Needle Found in a Haystack

In our increasingly technologically-advanced and data-driven world, the demand for adept problem solvers has never been higher. Applied mathematics and data science programs are growing, and employers are expecting college graduates to possess a certain baseline of problem-solving skills.

We believe in the power of modeling education to equip our students for their futures. More specifically, our goal as educators is to help our students develop a modeling mindset [Arney et al. 2020]. This shared goal fuels our mutual passion to constantly improve the landscape of mathematical and interdisciplinary modeling. One of the greatest resources that any educator has in these pursuits is their colleagues. To that end, we have spent countless hours discussing existing resources for teaching modeling, both with each other and with educators at all levels. Often, these conversations come around to a collective dreaming about resources that we really wished existed.

Sometimes we are pleasantly surprised to learn that we were wrong about a resource’s non-existence when we stumble across it—or at least across something “close enough.” These moments when we find a new-tous resource—such as a UMAP Module or a COMAP contest problem—that meets the needs of our classroom are always exciting. Such discoveries often take a bit of digging to find a gem that meets the specific needs of a class. Therefore, we find ourselves searching for them well beyond the months when we are teaching these classes, always prepping for the next time when we will need them.