9452050 Howland The proposed state-of-the-art computer laboratory will support an innovative new laboratory computer science course for students majoring in disciplines other than computer science, especially education majors who intend to teach science at the secondary level. This new course concept implements a contained laboratory that uses a breadth first rather than depth first approach to cover a broad range of computer science topics at the introductory level. The computer is studied as a phenomena, not just a tool yielding a non-classical but effective approach to instilling basic computer concepts in non-science oriented students. Finally, the course uses the Scheme programming notation as a lingua franca to describe computer science topics, build working models of computer science constructs and perform laboratory experiments without being a course which focuses primarily on teaching programming.
