An Undergraduate Computational Science Curriculum

Abstract

Wofford College instituted one of the first undergraduate programs in computational science, the Emphasis in Computational Science (ECS). Besides programming, data structures, and calculus, ECS students take two computational science courses (Modeling and Simulation for the Sciences, Data and Visualization) and complete a summer internship involving computation in the sciences. Materials written for the modeling and simulation course and developed with funding from National Science Foundation served as a basis the first textbook designed specifically for an introductory course in the computational science and engineering curriculum. The successful ECS has attracted a higher percentage of females than in most computer science curricula. The SIAM Working Group on Undergraduate Computational Science and Engineering Education summarized features of Wofford's ECS and other computational science programs. Besides its established curriculum, Wofford has incorporated computational science in other courses, such as in a sequence of three microbiology laboratories on modeling the spread of disease.