A forerunner in the area of undergraduate computational science and one of the first in the nation to offer a formal program in it, Wittenberg served as the site of the National Computational Science Institute (NCSI), May 21-27.

Led by the Shodor Education Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of science and math education through the use of computational science, modeling and technology, the workshop drew 25 Wittenberg faculty members from various disciplines, including chemistry, biology, economics and physics.

According to NCSI, science students today must understand and be aware of the advantages and limitations of this approach to scientific inquiry.
“The faculty found the new methods and tools for teaching our undergraduates
computational science techniques most rewarding,” said coordinator James Noyes, professor of computer science and director of Wittenberg’s computational science program.

“The feedback was also positive, and we plan for this to lead to a more specialized workshop, perhaps in bioinformatics and computational biology.”