Professor Guy-Alain Amoussou and Humboldt State University (HSU) propose to organize, in collaboration with several francophone West African institutions of higher education, a ?Computational Coastal Management and Global Computing Education Partnerships? planning visit in August 2009 in Abidjan, Cote d?Ivoire. The objectives of the proposed program are to: 1) initiate an International Computational Coastal Management program. The first step will be to build a web based library of a collection of the best available scientific information on the marine environment of the North Coast region of California and the West African regions 2) identify effective learning models that incorporate a global dimension in computing education; and 3) establish university collaborations to support student and faculty exchanges. For each of these discussion areas, we have indentified funding opportunities which we anticipate will stimulate participants? creativity to generate projects that will support their collaboration. Ultimately, our intention is to initiate innovative project ideas that will contribute to build Computational Coastal Management and Global Computing Education Partnerships. This planning visit will bring together three faculty and one evaluator from HSU, five faculty from the African partner institutions and three students (one undergraduate student from HSU and two from Cote d?Ivoire).
Intellectual Merit: Faculty and Students participating in the planning visit will be part of an interdisciplinary research environment that breaks the traditional academic silos they are used to. Additionally, given the increasingly technology-driven features of our modern society of the 21th century, there is a critical need to be involved in education and research endeavors that widen our perspectives to allow: - the development of sound and valid computational models that can be used in California and West Africa, - the identification of the necessary features computing education needs to be global and - a better preparation of the next generation of students and faculty. Finally, this planning visit will enable specific funded projects to be initiated.
Broader Impact: The proposed project will contribute to create a synergy with other existing NSF funded projects at HSU that are focused on interdisciplinary research and education projects. These include, for example, the Science of Design and the Research Experience for Undergraduates Projects. The outcomes of this planning visit will be shared at diverse venues including the California State University System Institute for Teaching and Learning e-magazine, the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education 2010 annual workshop and the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges North West regional conference. Our goal will be to attract additional partner institutions on the American side.
