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Blue Waters Parallel Computational STEM Curriculum Capstone

Click here to apply — Applications due March 20, 2020

Shodor is coordinating a curriculum development effort for which we are recruiting participants from institutions across the United States to fill a variety of roles (curriculum developers, testers, workshop instructors, and workshop participants). The Blue Waters Parallel Computational STEM Curriculum Capstone (or, simply, "the Capstone") aims to prepare faculty and professional staff to teach applied parallel modeling and simulation by incorporating the materials and lessons learned from the successful Blue Waters Intern Petascale Institute that has been conducted multiple times over the last ten years.

What has set the Petascale Institute apart from other efforts is that it starts with working models solving problems in real science that cover the continuum of multi-core/many-core technologies as exemplified by Blue Waters (OpenMP, MPI, OpenACC, CUDA, hybrid). Instead of teaching these from an abstract, theoretical point, we have exploited the basic motifs used in real scientific code to teach undergraduate and graduate students the basics of applied parallel modeling and simulation.

The goal of the Capstone effort is to update the Petascale Institute materials to become more useful for preparing undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to help faculty and professional staff to integrate the materials into their own courses, student programs, REUs, workshops, and institutes.

As part of this effort, Shodor will be coordinating a one-week workshop, June 8–12, 2020, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to demonstrate the curriculum modules and approaches, collect feedback and suggestions, and build community among educators and trainers.

This project is a component of the Blue Waters education initiatives at the University of Illinois, funded by the National Science Foundation.

There are four different roles you can fill in the project: curriculum developer, tester, workshop instructor, and/or workshop participant.

Curriculum developers will do tasks such as creating exercise sets, modifying or creating code examples, drafting lecture notes, recording video lectures, collecting reference materials, creating hands-on activities, etc. They will work for approximately 12–15 weeks between the beginning of April and mid-July 2020. The expected level of effort is 10 hours per week, including the submission of a monthly progress report. We will support each curriculum developer with a $4,000 stipend. Regular calls will be scheduled to coordinate efforts among the curriculum developers. We aim to recruit approximately 13 curriculum developers to work on this project.

Testers will do tasks such as reviewing existing materials and making suggestions for changes, piloting materials in courses or training events, and running example code on different clusters to benchmark and scale them. They will work between the beginning of April and mid-July 2020. We expect most of the work to occur prior to the June workshop, though some will be needed for refinement of materials after the workshop. The expected level of effort is about 15 hours total. We will support each tester with a $500 stipend. Calls will be scheduled to coordinate efforts among the testers. We aim to recruit approximately 10 testers to work on this project.

Workshop instructors will assist with the instruction at the workshop at NCSA in June. We will fund and arrange the travel, lodging, and meals during the workshop for 5 instructors, and each instructor will receive a $1,000 stipend honorarium. Instructors must attend the entire workshop to be funded by our program. There will be regular conference calls prior to the workshop for planning purposes, and instructors will be expected to attend most of these.

Workshop participants will explore the developed curriculum modules, critique their usefulness, work on developing their own courses / training events, and document their plans for using the modules and any suggested changes to the modules. We will fund and arrange the travel, lodging, and meals during the workshop for 20 participants. Participants must attend the entire workshop to be funded by our program.

A person can participate in multiple roles (curriculum developer, tester, workshop instructor and/or workshop participant) provided they can meet the expected level of effort for each role.

To apply, please use this Google Form.

Please direct questions to Aaron Weeden, aweeden@shodor.org