Teaching Computational Science in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Environment

该项目旨在建立一个能够支持计算科学专业本科生的实验室。计算建模正迅速成为一项重要的科学研究技术。然而，大量物理科学、自然科学和社会科学专业的学生在完成本科训练时，却没有任何将计算工具和建模技术应用于本学科问题的经验。该项目的重点是数学和计算机科学系的新课程序列，为学生提供所需的背景和经验。这些新课程将介绍计算科学的核心概念，包括过程性和非过程性编程、建模、科学可视化、数值库和工具包、并行算法和架构。学生们正在使用这些概念来解决从他们自己的科学领域得出的大规模问题。

This project is establishing a laboratory capable of supporting an undergraduate specialization in computational science. Computational modeling is rapidly becoming an important scientific research technique. However, a large number of students in the physical, natural, and social sciences are completing their undergraduate training without any experience in applying computational tools and modeling techniques to problems in their own discipline. The focus of this project is the new course sequence within the Mathematics and Computer Science Department that is giving students the needed background and experience. These new courses are introducing the core concepts of computational science, including procedural and non-procedural programming, modeling, scientific visualization, numerical libraries and toolkits, and parallel algorithms and architectures. Students are using these concepts to solve large-scale problems drawn from their own scientific field.