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MATH-UA 122 Calculus IIDepartmental Syllabus, Fall 2025 term

Matthew Leingang
Department of Mathematics
New York University
Last Updated: August 31, 2025
Calculus II is a coordinated course. This syllabus contains information shared across all lecture sections. Your professors will also provide a syllabus supplement that contains information specific to your lecture section.

Section Course Information

Course Description
Techniques of integration. Further applications. Plane analytic geometry. Polar coordinates and parametric equations. Infinite series, including power series.
Credits
Prerequisites
MATH-UA 121 Calculus I, or exam credit, or placement test. Visit the departmental course page for more detail.
Instructional modality
Section 001 meets online for lecture and in-person for exams. All other sections meet in-person.
β€œThe book of the universe is written in the language of mathematics.” Galileo wrote this four hundred years ago, even before Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus. The statement is as valid today as ever: We use functions in all the sciences, and calculus allows us to analyze the functions and draw scientific conclusions.
Calculus II is a second semester calculus course for students who have previously been introduced to the basic ideas of differential and integral calculus. Over the semester we will study three (related) topics, topics that form a central part of the language of modern science:
The material we take up in this course has applications in physics, chemistry, biology, environmental science, astronomy, economics, statistics, and just about everything else. We want you to leave the course not only with computational ability, but with the ability to use these notions in their natural scientific contexts, and with an appreciation of their mathematical beauty and power.

Learning Outcomes.

  1. Antidifferentiate elementary functions and evaluate definite integrals
  2. Analyze sequence and series
  3. Use calculus to analyze plane curves

Meeting Pattern.

Lecture sections meet twice weekly for 75 minutes, led by a professor. Recitation sections meets once weekly for 75 minutes, led by a teaching assistant. The times and locations of your sections are visible on Albert.

How the Credit Hours are Met by the Course.

This class meets for 3 hours and 45 minutes each week and carries the expectation that students will work on course learning activities (e.g. reading, problem sets, papers, and studying) for about 7 hours and 30 minutes outside of classroom per week. The syllabus includes more information about meeting times and expectations for student work.

Section Learning Activities

Most weeks we will follow the same pattern of engagement with the course material. It alternates between instruction and assessment, and is designed for you to have many opportunities to practice, ask for help, and get feedback on every topic.

Pre-lecture activities.

Before each lecture, you will be expected to complete a reading assignment. The assignment may also include watching videos and completing a basic quiz. The goal of these activities is to prepare you for lecture. Your professor will also use your responses to these activities to prepare for lecture.

Lecture.

Lectures will be interactive, with opportunities for you to ask questions and work on problems. Your professor will also use lecture to reinforce new concepts and provide context.

WebAssignments.

After lecture you will continue to practice the procedures and concepts through a β€œWebAssignment”—that is, an assignment on the WebAssign platform. You will have multiple opportunities to attempt these problems, and other problems like them. WebAssignments are due before recitation.

Recitation.

Recitation is your weekly class time with your teaching assistant. Recitation begins with a quiz and continues with supervised practice on worksheets.

Problem sets.

Problem sets are due at the end of each week. They are designed to challenge you to apply the concepts into new or unique situations. Problem sets are also where you learn to present worked solutions clearly and logically.

Exams.

There will be two midterm exams (70 minutes long, during lecture), and one final exam (100 minutes long, during finals period). Midterms are summative assessments and comprehensive of the course material taught until that point. The final will be cumulative. Exams are designed to test your mastery of the course material at a deep and synthetic level.

Section Textbook and Other Required Materials

Textbook
The course will closely follow the textbook Essential Calculus, Early Transcendentals, by James Stewart. An electronic version of the text is included in WebAssign.
WebAssign
The required online homework platform for this course is WebAssign for Essential Calculus by Stewart. As part of the university’s Folett ACCESS program, it will be delivered to you digitally through a link in your section’s Brightspace site. The cost of the platform including the book is $24.25, which will be added as a β€œbook charge” to your bursar bill. This is the only purchase you need to make for the course.
If you choose to purchase your course materials elsewhere, you must login to the student portal and opt out of the program. Then you can buy access independently through the NYU Bookstore, or within WebAssign itself. For most students, the lowest price will be found through ACCESS. If you do not opt out by September 17, you will be charged. If you do opt out, you are responsible for purchasing your own WebAssign access.
Brightspace
Each lecturer will have their own Brightspace site, through which they will distribute lecture and study materials. Brightspace is your course hub which links to each of the other platforms used.
Gradescope
You will scan and submit your written homework to Gradescope. Homework will be graded and returned to you within Gradescope. Quizzes and exams will be taken on paper, but the instructional team will scan them and upload them to Gradescope. Graded quizzes and midterms will be returned to you using Gradescope.
Discussion boards
Lecture sections may use Ed Discussions, Campuswire, or the Brightspace Discussions tool to organize questions and discussion outside of class.
PollEverywhere
Lecturers may use PollEverywhere or other polling software to facilitate in-class discussion.

Section Grading

Most of the grade components are identified above. Participation will be measured through attendance and completion of in-class activities. The exact rubric may vary across lecture sections.
We will only count the top half of your problem sets, quizzes, and WebAssignments. This means that the lowest five (5) problem set scores, the lowest five (5) quiz scores, and the lowest seventeen (17) WebAssignment scores will be dropped before averaging. This should wash out the effects of any unforeseen circumstances which prevent you from attending recitation or completing an assignment to the best of your ability. There will be no other extensions or makeups on quizzes or problem sets.
The grade components are averaged into a final calculated grade using the following weights:
Component Weight
Problem sets 10%
Quizzes 15%
WebAssignments 5%
Midterm I 20%
Midterm II 20%
Final exam 25%
Participation 5%
Grades will be calculated to two decimal places. They will not be rounded up to the next whole number. The lower cutoff for each letter grade is given in the table below.
Letter Grade Lower Cutoff
A 93%
A- 90%
B+ 87%
B 83%
B- 80%
C+ 75%
C 65%
D 50%
F 0%
It is possible that these cutoffs will be adjusted at the end of the semester, but only in the downward direction in order to raise letter grades slightly. There is no school- or departmentally-prescribed distribution of letter grades. Letter grades across sections will be comparable.

Section Extra help and tutoring

In addition to your professor’s and your teaching assistant’s office hours, the University provides a few options for extra help:

Section Policy statements

These are adapted from departmental and university policies.

Subsection Student Accessibility

New York University is committed to providing equal educational opportunity and participation for students with disabilities or accessibility concerns. It is the University’s policy that no qualified student with a disability or accessibility concern be excluded from participating in any University program or activity, denied the benefits of any University program or activity, or otherwise subjected to discrimination with regard to any University program or activity. The Moses Center for Accessibility and Inclusive Culture determines qualified disability status and assists students in obtaining appropriate accommodations and services. CSA operates according to an Independent Living Philosophy and strives in its policies and practices to empower each student to become as independent as possible. Their services are designed to encourage independence, backed by a strong system of support. Any student who needs a reasonable accommodation based on a qualified disability or accessibility issue is required to register with the CSA for assistance.

Subsection Religious Observations

NYU’s Calendar Policy on Religious Holidays states that members of any religious group may, without penalty, absent themselves from classes when required in compliance with their religious obligations. You must notify your professor in advance of religious holidays or observances that might coincide with exams, assignments, or class times to schedule mutually acceptable alternatives. Students may also contact religiousaccommodations@nyu.edu for assistance.

Subsection Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

As instructors, we will strive to create a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all students regardless of their identity. We recognize and value diversity inside and outside of the classroom, and recognize that each student has a unique contribution to make and brings with them different strengths and weaknesses. We welcome your ideas for how to promote a better understanding and deeper learning in this class as a community. Please feel free to ask questions, to participate in discussions, and to suggest new approaches to the class content. Please also feel welcome to raise any issue you may have in class or outside of class, including reporting incidents of bias or discrimination, whether intentional or unintentional, either to your instructor, to your advisor(s)/mentor(s), or by using the NYU Bias Response Line.

Subsection Academic Integrity

All students are expected to abide by the CAS Honor Code to be found in the Academic Policies page. Academic integrity is part of your reputation as a responsible student and adult. Violations of the policy are a breach of the trust between professor and student. It is unfair to your fellow students, to the faculty, and to yourself.
The following are considered violations of academic integrity:
  1. Copying answers from Wolfram Alpha, Symbolab, ChatGPT, or any other computational or large language models website. You can use technology to check your work, but if you submit it without thought you are cheating yourself of the point of the exercise.
  2. Copying answers to problems from another website such as Chegg, Math Stack Exchange, Yahoo! Answers, etc. The graders will be able to detect if you’ve copied your work. Aside from the integrity issue, students who short-circuit the homework process usually do not do well on quizzes and exams.
  3. Sharing answers with other students in a group chat or Discord server
  4. Discussing quizzes and exams at any time the quiz or exam is active
  5. Arranging for another person to take a quiz or exam in your stead
  6. Altering graded work to raise scores
  7. Fabricating excuses or forging documentation for makeup exams
This list should not be considered exhaustive.
If a student submits work that is not their own, with the intention to deceive the instructor, then the instructor has no way to evaluate the student’s learning. This usually results in a score of zero, at a minimum. Additionally, any such findings will be reported to the applicable dean in the student’s school, for recordkeeping and possible further disciplinary action.
Please also abide by the NYU policy on illegal downloading of copyrighted material, including textbooks.