Why do I need to take math?

This is a common question asked by many undergraduate students as they work towards their first degree. As you know, math courses were a standard feature throughout your early schooling years. Through those experiences, you no doubt developed a range of opinions regarding the utility of mathematics in your daily life and chosen career path.  

As America’s environmental university, Unity Environmental University is dedicated to preparing the next generation of environmental professionals and leaders to address real-world issues related to sustainability, habitat impact, and global warming.  These are very complex issues and require professionals that possess the critical thinking, logic, and organizational skills necessary to meet these challenges.  

The mathematics courses you will take as part of your Unity Environmental University degree program will be focused on preparing you for tackling environmental challenges.  Our mathematics curriculum is rooted in addressing concepts, relationships, and applications that have a direct impact on modeling environmental problems.  Environmental decision making requires the adoption of holistic thinking and long range planning.  Mathematical models of environmental systems provide both real-time analytics and future predictions based upon current knowledge and available data.  

As an environmental professional, it will be part of your job to monitor systems, collect data, analyze data, and make decisions and inferences from the results of these analyses.  As such, it is critical that you gain a good working knowledge of how to read data in spreadsheets and represent data graphically to analyze trends.  You will need to know which variables are important to track and which are extraneous to the problem.  The following is a brief description of some Unity Environmental  University mathematics courses and their connection to future environmental professional activities. 

Our Environmental  University Algebra for Environmental Professionals (MATH 101) course is built around the question: How will I use algebra in my job? In a nutshell, algebra is concerned with building models that represent the relationships between variables.  A common problem solving approach is linear analysis which seeks to find the relationship between two variables represented by the equation of a line.  Using this technique you might tackle problems like the following: 

• Is there a linear relationship between loss of habitat and coyote reproduction rates? 
• Has an increase in cell tower saturation had an impact on purple martin migrations?
• What is the rate of increase in California wildfires since 2000?

To truly understand an environmental issue, and make related decisions, we apply the techniques of statistics.  In Statistics for Environmental Professionals (MATH 201), you learn how to collect and categorize data from the real world. You also learn how to ask well crafted research questions that can be subjected to hypothesis testing.  Finally, you develop the skills necessary to draw inferences from the results of hypothesis testing in order to make informed decisions.  Statistics is applied mathematics specifically designed to gain an understanding of some aspect of a population from collected samples.  The following represent examples of the kinds of questions that might be addressed by statistics:

• What is the mean carapace length of loggerhead sea turtles along the East Coast of the US?
• Has there been an increase in the mean surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean as measured in Tahiti?
• Has climate change had an impact on Beisa oryx mean migratory patterns in Kenya?

Environmental engineers design solutions to problems such as clean air, water purification, solid waste management, and sustainability solutions to combat the impact of climate change on necessary systems.  These solutions often involve changes over time or changes in conditions that are modeled using tools from calculus.  In Calculus (MATH 215), you explore how to model real-world systems with the use of functions and how those functions are used to predict future conditions.  Here are some examples of problems that can be addressed via calculus modeling methods: 

• Impact of increased carbon dioxide levels on marine ecosystems such as coral reefs.
• The effect of increased nitrogen oxide levels from gas-powered vehicles  in Central London over a period of time. 
• The spread of ranavirus in North American amphibians. 

Our planet is a complex conglomeration of diverse and interdependent ecosystems and processes that present opportunities and challenges to our society.  Making sense of any part of this requires rigorous monitoring, valid and reliable data collection, competent analysis, and thoughtful decision making.  As a prospective environmental professional, you owe it to the future of our society, and our planet, to gain a good appreciation and workable understanding of the common mathematical tools used to understand the world around us.