Capital University Professors Lead NSF-Funded Project To Strengthen Teaching of Computational Studies to Undergraduates
Capital University professors Terry Lahm and Andrea Karkowski will lead 35 of their peers in a four-year effort to create and distribute educational materials and to train faculty how to teach computational studies to undergraduate students.
Funded by a $480,000 National Science Foundation grant, select faculty members from 14 colleges and universities will combine their expertise to develop educational materials to teach computational studies, which currently is taught almost exclusively at the master’s level, to students at two- and four-year colleges.
Computational studies blends computer science and visualization with mathematical modeling to predict the likely outcome of a given set of circumstances to solve real-world problems. Computational science models can be used to predict how an epidemic will spread through a population or model traffic flow to help engineers design a new highway that nearly eliminates gridlock.
“These models serve the students who come to college with varying interests,” said Karkowski, who will help direct the grant, along with Lahm, principal investigator for the project. “So often, when they go to college, students are told to focus on one or two areas of strength. This allows them to find connections between many disciplines to solve very relevant problems.”
For example, Karkowski – whose background is in psychology – currently is developing a model with social work professor Renda Ross to show how a learning environment could be changed to allow students with ADHD to succeed in the classroom. Creating such a model requires the ability to work and communicate with professionals in social work, education, psychology and mathematics.
“The educational materials will be structured so that students experience a work environment they typically would find in industry, which means they’re working with students in other fields of study to solve problems,” Karkowski explained.
The grant also provides funding for 10 workshops for faculty development and two national conferences to disseminate the educational materials developed through the grant.
“Faculty traditionally are used to teaching within their own area of expertise and not facilitating learning for student in various disciplines,” Karkowski explained. “So when students graduate they often have difficulty communicating with people in other fields. This training involves teaching faculty how to bring together students from unrelated areas of study and get them to talk to each other and work together.”Capital, the first liberal arts institution to offer computational studies to undergraduates pursuing degrees in a variety of fields, will serve as the host institution for the NSF-funded project. Other co-principal investigators include Sheryl Hemkin of Kenyon College, Gerald Mueller of Columbus State Community College and Ignatios Vakalis of California State Polytechnic Institute.
The project builds on the success of previous grants from the National Science Foundation, the W.M. Keck Foundation, and Battelle. Previous grants from the National Science Foundation focused mostly on curriculum development. The project also aligns with the Ohio Board of Regents and Ohio Supercomputer Center Statewide Initiative in Computational Science.