National Computational Science Leadership Program

The National Computational Science Leadership Program is intended to build a national reservoir of secondary education teachers who can effectively utilize computational science to enhance science and math education.  Furthermore, it builds upon the programs and track record of the national Supercomputing Conference by integrating a teacher enhancement/leadership component as a fundamental part of the 2000 and 2001 SC (Supercomputing) Conferences and the respective Education Programs held during those conferences.  The overall goal of this program is the development of a core group of teachers who, through a rich and stimulating environment including interactions with leading computational scientists and year-round support, will reach out from within their school districts to share their knowledge and expertise with other teachers.   Furthermore, to extend the reach of this project beyond the boundaries of the participants, information and best practices will be collected and shared through the development of a national clearinghouse of ideas, curricula materials, and instructional applications generated by participating teachers and including reference materials made available through other NSF grants.

Two hundred (200) teachers, participating in teams of four teachers each, will be selected from a national pool of teacher applicant teams.  These teacher teams may come from one school district or from several cooperating school districts as needed to make up the four participants required for each teacher team.   The teams should be formed around two science teachers, one mathematics teacher, and one school administrator. 

Team Member Benefits include but are not limited to:

1. paid attendance at the SC2000 Conference (November 4-9, 2000)

2. paid attendance at a two-week summer workshop at the University of Alabama Huntsville with research excursions to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (July 2001)

3. development of a two-week course module or replacement unit utilizing computational science methods for use in the classroom

4. development of a “lessons learned” plan for dissemination of information within the teacher participants’ home school system

5. computational science leadership skill development

6. participation in web cast seminars, computational science and leadership topics, and on-line intra-classroom experiences including "live national hands-on laboratory exercises"

7. development of learning modules that will become a permanent part of the national online computational science resource repository

The National Computational Science Leadership Program is funded by a $1,130,503 National Science Foundation grant that provides adequate travel allowances to the teacher participants in this program.   These allowances will cover reasonable costs for coach airfare to project meetings (including the SC2000 Conference and a Summer Institute), ground transportation, lodging, meals, course instructional materials, and substitute teacher support.    Teacher participants will be responsible for any costs that exceed these allowances.  Additionally, program coordinators are also applying for supplemental grants to provide laptops, ISP accounts, and release time to teacher participants.  Special emphasis will be placed on providing additional support to low wealth schools and districts.

If your school or district is interested in supporting one or more teams (4 participants/team as noted above) in the National Computational Science Leadership Program, please review the “Teacher Enhancement Application Form” link on this web page or view the form directly at http://www.ecu.edu/si/te/te_app.cfm .  Keep in mind that a team of four will be required before the application form can be completed.

Broken links? Send e-mail to dpetter@ucar.edu

LAST UPDATED: 09/01/2000