Funded by NSF through grants IIS-0722211 and IIS-0722203
Participants | Goals | Description | Schedule | NSF Program Description | Full Proposal (.pdf)
Principal participants are:
- Chun Wai Liew, Associate Professor & Head, Computer Science, Lafayette College
- Valerie B Barr, Professor & Chair, Computer Science, Union College
Affiliated participants include:
- Janet Anderson, Professor, Chemistry, Union College
- Bert Flugman, Director of the Center for Advanced Study in Education (CASE), City University of New York
- Alan Gross, Professor, Doctoral Program in Educational Psychology, City University of New York
- Helen Hanson, Assistant Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Union College
- Sharon Jones, Associate Professor & Chair, AB Engineering Program, Lafayette College
- Ed Kerns, Eugene Clapp Professor of Art, Art, Lafayette College
- Eshragh Motahar, Associate Professor, Economics, Union College
- Jeff Pfaffmann, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Lafayette College
- Gary Reich, Professor, Physics, Union College
- Elaine Reynolds, Associate Professor & Chair, Neuroscience, Lafayette College
- Chris Ruebeck, Assistant Professor, Economics & Business, Lafayette College
- Jim Toia, Director of the Community Arts Program, Art, Lafayette College
- Frank Xia, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Lafayette College
Project Goals
The goal of the proposed project is to model, at Lafayette and Union colleges, a transformation of undergraduate computing education through initiatives that engage in computation:
- students who are not typically attracted to computer science
- faculty leaders who are outside the computing community.
We will create a model for a campus-wide computation initiative that provides:
- a curriculum based in the CS department that introduces computational methods to students and faculty in other disciplines
- examples of ways to incorporate computation into the curriculum (core and upper-level) in
other disciplines- ways to raise awareness among students and faculty of the importance of computation
- examples of faculty research projects that involve computation
The core of the curriculum is based around an introductory course and a number of general application courses, which the students will follow with discipline-specific courses. The
core is designed to teach students:
- basic computer science concepts,
- basic programming skills that will enable them to write (a) small programs, (b) customize
the programs used in their discipline (e.g., statistical packages), and/or (c) create programs
by combining the use of standard package libraries (e.g., numerical libraries)- the major concepts underlying commonly used large software packages such as databases
and machine learning software. This will equip students to make use of them in their disciplines, e.g., to organize, store and analyze their data.Courses in the computation curriculum fall into three categories:
- Introductory Courses
These courses introduce students to computation concepts and computing principles. They will be open to any student on campus, though we expect it to be taken primarily by students in science, engineering, and social sciences. These courses cover the basic principles of computer science.
- General Application Courses
These courses teach students how to apply computational methods. They will cover material that is currently covered in upper level CS courses, but are distinct from their CS counterparts because they have only an introductory course as prerequisite and will be less analytical and more applications oriented than the equivalent course for CS majors.
- Discipline Specific Courses
These are upper level courses in specific disciplines that make extensive use of computing methods and technology.At each institution a combined group of faculty will:
- engage in joint development and teaching of a core of introductory and general applications
computation courses,- engage in joint development and teaching of a core of introductory and general applications
computation courses,- continue to develop and enhance courses for a computational methods minor,
- modify upper-level courses in various disciplines to extend use of computational approaches,
- consult for or engage in joint development of research projects that involve students and
computation,- create seminars and other opportunities for computation-intensive work to be presented
by students and faculty from across the institution.
Annual Reports
- 1st year (July 2008) (pdf)