CLOUD

CHAMPAIGN, IL -- Mary Bea Walker, a professional with 25 years of experience developing and managing education, training, and outreach programs, has been named the new associate director of the Education, Outreach, and Training (EOT) division at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Walker has managed and developed education, outreach, and training programs for academic, government, and industry organizations for many years. Prior to joining NCSA in 1996, Walker worked as training director for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, assistant dean and director of continuing engineering education for the UIUC College of Engineering, and assistant coordinator for undergraduate education in the UIUC College of Education. She also collaborated with University of Illinois regional program directors to deliver statewide degree and non-degree education programs through the university's Office of the Associate Vice President for Public Service. At NCSA she has been the center's lead for the Department of Defense's Programming Environment and Training (PET) Program, working with three DoD PET program sites. She was also NCSA's senior academic lead for training for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory DoD PET program site. In addition Walker was training program manager for the EOT division, leading teams that developed programs and conducted high performance computing workshops and conferences for industrial, government, and academic audiences. Walker holds a doctorate in adult and continuing education from UIUC and a doctorate and master's in French literature from the University of Kentucky. She has published more than 30 papers on continuing professional development for engineers, scientists, and other practicing professionals in academia, government, and industry. "Fostering learning opportunities is my chosen career, so I am honored to be part of the NCSA EOT team with its distinguished reputation for innovative services and outreach activities for a wide range of learners, educators, and other practicing professionals," said Walker. "I look forward to continuing work with other NCSA divisions, NCSA's Private Sector Program, and our EOT-PACI and other Alliance partners to support scientific computing and information technology knowledge dissemination." EOT develops and conducts a wide variety of activities and programs aimed at educators, engineers, scientists, and other learners. These activities disseminate advanced technologies to new communities and encourage audiences to adopt new technologies as learning tools in schools, colleges, universities, and the workplace. EOT staff work with NCSA's access and inclusion program to increase the participation of women and underrepresented groups in computational science and engineering and to foster relationships with Minority Serving Institutions that have not yet received the full benefits of the technology revolution. The division also works closely with the Education, Outreach, and Training Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (EOT-PACI), the outreach initiative of the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure program. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a leader in developing and deploying cutting-edge high-performance computing, networking, and information technologies. NCSA is a partner in the TeraGrid project, a National Science Foundation initiative to build and deploy the world's largest, fastest, most comprehensive, distributed infrastructure for open scientific research. NCSA also leads the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance), a partnership to prototype an advanced computational infrastructure for the 21st century that includes more than 50 academic, government, and industry research partners. The NSF Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) program funds the Alliance. In addition to the NSF, NCSA receives support from the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, private sector partners, and other federal agencies. For more information, see http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/.