As part of a strategy to strengthen computational science education, the U.S. Department of Energy sponsors awards programs to recognize excellence and innodation in CSE teaching at the undergraduate level. These programs are sponsored through the Office of Scientific Computing and administered through the Applied Mathematical Sciences Division of the Ames Laboratory, located at Iowa State University. This particular CSE effort is part of the DOE's broader Undergraduate Computational Engineering and Science (UCES) project.
The Undergraduate Computational Science Awards (UGCSA) contribute to CSE in five distinct ways:
To accomplish these objectives, the UGCSA program issued a national call in 1994 for outstanding CSE projects at the undergraduate level. While the nominated projects ranged across many disciplines, most fell into three categories: (1) individual instructional modules focusing on a particular problem, concept, or model; (2) a curricular innovation involving a single course, or a set of interrelated courses; and (3) computational tools to support instructional development. Winners received $1,000 cash awards and travel to Washington, D.C. for an awards exposition and dinner, an opportunity both to be recognized for their achievements and to share their projects with other educators and with professionals from government and industry.
Later in 1994, UCES conducted a pilot project to recognize excellence in World Wide Web based educational efforts by students. Two universities, Mississippi State University and the Colorado School of Mines, were selected as institutional participants. UCES hopes eventually to expand this student awards program to a national level.
In 1995, the UGCSA program sponsored a second round of professional awards. Although the basic program remained unchanged, much had transpired within the CSE community and within the UCES organization during that year. First of all, a number of the projects nominated in 1995 followed the five-element structure developed by UCES as a guideline for CSE instructional materials. This problem- model-method-implementation-assessment paradigm had evolved from exactly the kind of collaborative work that the first UGCSA program sought to encourage. Second, a greater percentage of project materials were submitted in an electronic form that made it easier to share them with other teachers. Noticeable, too, was the increase in curricular projects with an interdisciplinary design.
Finally, in 1995 UCES also inaugurated a new Leadership in Computational Science Award, which was presented to Roscoe Giles, Center for Computational Science at Boston University. Among Prof. Giles notable contributions to CSE eucation has been curricular development in parallel computing for students in the natural sciences, engineering, and computer science.
The application schedule for the 1996 awards cycle is currently in process. The due date for applications is June 1, 1996. Awards should be announced by mid-July, 1996. Presentation of awards and the awards banquet will be held in late summer or early fall, 1996.
An application form is available on-line from the awards page. For more information, send electronic mail to The Krell Institute.
