An Undergraduate Workstation Laboratory for Scientific Computing

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This project introduces lower division engineering students to state-of-the-art scientific computing environment. Key components of this environment include two high-performance workstations, a widely-used scientific subprogram library, and a very high-level problem solving environment. A color PostScript printer provides state-of-the-art printing capability. Equipment support for the introductory course in scientific computing previously consisted of an IBM mainframe and attached terminals; this new instrumentation expands an existing NSF-funded laboratory, thus allowing the course to demonstrate modern methods in problem solving and scientific software development. Students gain a knowledge of the capabilities of existing software libraries and systems and then learn to critically evaluate problems in order to recognize which ones require custom-designed software, which may be approached using library routines, and which may be rapidly solved with a very high-level programming language. Problems requiring varying amounts of computational resources will be solved so that students will acquire expertise in the selection of the appropriate hardware environment. The award is being matched by an equal amount from the principal investigator's institution.