Building a Faculty Community to Support Computational Science & Engineering
SIAM Annual Meeting
Atlanta, GA, May 14, 1999
MiniSymposium 46
Super-Partnership: Computaional Science Curricula, High Performance
Computing and SIAM
Mike Heath, Geoff Fox, Roscoe Giles and Kris Stewart
This URL is http://www.edcenter.sdsu.edu/projects/siam99/stewartsiam99.html
Abstract: SIAM's long history linking Higher Education academics and Industrial practitioners of applied mathematics makes it a natural venue for showcasing the international efforts in the now well established discipline of Computational Science. The linkages between the campus learning and research environments and industrial laboratories is also well established. To complete the circle, we present a project providing the incentive for faculty buy-in for curricular enhancement at the undergraduate level which focuses on High Performance Computing and the NSF sponsored Education, Outreach and Training partnership . This Faculty Fellows program is piloted at SDSU and has already succeeded with faculty from Geology, Geography and Computer Engineering.
Building the community
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comes from an understanding of the current attitudes of faculty at your
institution. At San Diego State University, a detailed phone survey
was conducted in Fall 1997, by the Social Science Research Laboratory.
The Ed Center learned of this survey and requested access to the data
so that we could perform preliminary data analysis. We plan to use
this as the baseline for future research on the effectiveness
of the EC/CSE as a change agent to benefit computational science.
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Faculty Community
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Directly funding faculty to invest their time in the development
of curriculum materials for their discipline was key. The additional
acknowledgement from the College Dean, through their matching funds
for this program, helped address the issue
IX. Change Faculty Reward Systems from the
Boyer Commission
on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University,
Reinvesting Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's
Research Universities.
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Support
Computational Science & Engineering
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Instructional technology, information technology, scientific
visualization, simulation & modeling - all are avenues to pursue
to promote the use of the computer in the classroom.
Instructional technology was the main focus of the survey data
referenced above.
The EC/CSE supports the use of tools for scientific visualization and
modeling. A frequently heard comment is then:
Do you need a supercomputer to do scientific visualization? and
our resounding response is NO. But it is true that the
nature of the supercomputer allows such a large amount of data to be
computed that there is demand for effective visualization
tools and supply follows demand.
Dr. Kris Stewart, Director
Education Center on Computational Science & Engineering,
an NPACI partnership activity for the CSU/SDSU
Professor | Senior Fellow
Math & Computer Sciences | San Diego Supercomputer Center
San Diego State University | La Jolla, CA 92038-0505
San Diego, CA 92182-8050 | -----------------------------
619.594.0491 Fax: 619.594.0433 Mail Code 8050
Campus Location: Library Addition Basement/LA 073 ("under the dome")
stewart@sdsu.edu
EC/CSE Homepage