This is a database of homework assignments and other educational content created at UBC as part of the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund: “Math and EOAS Collaborate to Improve Climate Education at UBC”, led by Sven Bachmann ([email protected]). Please feel free to modify and incorporate any of these educational materials into your own courses!
While the authors primarily responsible for the creation of the individual assignments or resources are listed on the respective assignment pages, many people were integral in the creation of these resources. Tara Ivanochko from UBC’s Sustainability Hub, along with assistance from Oliver Lane, Peter Harrington, and Sven Bachmann, was responsible for organizing collaborative meetings between Math and Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science (EOAS) faculty which were foundational for the creation of this material. Phil Austin, Rebecca Tyson, Sarah Wyse, Valentina Radic, Brian Marcus, Peter Harrington, Rachel White, Frederick Noack, Christian Schoof, Anais Orsi, and Meghan Wise gave presentations to all participants as part of this project so the climate scientists could learn about the mathematics being taught in introductory math courses and so that the mathematicians could learn about big ideas from climate science that could be incorporated into the math courses. These presentations gave rise to many fruitful discussions and the majority of the educational material created as part of this project was based on the big climate ideas in these presentations. Raphael Kelly and Nathan Bailey, two UBC undergraduate students hired as part of this project, worked under the supervision of Sven Bachmann and Peter Harrington to create the majority of the assignments that are found in this database. Jose Reyeros Sanchez, another undergraduate student hired as part of the project, created and assembled resources for students who may feel increased climate anxiety after learning more about climate science in their classes. Oliver Lane and Jose Reyeros Sanchez participated in several events around campus to spread awareness to both faculty and students about the resources created as part of this project. The climate anxiety resources can be found here: https://climateemergency.ubc.ca/stem-and-climate-wellbeing-toolkit/
The materials found in the database are grouped by the course that they were designed for, and then within each course there are two further groupings: materials that have already been used in a course at UBC, and materials that have not been used in any course. Please note that the status of used/unused is current as of April 2025, but some currently unused materials may be used in the future and the status may not necessarily be updated. Within each assignment folder you can find the pdf file for the corresponding assignments as well as the tex file and any additional files required to generate the pdf. Each assignment has a corresponding solution key (both pdf and tex file), which is available to any instructors upon request. Some assignments were designed to be written by students outside of class and some are collections of both in class and out of class activities.
We hope that these materials can be useful to you in whatever classes you are teaching!
These materials are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
