MTH 254 Vector Calculus I
Fall 2011


Instructor: Juha Pohjanpelto
Office/Phone: Kidder Hall 282B, (541) 737-5156
Office hours: Monday 11:00 – 11:50 a.m., Wednesday 1:00 – 1:50 p.m., or by appointment
Email: juha@math.oregonstate.edu
Homepage: www.oregonstate.edu/~pohjanpp

Recitation Instructor (sections 082, 083, 084): Mathew Titus
Office: Kidder Hall 108E
Office hours: Tuesday 11:00 a.m. – noon, Wednesday 3:00 – 4:00 p.m., Thursday 11:00 a.m. – noon, or by appointment
Email: titusm@math.oregonstate.edu

Prerequisites : MTH 251, MTH 252, or equivalent

Texts: Briggs, Cochran, Multivariable Calculus Custom Edition with MyMathLab Access , Pearson Learning, 2011.
 Hal Parks, MTH 254 Study Guide, 2010.

Learning objectives:

Upon successfully completing this course a student

Success in MTH 254 as in any other mathematics course requires a serious commitment on your part.  Class attendance and involvement as well as extensive regular reading and homework practice are pivotal to succeeding in this course.  For every hour spent in class, plan to spend a minimum of 2-3 hours outside class studying the material. If you have a weak background in calculus or have had difficulties in succeeding in your previous mathematics classes, you may have to dedicate much more effort than this in order to master the course material. I strongly recommend that you study and solve problems in small groups and seek help from other students when you get stuck on a new concept or an exercise. As preparation for this class, you should review the materials covered in the differential and integral calculus classes MTH 251, MTH 252.

If you miss a day of class you should try to obtain notes from one of your classmates and study the missed lesson as soon as possible. Calculus classes move fast and MTH 254 will be no exception, and you will find it difficult to catch up if you fall behind. Be sure to seek help immediately if you are having trouble with any concepts by asking questions in class, by making full use of the free tutoring services provided by the MLC located in Kidder 108, or by visiting your recitation instructor or me during the scheduled office hours. I will also attempt to respond promptly to questions sent to me by email in the course of the term.

A list of suggested homework problems can be found in the Study Guide, which is currently published on a CD and will be available from your recitation instructor. You should consider the suggested problems as your homework assignment for this course. Solving these problems will be important to your understanding of the material, and some (or even all of them) may be collected and graded depending upon your recitation instructor's discretion. Exercises in the course text are divided into several categories. Review Questions test your conceptual understanding of the narrative, while solving Basic Skills exercises will improve you computational dexterity. Exercises under the Further Explorations and Applications heading are built on the Basic Skills problems and are more demanding. Finally, Additional Exercises will challenge your thinking and often involve mathematical proofs. Each chapter in the text concludes with Review Exercises which will help you to synthesize the contents of the entire chapter.

The edition of Briggs and Cochran employed at OSU comes with an access code to MyMathlab. In order to log into the site you will first need to register via the publisher's web page. During registration you will be asked to enter the ID for the course, which is pohjanpelto30259. MyMathLab comes with a number of useful tools, including video lectures, review cards, and tutorial exercises, for organizing your studies and to facilitate learning the course material. The features are rather extensive and using some of the applications might require installing additional software on your computer, so it will pay off to take the time to familiarize yourself with the various aspects of the portal. MyMathLab is also designed for delivering online tests and graded homework assignments, and your recitation instructor may choose to administer some of the graded course activities via the site.

You can find (at times witty) advice on how to survive a calculus class on the websites How to Ace on Calculus and Calculus Tips. Additional online exercises on differential and integral calculus can be found on the freely available Calculus on the Web (COW) and Visual Calculus web portals. COW also comprises an extensive collection of problems in vector calculus.

Exams: During the term you will be given five 10–15 minute quizzes, an in-class 50 minute midterm exam, and a final exam. The midterm and final exams will consist solely of multiple choice questions. No notes or books are allowed in the exams; however, you may use a basic scientific-graphing calculator. No make-up midterm or final exams will given after the scheduled time under any circumstances.

Grading information:
Recitations150 points
Midterm Exam150 points
Final Exam200 points
Total points possible500 points

The grading scale for the course is guaranteed to be no higher than the following cutoffs:
A:450 – 500
B:400 – 449
C:300 – 399
D:275 – 299
F:0 – 274

You can view a day-by-day course calendar by clicking here.

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Last Modified on September 27, 2011