ACADEMIA

By Barbara Jewett -- Just as a petascale computer will dramatically change the world of high-performance computing, it also will set the education arena on its edge. Petascale computing will transform how computing as well as math and science are taught, from revamped materials to new courses to a virtual school. "If you want to have the biggest impact on the overall education scene, affecting the undergraduate content courses—in the sciences, in computer science, in technology, and in mathematics—is the way to accomplish that," says Bob Panoff, executive director of Shodor, a non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the advancement of science and math education through the use of computational modeling and simulation technologies. Shodor is a member of the Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation (GLCPC), a group of colleges, universities, national research laboratories, and other educational institutions that have joined together to facilitate the widespread and effective use of petascale computing to address frontier research questions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. "The consortium education plan focuses on the substantial transformation of the undergraduate experience to include not only computational thinking but the computational thinking that leads to the ability to work with petascale technologies," explains Panoff. Providing education in petascale computing and technologies is a key component of the Blue Waters petascale computing project. Undergraduates the linchpin Investing in undergraduate education is the best way to improve both pre-college and graduate education, Panoff says. For example, consider K-12 teachers. "Where did these teachers acquire the content knowledge they are going to bring to the K-12 classroom? At the undergraduate level," he maintains. "Typically, if a K-12 teacher has a master's degree that degree is in methodology or advanced practice. But the content knowledge most teachers have is the content knowledge they acquired while they were undergraduates." In addition, notes Panoff, the entry-level technology positions in computer companies tend to be filled by those with an undergraduate degree. The undergraduate effort will focus on partnerships with the National Computational Science Institute (NCSI), TeraGrid, and the Computational Science Education Reference Desk (CSERD), a pathway portal of the National Science Digital Library. These partnerships, says Panoff, will lead to the development of effective computational modules that will provide the foundation for multiscale modeling and petascale computing. Faculty workshops and internships for undergraduate students will provide hands-on experience as Blue Waters is brought online. Emphasizing undergraduate education also impacts future graduate students, he says. At the graduate level students are specializing in or extending what they've done, but their interest in and their sustained desire to pursue something at the graduate level is affected by their undergraduate experience. The current generation of undergraduate students will be the first generation exposed to petascale computing in graduate school. Virtual graduate education The Virtual School for Computational Science and Engineering will provide a unique venue for students to learn petascale computing for science and engineering says Sharon Glotzer, a University of Michigan (UM) professor of chemical engineering, material science, and other subjects. Co-founded by Glotzer and NCSA director Thom Dunning, the vitual school, is also part of the Blue Waters project. The UM is also a GLCPC member. "All major research universities have efforts in computational science and engineering research as well as instruction," says Glotzer, "And these efforts are growing as simulation-based engineering and science becomes more and more prominent and the use of computational tools becomes a critical supplement to theoretical and experimental approaches, which it already is in many fields. "One of the complications in teaching computational science is that computer science departments typically focus on algorithms and hardware that computer scientists need to know, while in 'domain' science and engineering departments, like physics, chemical engineering, or aerospace engineering, computational science courses focus on applications of simulation to those disciplines," Glotzer explains. "Many aspects of the nuts and bolts of computational science then fall between the cracks, and as a result, it is not easy for today's students to learn all they need to know to become tomorrow's innovators in high-performance scientific computing." The goal of the virtual school is to fill those gaps, especially in petascale computing where there is not critical mass at any one institution. "For many of our most important scientific applications, petascale computing will force us to rethink how we structure our codes to take full advantage of the architecture of these new machines," she says. "The virtual school will develop new curricula, modules, and courses to help students learn the nuts and bolts of petascale computing-based computational science and engineering." Glotzer says the virtual school will eventually encompass both undergraduate and graduate study, but will initially focus on graduate courses and graduate education. The first Virtual School summer school will be held this August, and the first online curricula and course offerings will be in the spring of 2009. "I'm very excited about it," she says. "It's completely new, and it's the first time that a group of schools across a multi-state region have come together and leveraged their expertise to prepare the next generation of scientists and engineers to harness the power of petascale computing for discovery and innovation. This educational component of Blue Waters will be critical to our ability to exploit this new technology to its fullest potential."