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I teach math in the first year of the university. Stuff like solving a 2×2 or 3×3 system of linear equations or the derivative or integral of x*exp(x^2).

They are very important for the phisics or whatever class next year, but they are just tools too boring to make a special project about them.

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I had a math instructor in my small, unknown technical school for my mechanical engineering program. He took a huge amount of initiative to work with the profs in the engineering department to make our assignments into word problems showing us exactly how what we were learning would be used later on.

I think it was a lot more useful because we could see how each of the subparts in a multi-part question worked together to solve engineering problems.

I know this isn't possibly in a generalist class with students from many departments, but there are some ways to make them less boring.

I'd recommend researching where such math is applied in the industry and at least show them where it's used. I have rarely understood why I should learn something. While having to research it again years later.

Matrix multiplications are for example used in game engines or in image processing. One example of rather complex algorithm is potential based interception algorithms for moving objects (Ai for Game Developers - O'Reilly).

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