CPATH-1: Revitalizing Computing Education through Computational Science

该计划旨在通过针对科学和工程本科专业的计算科学未成年人的发展来振兴本科计算教育。 这些专业代表了一个广泛的学习者社区，对他们来说，计算是一个越来越重要的工具。 现代科学和工程应用的显着复杂性需要高性能的计算解决方案，科学家和工程师需要计算思维能力，以实现这样的解决方案。该项目介绍了并发，并行和分布式计算的概念，技术和模式早期的课程。 由于延长摩尔定律的努力，商品级多核处理器的出现使理解这些主题成为重要的学习成果。 因此，这个项目的总体效果将是教计算思维能力，现代软件设计方法，高性能计算和科学计算的学习者迫切需要他们的广泛社区。 通过对非计算机科学专业的课程进行更新，计算机科学专业也将受益匪浅，因为并发，并行和分布式计算方法将比通常遇到的更早地融入课程。计算机科学课程也将通过引入具有计算兴趣的科学和工程的真实世界的例子来振兴。科学和工程的人口统计数据与传统计算机科学有很大的不同，计算中代表性不足的群体将获得显着接触计算思维和计算的核心思想。 计算技术在各个学科中的扩散也将改变核心计算机科学学科中感知和教授计算思维和计算的方式。在整个项目的所有阶段严格的评估计划将定量测量本科生的科学计算准备的变化，由拟议的计算科学未成年人，导致被其他机构采用或调整的可能性更大。通过提高范德比尔特和其他地方的科学家和工程师的计算技能，该项目将在改善美国科学教育方面产生更广泛的影响，使学生为就业和高级研究生培训做好更好的准备。

This program aims to revitalize undergraduate computing education through the development of a computational science minor targeted to undergraduate majors in science and engineering. These majors represent a broad community of learners for whom computation is an increasingly critical tool. Modern scientific and engineering applications of significant complexity require high-performance computing solutions, and scientists and engineers require computational thinking competencies to achieve such solutions.The project introduces concurrent, parallel, and distributed computing concepts, techniques, and patterns early in the curriculum. The advent of multi-core processors at the commodity level, necessitated by the efforts to prolong Moore's law, have made understanding these topics a critical learning outcome. The overall effect of this project will thus be to teach computational thinking competencies, modern software design methods, high-performance computing, and scientific computing to a broad community of learners sorely in need of them. By renovating the curriculum with non-computer science majors in mind, computer science majors will also benefit significantly because concurrent, parallel, and distributed computational methods will be infused into the curriculum earlier than they are normally encountered. The computer science curriculum will also be revitalized by introducing real-world examples from science and engineering that have computational interest.The demographics of science and engineering are different enough from traditional computer science that underrepresented groups in computing will receive significant exposure to core ideas of computational thinking and computing. The diffusion of computational techniques throughout a variety of disciplines will also change the way computational thinking and computation are perceived and taught within the core computer science discipline. A rigorous evaluation plan throughout all phases of the project will measure quantitatively the changes in the preparation of undergraduates for scientific computing by the proposed computational sciences minor, leading to a greater likelihood of being adopted or adapted by other institutions. By improving the computational skills of scientists and engineers, at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, the project will achieve the broader impact of improving science education in the United States, making students far better prepared for the work force and advanced graduate training.