This project is establishing a laboratory capable of supporting an undergraduate specialization in computational science. Computational modeling is rapidly becoming an important scientific research technique. However, a large number of students in the physical, natural, and social sciences are completing their undergraduate training without any experience in applying computational tools and modeling techniques to problems in their own discipline. The focus of this project is the new course sequence within the Mathematics and Computer Science Department that is giving students the needed background and experience. These new courses are introducing the core concepts of computational science, including procedural and non-procedural programming, modeling, scientific visualization, numerical libraries and toolkits, and parallel algorithms and architectures. Students are using these concepts to solve large-scale problems drawn from their own scientific field.
