Recently, the results of the 2022 Higher Education Community Cup National Mathematical Modeling Contest for College Students were announced. NEFU students made some great achievements. We won 1 national first prize and 8 second prizes. The number of the awards ranked second in the province, as well as within all forestry colleges and universities. Additionally, we won 121 regional awards (including 41 first prizes, 53 second prizes and 27 third prizes), setting a new peak in this contest.
Founded in 1992, the National Mathematical Modeling Contest for College Students is held annually. It is one of the first 19 contests listed in the “Ranking of University Discipline Competition”. In 2022, more than 160,000 people, 54,257 teams (49,424 undergraduate teams and 4,833 junior college teams) from 1,606 universities/campuses from all over the country, the UK, Malaysia and other countries applied for the contest. This year, our university organized 222 teams to participate in the contest, among which 130 teams won prizes, more than half! Both the number of the contestants and the number of award winners increased over previous years.
The National Mathematical Modeling Contest for College Students places a strong emphasis on the originality of research and solutions, teamwork, communication and the soundness of results. Three people form a team. They collect data, conduct research and investigations, and complete all the work from modeling, solution, and verification to writing papers on the specified problems. Each team should complete a scientific paper that solves practical problems with mathematical modeling methods. The evaluation criteria for the contest are the rationality of the hypothesis, the creativity of the modeling, the correctness of the results and the clarity of the text.
Our university attached great importance to this contest and actively built an innovative community of teachers and students based on teamwork. The School of Science scaled up the teams of supervising teachers and their quality and strengthened the management of various links such as team establishment and registration, student training and daily organization. On the basis of summarizing previous years’ experience, the school improved the professional level of the instructors and popularized the cutting-edge knowledge of the contest, stimulated the innovation potential of the participating teams, strengthened the experience exchange of the teams and gradually explored the innovation path suitable for us through thinking innovation, system construction and mechanism optimization. The students said that during the preparation period, the instructor teams provided patient and meticulous guidance to the students and held many online training sessions, including experience sharing sessions, special training sessions and simulation training, which made the students gain a lot and benefit a lot, and better promoted their professional knowledge.
Over the years, NEFU has actively constructed the mathematical culture suitable for the agriculture and forestry colleges and universities. The mathematical modeling contests for college students have been vigorously carried out, and are favored by many students. The Academic Affairs Office, the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and other functional departments have always attached great importance to and strongly supported all kinds of mathematical modeling contests, providing a strong guarantee for our students to achieve excellent results. As the organizer of the contests, the School of Science actively constructs the competition mode of “consolidating the foundation and casting the spirit", and strengthens the students’ basic knowledge and innovation ability through a series of teaching reforms. By participating in the mathematical modeling contests, the students have greatly improved their ability in logical thinking, innovation, and mathematical and computer application, as well as their practical ability and spirit of teamwork, creating a strong atmosphere for modeling. The results obtained in the mathematical modeling contest this year fully demonstrate the phased effect of the reform of mathematics curriculum in our university, and will help to promote the continuous development of the reform.
