The Computational Discovery Laboratory, an interdisciplinary state-of-the-art computer teaching laboratory, will provide biological, physical, mathematical, and social science majors at Benedictine College with the technology to learn and discover for themselves in a supervised environment. It will also support faculty/student research. The Computational Discovery Laboratory, consisting of eight Quadra 950s with appropriate software, will have a ninth mobile computer which will serve as a projection platform in the Laboratory and allow for demonstrations in traditional classrooms and laboratories. The Laboratory will be used for a wide variety of applications, including interfacing with biology instruments using MacLab, simulating chemistry experiments using Gantt, solving symbolic mathematics equations using Mathematica in physics and mathematics classes, writing computer programs in a structured laboratory setting in computer science classes, and analyzing data using SPSS in psychology, political science, and sociology classes. The computers will be networked with the College's minicomputer, allowing students access other programming languages and, providing access to Internet/Bitnet when that becomes available. The Laboratory will serve as a model of how a group of departments at a small college can share a facility in order to provide state-of-the-art computing facilities for their majors.
