In the Fall of 2004, the Executive Committee of the Mathematics Department gave the charge to the Undergraduate Affairs Committee (UAC) to examine the three advanced calculus courses offered, namely Math 242, 243 and 380, and to address redundancy and quality concerns that had been expressed by faculty. After several meetings, the Undergraduate Affairs Committee came to the position that one reasonable solution to these concerns was the elimination of Math 242 in favor of Math 243 and to completely eliminate Math 380 as it was.
One of the primary difficulties with this solution, however, was the fact that the addtional material in Math 243 which was not covered in Math 242 required additional meeting times and effort on the part of the students. The additional material requires that Math 243 is offered for 4 credits as opposed to the 3 credits for Math 242. As the majority of the students taking Math 242 are engineering students and nearly all the engineering curricula at UIUC have no room for additional credit units, this additional one credit represented a very serious problem. Many options were considered by the Undergraduate Affairs Committee and research was done as to how other programs handled these problems.
One possible solution to the additional credit problem that persisted was to find a way to offer some variant of the first semester calculus course, namely Math 220, for one less credit. Stephanie Alexander, chair of the UAC, and Randy McCarthy met with the Physics UAC to discuss these issues. It was felt that since Physics was one of the larger Engineering units to currently require Math 380, their input would be especially helpful at this preliminary stage. With their help the basic outlines of the final proposal was formed and they voted unanimously to support this change.
The UAC of mathematics again debated this new proposal and in particular examined its effect for good pedagogy, student enrollments, instructional obligations, and total effect on departmental instructions units. Randy McCarthy meet with the Engineering-Mathematics Liaison Committee on December 1. After several hours of discussion, many useful modificatons in terms of naming and numbering were incorporated into the basic proposal. As the Liaison Committee was enthusiastically in support of the overall proposal, the chair, Sri Namachchivaya, asked for a one page summary to send to the Engineering departments for further feedback.