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Letter from the Editor

Journal of the ACMS 2006 Issue

Teaching the History of Mathematics Using Architecture and Art

Maria Zack, Point Loma Nazarene University

Abstract: Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) is a Christian university deeply committed to teaching in the liberal arts tradition. As a consequence, all of our students take roughly 64 semester hours of “general education” courses as part of the 128 semester hours required for graduation. One of the challenges of teaching at such an institution is helping students to value the core curriculum. I recently taught “Topics in Mathematics: Mathematics, Art and Architecture.” My goal was to help students see, discuss and understand connections between the mathematics that they were studying and some aspects of the general education core that is required of them. This course, taught as a conversation between ideas, was a great deal of work to prepare because it caused me to reach into areas in which I am not an expert but it was a success and well worth the effort. In this paper I will briefly outline some of the details of this somewhat quirky and highly personal class and also discuss some of the lessons that I learned.

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