The Shodor Computational Science Institute

B. Project Description

B1. Executive Summary

The Shodor Education Foundation, a non-profit education and research corporation, proposes the Shodor Computational Science Institute (SCSI), a modular series of workshops, seminars, and support activities to introduce the authentic use of numerical models across the undergraduate curriculum. We want to focus on faculty who can readily multiply the number of other faculty interested and capable of using numerical models as interactive learning environments. Our goal is to assist schools such as those represented by the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) and the undergraduate institutions that comprise the Carolinas Consortium for Computational Science (CCCS) to achieve interdisciplinary, curricular reform based on mathematical modeling and computational tools, techniques, and technologies. The SCSI project will enable teams of mathematics, science, and computer science faculty at small to medium sized colleges to work together, to enhance their professional standing through the use of technology and the wider use of mathematical modeling and the tools of computational science within a truly interdisciplinary approach. The institutions of both ACS and CCCS are seeking ways to work together and with Shodor to overcome the barriers on their own campuses that inhibit the effective and wide-spread inclusion of technology in education, specifically mathematical modeling, numerical simulation, and other computing, multi-media and communication technologies. The faculty themselves represent a new, virtual community, using technology to build bridges between campuses and to learn to teach with technology.

The teacher is the focal point for change, and the Shodor staff and targeted faculty together constitute a productive, energized, and focused resource; they are a critical mass that can address, enable, and extend technology-based reform efforts according to the individual needs and circumstances of the constituent campuses.

The result is a regional, coordinated and distributed education, training, and resource access program in computational science and the use of computational models across the undergraduate curriculum. Undergraduate faculty in science, mathematics, engineering, and education will grow in their appreciation for the roles that models play in learning and research. This focus on modeling will enable these faculty to learn how to do computational science and how to teach computational science in engaging and enriching interactive environments incorporating the same tools, techniques, and technologies which characterize the modern practice of science and engineering. During a series of workshops and follow-on activities, participants progress from finding and assessing models, to running other peoples' models, to modifying these models, to ultimately writing their own. At each stage, the faculty grow to understand the importance of challenging the models and their numerical implementations, asking themselves and their students, "How do we know if it is right?"

The project includes a series of campus visits, a series of three, intensive, one-week, interdisciplinary summer workshops which cover the principles and practice of computational science, and seminars and modeling-based activities back at the home institutions. Continuous support and follow-up, materials development, access to HPCC and visualization resources, and evaluation are coordinated and enabled by using collaborative tools and electronic networks.

With its board of directors composed of the original designers and implementers of the NSF-funded Carolinas Institute in Computational Science, the Shodor Foundation is uniquely positioned to leverage its own resources in partnership with the ACS and the CCCS. We seek to develop model faculty who will improve their own computational, modeling, and teaching skills, who can teach a tested and proven computational science curriculum, who can direct undergraduate research projects in computational areas, and who can and will pass along their experiences to their peers.

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