To attract
students into a technologically important field
To improve
the retention of those students who are recruited
To provide
students with useful skills and the outlook necessary to continue their
own education
To provide
industry with graduates trained in a critically needed specialty, and
To provide
the scientific community with people who can work productively on a large
class of difficult scientific problems
Our program
involves three elements:
Establishment
of a parallel-computing
capability at JMU
Course
and curricular development in computational
science including scientific visualization at NCCU
Creation
of a fluid-mechanics laboratory component for the computational science
course work at JMU
In the
computational science program, we have initially focused on computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) for several reasons. Fluid dynamics provides a rich
source of problems that can be used to demonstrate diverse approaches to
developing mathematical models. By limiting our scope to problems in fluid
physics, we can require mathematics majors to take enough physics courses
to have a firm scientific background in that field without requiring them
to take what would be essentially a second major. In addition to being
a rich source of physical and computational examples, fluid mechanics provides
problems that draw on everyday experience and that students can recognize
as useful and interesting. The CFD projects required to complete the program
develop the
student's physical intuition.
