledge and skills. Thus, another major suggestion made consistently was that faculty should take every opportunity to participate in joint biology-mathematics projects. And as these take place, the participants will learn enough about each others' subjects to be able to communicate effectively with students in their own discipline.
The discussions that consumed the most time at the conference revolved around curriculum. What mathematics must be taught to future biologists and biomedical researchers? As already noted, CRAFTY has made its own suggestions and the BIO2010 report has made others. Numerous colleges already have revamped the mathematics courses required by biology majors to incorporate some of these suggestions. Lou Gross, of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, one of the plenary speakers at the conference, described the successes at his own school with a new mathematics course as well as the inclusion of more mathematics in biology courses. 
The incorporation of mathematics into biology over the next decades may eventually convince enough students and their universities that biology in the twenty-first century is analogous to physics in the twentieth. Thus programs for biology majors will involve heavy doses of mathematics, and many prospective biologists, like their physics counterparts, will even have a minor in mathematics, taking courses in differential equations, advanced calculus, and abstract algebra.
At present, however, the majority of universities will not ask biology majors to take more than two or three mathematics courses. So if these students are to learn at least some of the mathematics they will need in the future, it appears that mathematics faculty must develop specially designed courses appropriate for biology majors. A three-semester sequence of courses is probably the most that the great majority of biology major can include, but from various models at colleges and universities around the country, it appears that one can accomplish quite a bit in that time frame. In order to do this, as CRAFTY suggests, mathematical modeling must be at the heart of the course. We must carefully choose biology problems that can be modeled by increasingly sophisticated mathematics as one works one's way through the courses. Early on, one might be satisfied with the elements of probability and statistics and with the notion of drawing and interpreting graphs of various types of functions. Later, one needs to develop the ideas of calculus as well as more sophisticated statistics which would enable students to work with the huge data sets so common in biology. Finally, one has to develop the basic ideas of linear algebra as well as differential equations and dynamical systems.
The Meeting the Challenges conference was a unique opportunity for faculty from mathematics, biology, and computer science, as well as representatives from industry and the professional organizations, to meet and learn about each other's concerns. There were five plenary speakers. Besides Summers and Gross, they included Mary Clutter, the Assistant Director of the Biological Sciences Division at the NSF, Judith Ramaley, the Assistant Director of the Division of Education and Human Resources at the NSF, and James Cassatt, the Director of the Division of Cell Biology and Biophysics at the NIGMS. Each of these speakers emphasized the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of science and urged faculty to overcome disciplinary boundaries in designing new programs. Ramaley, in particular, noted that our job is to prepare people who will do Good Work, in the words of the authors of a new book by Howard Gardner, Michaly Csik-zent-mihaly, and William Damon. And good work requires greater expectations, which can only be met through our students' mastery of the knowledge and skills necessary to study the natural world, mastery that must be enhanced by a strong responsibility for personal actions. (For more on the Great Expectations project of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, which Ramaley chaired, see http://www.aacu.org/gex/index.cfm.)
The major work of the conference took place in cross-disciplinary working groups that discussed issues of curriculum, faculty, and students. The participants then met in disciplinary groups to review the recommendations. The report to come out of the conference will be written by the group leaders and recorders, among others, and will be edited by Lynn Steen, of St. Olaf College. It will include numerous examples of mathematics and computer science in biology, examples designed to make the point to the nation's stakeholders that it is crucial for the future to develop biology researchers better trained in mathematics and computer science. The report is expected to be available at the 2004 Joint Mathematics Meetings. But even before the issuance of the report, it is important that mathematics departments take seriously the CRAFTY recommendations and begin thinking about the needs of biology students. It is imperative that we as mathematicians "meet the challenges" of educating the biology students of the twenty-first century, so that their research into the nature of life itself can benefit all of us.
For more information on Meeting the Challenges, visit the project web site http://www.maa.org/mtc.