Computational Science Education

III.  RESOURCES FOR COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE EDUCATION

Many resources are available to help educators introduce computational science courses and programs at all levels.  These include faculty workshops, conferences, textbooks, magazines, and materials available on the web.

A.  National Computational Science Institute (http://www.computationalscience.org/)

The National Science Foundation awarded a three-year grant to the Shodor Education Foundation (http://www.shodor.org/) for the creation of the National Computational Science Institute (NCSI).  NCSI expands the already popular regional workshops known as the Shodor Computational Science Institute (SCSI).  At over 18 partner sites across the country, NCSI will introduce the hands-on use of computational science, numerical models, and data visualization tools across the curriculum.

B.  Supercomputer Center Programs

Many national and state supercomputer centers and government laboratories have programs in computational science education.  These programs include workshops, student research opportunities, and seminars.

The National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) and the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) are the two NSF-funded partnerships that help to create a national computing infrastructure to support computational science and engineering.  They jointly support an education, outreach, and training effort called EOT-PACI.  (http://www.eot.org/)

Information on other supercomputer center programs in education can be found on the web:

• National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) (http://www.scd.ucar.edu/)
• National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/)
• North Carolina Supercomputing Center (http://www.ncsc.org/)
• Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) (http://www.osc.edu/education/)
• Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) (http://www.psc.edu/education.html)
• San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) (http://www.sdsc.edu/Education/)
• SDSC Education Center on Computational Science & Engineering     (http://www.edcenter.sdsu.edu/index.html)

C.  Computational Science Education Project

The Computational Science Education Project (CSEP) produced teaching material for high performance computing.  The material is targeted for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in science and engineering.  Although this project is no longer active, the material is still available on the CSEP web site.  (http://csep1.phy.ornl.gov/)

D.  Undergraduate Computational Engineering and Sciences Initiative

The Department of Energy sponsored a project titled Undergraduate Computational Engineering and Sciences: An Educational Initiative in Computational Science (UCES).  The emphasis of the project was on collecting, developing, and distributing a set of educational materials in computational science at the undergraduate level.  The developed material was modular, interactive, and logically grouped into courses, beginning with introductory material targeted towards freshmen and sophomores (http://www.krellinst.org/UCES/)

E.  Textbooks and Reference Books

The Bibliography lists many articles and textbooks devoted to computational science.

F.  Magazine

In addition to the several journals dedicated to computational science and engineering, the following magazine is particularly relevant to computational science education:

Computing in Science and Engineering - a joint publication of the IEEE Computer Society and the American Institute of Physics. (http://www.computer.org/cise/)

G.  Conferences

For several years the Supercomputing 'xy (now called SCxy) conferences on high performance computing and communications have had significant sessions on computational science education.  SC2003, to be held in Phoenix on November 15-21, 2003, will have an education programming focusing on undergraduate computational science education (http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/edu_general.html)

The second SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering was held in San Diego, February 10-13, 2003 (http://www.siam.org/meetings/cse03/index.htm).  The next conference will be held in 2005.