ILAP

Interdisciplinary Lively Application Projects

The formal concept of an ILAP originated at the United States Military Academy at West Point, particularly through the interaction of the mathematics department with the science and engineering departments. ILAPs began as integrated, student-centered projects linking mathematics with partner disciplines, but the scope is more inclusive now. Many projects are presented in collateral disciplines and some carry-through ILAPs, such as the Lake Pollution Project, are revisited in several contexts. The interdisciplinary cooperation required in writing an ILAP is a catalyst for evolutionary cultural change in colleges and universities. The use of ILAPs in courses requires students, cooperatively working in groups, to analyze problems from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

The development of ILAPs at Carroll College has generated a significant dialogue and cooperation among professors from many different departments. Through these exchanges, faculty members are finding a variety of ways to interact in classroom and laboratory settings that may include outdoor field environments. We have mathematics, science, and engineering faculty working with faculty from the humanities, social sciences, and health sciences on projects including human cloning, the Yellowstone bison problem, health rights and health care issues, distribution of wealth and taxation, and the global positioning system.

If you wish to see ILAPs and Projects that are available through Project InterMath and download the product you want, go to the Project InterMath site http://www.projectintermath.org/products/ 

Carroll College ILAPs are available through http://web.carroll.edu/mvanisko/ilaps/ilaps.html

The Lake Pollution ILAP that follows is an excellent example of a carry-through ILAP, since it contains problems that involve discrete dynamical systems (Parts 1 and 2), differential equations (Part 3), Markov processes (Part 4), and probability and statistics (Parts 5 and 6). The first portion of the ILAP is what you would give to your students, The last portion contains sample solutions.