US colleges and universities have long been the envy of the world. Institutional autonomy has fostered creativity among faculty, students, and staff. But this autonomy means that colleges tend to create their own solutions for every need. As a result, higher education suffers from costly redundancies that drive tuitions ever upward, putting higher…

In this article, the author shares the Menu Writing project, designed to promote a meaningful, real-world connection to mathematics with the lives of students. The rationale for developing this project was two-fold: (1) to connect school mathematics to students' lived experiences to encourage and sustain students' interest, motivation, and…

Single-period inventory models with uncertain demand are very well known in the business analytics community. Typically, such models are rule-based functions, or sets of functions, of one decision variable (order quantity) and one random variable (demand). In academics, the models are taught selectively and usually not completely. Students are…

Recently, the Modern Language Association (MLA) has called for proposals on the "greening" of the Spanish curriculum for their 2020 convention. University students are and will be faced with complex twenty-first-century economic problems, such as food deserts, costs of industrial agriculture, organic regulations and market demand,…

Open-ended questions that can be solved using different strategies help students learn and integrate content, and provide teachers with greater insights into students' unique capabilities and levels of understanding. This article provides a problem that was modified to allow for multiple approaches. Students tended to employ high-powered, complex,…

Professional accrediting bodies and accounting education reviews have long expressed concerns about student capabilities and learning outcomes, including the ability to apply knowledge and make reasoned judgements. In response, we report on a new design that uses a web of threshold concepts to guide curriculum development. With an associated focus…

Students' success in solving problems involving proportional reasoning is an indication that they have moved beyond additive thinking to multiplicative thinking. However, classroom work indicates that many students do not reason proportionally in many practical contexts. The authors discuss a particular task that reveals students'…

Einstein was blessed with a rare genius. He also understood the intellectual weight of a flight of fancy. He turned over the idea in his mind for a decade before concluding that the light beam next to him would appear to be at rest even though it was traveling at the speed of light. While it may be tempting to focus on Einstein's cognitive…

Three contemporary processes for cyclohexanone oxime synthesis are evaluated in a case study. The case study introduces organic chemistry students to basic cost accounting to determine the most economical technology. Technical and financial aspects of these processes are evaluated with problem-based exercises that may be completed by students…

This paper provides a road map for universities to follow in responding to corporations that are in need of a solution to the dilemma of building an executive development program and simultaneously providing their executives with a high quality MBA degree. Difficulties experienced by many corporations are complicated by the fact that MBA programs…

In this chapter, the authors illustrate on mathematical problem-solving activities within families how the functions and structures of their mathematics at home are dependent on values, and how interacting values during problem situations came to shape what counted as solutions. These values examples from family math illustrate the complex…

Suggests that the scope of return on investment (ROI) for organizations includes measurable indicators of both the internal and external value added by the organization rather than just short-term profit and customer satisfaction. Topics include demonstrating progression toward required performance; and justifying problems to be solved in terms of…

Describes four word-and-picture problems through which students can hone their math skills, all of which involve shopping for goods and calculating prices of items that they would buy. Notes that shopping creates real-life problem-solving situations. (MDM)

This work extends the theory of the fixed charge transportation problem (FCTP), currently based mostly on a forty-year-old publication by Hirsch and Danzig. This paper presents novel properties that need to be considered by those using existing, or those developing new methods for optimizing FCTP. It also defines the problem in an easier way,…

The American Association of University Administrators (AAUA), an organization for administrators that offers a mediation service for resolving disputes concerning professional standards, is described. Causes of disputes, mediation procedures, users of AAUA's mediation service, selection of mediators, costs, reactions to the process, and mediation…