B4.4 Recruitment of Participating Institutions and Faculty

Our recruitment and selection procedures have been developed successfully over several years, first with the Carolinas Summer Institute, and later with workshops led by the project director while team leader of the education group at NCSA at the University of Illinois. The concept of an instructional team is central to our approach. Even if an individual teaches a computational science course or incorporates computational models in current courses, that individual must rely on the skills and expertise of other supporting areas. Consequently, we are looking to form partnerships with institutions that will foster such a collaborative environment.

The targeted institutions for this national initiative are predominately undergraduate institutions, historically black colleges and universities, minority institutions, colleges of education, and community colleges in the southeastern region of the US. Faculty from ACS and CCCS schools, as consortia partners, will likely comprise the majority of the participants, but we will not restrict participation to those schools. Female and minority faculty participation will be encouraged from all targeted schools. We intend to repeat the significant success achieved in our previous NSF-funded activities, in which half of the selected faculty were from historically black or minority institutions.

We will recruit two, or preferably three, faculty members from each participating institution. These participants are intended to be from mathematics, computer science, and either engineering or one of the physical, life or social sciences. For faculty from colleges of education we seek a similar diversity of expertise in areas of teacher preparation. This approach has proven successful in establishing a critical mass on each targeted campus - providing a natural, interdisciplinary support mechanism. If a given school is able to provide only two faculty members, collaborations between cooperating institutions will be encouraged, provided an acceptable plan is developed describing how the faculty at the two schools will work together. This plan should include joint seminars, workshops, and other joint projects.

Recruitment and selection of participants will be administered at Shodor with the advice and consultation of the Advisory Committee. NSF support for fifteen faculty is requested for each of the introductory, intermediate or advanced workshops. Additional slots will be paid for by the consortia or member institutions. Publicity materials will be prepared that describe the SCSI activities, the interdisciplinary nature of the courses, and the requirements for institutional commitment and faculty prerequisites. These materials will be sent to deans, department heads, and other administrators at targeted institutions, as well as to individual faculty members who express an interest. Institute staff will make campus visits to raise the awareness of the role of modeling and computational science in education, and to explain the enhancement opportunities and the nature of the commitments required for application to the program. A call for participation also will go out over appropriate network news groups. The Project Director will work with the Advisory Committee to ensure that the recruitment procedures are implemented properly.

B4.4.1 Institutional Requirements

Each participating institution must make the following commitments during the application procedure:

a) provide an interdisciplinary team of at least two but preferably three faculty;

b) commit in writing that these faculty will have the opportunity to use the materials and expertise acquired in existing or new courses or research;

c) fund the travel expenses of the participating faculty to attend the SCSI workshops;

d) facilitate on-campus dissemination of what was learned at the SCSI workshops through faculty seminars or in-service activities;

e) assist the Project Director in conducting an accurate evaluation of the National Institute by providing written feedback on progress in incorporating the tools, techniques, and technologies in the undergraduate curriculum.

B4.4.2 Individual Faculty Requirements

All faculty members making up the application team must satisfy the following prerequisites as part of the application procedure:

a) be expert in their own subject area;

b) be knowledgeable about and willing to use network tools such as e-mail and the Web;

c) commit to incorporating the tools, technologies, or techniques learned in the Summer Institute into existing discipline-specific courses, and/or to teaching an interdisciplinary modeling or computational science course;

d) be capable of and interested in learning and working within a collaborative, team oriented context; and

e) be recommended by the department head or dean.

B4.4.3 Team Selection Criteria

Our work with the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) and Carolinas Consortium for Computational Science (CCCS) indicates that there will be significant demand for participation in the various SCSI workshops. This realization, coupled with our previous experience with the Carolinas Institute, leads us to establish some criteria for prioritizing applications.

The Project Director and Advisory Committee will make the final selections of the participating schools each year, with the goal of a demographic, economic, and geographically dispersed set of participants. The Advisory Committee will help review the institutional applications with the following criteria being used to prioritize them:

a) Because we see computational science as a significant new opportunity to level the playing field in science and engineering education, priority will continue to be given to recruiting faculty from HBCUs and other minority institutions;

b) Special emphasis will be given to teams including minority and/or female faculty members regardless of institutional classification;

c) Priority will be given to institutions that demonstrate significant commitment to curriculum reform on a campus-wide basis, thereby increasing the effect of the project. This commitment can be shown, for example, by the institution seeking funds for hardware, software, or communication equipment improvements, or by providing release time for faculty to develop new courses or improve existing ones based on the SCSI experiences;

d) Schools that commit themselves to being catalysts and resources for curriculum reform in science, engineering, or technology in area community colleges and/or to providing in-service training for K-12 educators will have preference over those that can only demonstrate a single-campus impact.

The goal of this preference in the selection criteria will be to favor undergraduate faculty who fully incorporate computational science tools, techniques, and technologies into science and mathematics courses and teacher preparation courses of the pre-service education curriculum.

Prior to final selection of participants, the SCSI staff may conduct interviews or site visits to ensure the participants' commitment to the program and to assess their level of preparation.