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7094 DOCUMENTS OF THE GENERAL FACULTY PROPOSED ADDITION OF THE COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING CERTIFICATE AND REQUEST FOR RECOGNITION ON THE UNIVERSITY TRANSCRIPT The Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences has filed with the secretary of the Faculty Council the request to add a new certificate program and request for its recognition on University transcripts. The change will appear in the in The University chapter in the Undergraduate Catalog, 2010-2012. The deans of the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences, the Cockrell School of Engineering, and the Jackson School of Geosciences have approved the interdisciplinary request. The secretary has classified this proposal as legislation of general interest to the University. The Committee on Undergraduate Degree Program Review approved the proposal at its meeting on April 14, 2009, and forwarded the proposed changes to the Office of the General Faculty. The Faculty Council has the authority to approve this legislation on behalf of the General Faculty. The authority to grant final approval on this legislation resides with the executive vice chancellor for academic affairs with notification to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. If no objection is filed with the Office of the General Faculty by the date specified below, the legislation will be held to have been approved by the Faculty Council. If an objection is filed within the prescribed period, the legislation will be presented to the Faculty Council at its next meeting. The objection, with reasons, must be signed by a member of the Faculty Council. To be counted, a protest must be received in the Office of the General Faculty by five p.m. on May 4, 2009. Sue Alexander Greninger, Secretary The Faculty Council This legislation was posted on the Faculty Council web site on April 24, 2009. 7095 PROPOSED ADDITION OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMPUTATION CERTIFICATE AND REQUEST FOR RECOGNITION ON THE UNIVERSITY TRANSCRIPT 1. Official Certificate Name: Undergraduate Certificate: Computational Science and Engineering 2. Administrative Unit Awarding the Certificate: Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences 3. Statement of Objective: The purpose of the certificate program is to engage, mentor and prepare selected undergraduates at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) for advanced study in computational science and engineering, including computational and applied mathematics, numerical simulation, scientific computation, and visualization. The highlight of the program is the introduction of senior-level students to independent research on problems in computational science and engineering that have applications cutting across broad areas of the university. The development of an interdisciplinary undergraduate component will afford UT a stronger undergraduate cohort to recruit for graduate work, and it will make a critical contribution to UT’s effort to broadly train researchers in computational science and engineering. This addition will appear in the natural sciences chapter of the Undergraduate Catalog on page 7. 4. Number of students expected to receive the certificate each semester: 2 to 6 5. Completion Requirements: 18 hrs. 6. Details of new certificate program. a. Faculty. List of faculty who are on the certificate program faculty committee1. Name of Faculty Member College Highest Degree and Awarding Institution Courses Assigned % Time Assigned to Program Orly Alter* CSE Ph.D.– Stanford NA NA Todd Arbogast (chair)* CNS Ph.D. – U. of Chicago NA NA Luis Caffarelli* CNS Ph.D. – University of Buenos Aries NA NA Clint Dawson* CSE Ph.D. –Rice NA NA Leszek Demkowicz* CSE Ph.D. – Cracow Univ. NA NA Bjorn Engquist* CNS Ph.D. – Uppsala Univ. NA NA Omar Ghattas* JSG/CSE Ph.D. – Duke NA NA Robin Gutell* CNS Ph.D. – U.C. Santa Cruz NA NA Tinsley Oden* CSE Ph.D. –Oklahoma State NA NA Robert van de Geijn* CNS Ph.D.– U. of Maryland College Park NA NA *Faculty who are tenured or tenure track. 1For inclusion on transcripts, the faculty committee must have a minimum of five members and at least 2/3 of the committee must be tenured or tenure-track. b. Academic course requirements: The following table identifies the courses that qualify for this certificate program. No courses would be added if the certificate program were approved. The core requirements are: Course Abbreviation and Number Course Title SCH   Numerical Computing Courses   M 348 Scientific Compuation in Numerical Analysis CNS CS 323E Elements of Scientific Computing CNS CS 323H Elements of Scientific Computing (honors) CNS CS 367 Numerical Methods CNS         Numerical Applications Courses   ASE 347 Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics CSE BIO 337J Computational Biology CNS BME 341/383J Engineering Tools for Computational Genomics Laboratory CSE BME 342 Computational Biomechanics CSE BME 346 Computational Structural Biology CSE CE 379K Introducation to Numerical Methods CSE CHE 348 Numerical Methods in Chemical Engineering and Problem Solving CSE ECO 363C Computational Economics CLA EE 332K Numerical Techniques CSE ME 369L Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics CSE PHY 329 Introduction to Computational Physics CNS SSC 339 Applied Computational Science CNS CAM 383L/EM 394F Numerical Methods in Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering ICES/CSE CAM 394F/EM 394F Finite Element Methods ICES/CSE         General Electives Courses   CS 377 Principles and Applications of Parallel Computing CNS EM 360 Studies in Engineering Mechanics: Applied Finite Element Methods CSE M 346 Applied Linear Algebra CNS M 368K Numerical Methods for Applications CNS M 373K Partial Differential Equations and Application CNS M 376C Methods for Applied Mathematics CNS SSC 374C Parallel Computing for Scientists and Engineers CNS SSC 374E Visualization and Data Analysis for Scientists and Engineers CNS CAM 386K/M 383G Numerical Treatment of Differential Equations ICES/CNS         Scientific Computing Project   Any 3 credit, advanced undergraduate level individual instruction course in a participating department   CNS/CSE/JSG/CLA 7. Existing certificate program information: This is not an existing certificate program. 8. Other certificate requirements: To enter the program, students are expected to have broad training in quantitative methods comparable to: M408D or M408M; CS303E or SSC222; M427; and M340L. Moreover, a student must have completed at least sixty semester hours of coursework and must have a University grade point average of at least 3.00. Students must complete eighteen credit hours and receive a letter grade of at least B in each certificate course*: 1 course (3 credits) in Numerical Computing (see table above); 1 course (3 credits) in Numerical Applications (see table above); 3 courses (9 credits) from the General Electives list (see table above); A Scientific Computing Project course (3 credits) supervised by a member of the Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematics (CSEM) faculty. *The lists of courses are not inclusive and may be expanded to include other advanced courses of 3 credits or more as approved by the certificate program’s faculty advisor. 9. Detailed rationale for changes: The broad purpose of the proposed program is to engage, mentor and prepare selected undergraduates at The University of Texas for advanced study in computational science and engineering, including computational and applied mathematics, numerical simulation, scientific computation, and visualization. The program's highlight will be to introduce senior-level students to independent research on problems in computational science that have applications cutting across broad areas of engineering and science. We have observed in our past recruitment of graduate students in the Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematics program (CSEM, formerly Computational and Applied Mathematics or CAM) that leading programs from which we draw students have strong interdisciplinary undergraduate programs in computational science and applied mathematics, including Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Rice, Rensselaer Polytechnic, and Stanford. The development of an interdisciplinary undergraduate component will afford us a stronger undergraduate cohort to recruit for UT graduate work, and it will make a critical contribution to UT’s effort to broadly train researchers in computational science and mathematics. This initiative extends the thrust for training graduate students in science and engineering as outlined by the recent NSF SBES study and the widely distributed National Academies study Rising Above the Gathering Storm to undergraduate programs. Both of these reports emphasize the point that “modern developments in science and engineering depend critically on advances in computational modeling and simulation.” Our proposal is an integral part of the successful NIMS-SBES endowment, which provides critical new support for the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) and includes ICES undergraduate internships to bring select students onto cutting-edge ICES research teams. Undergraduates would normally elect this program in their junior year. A basic requirement would be to take five courses from a list of upper division classes in computational science regularly taught by CSEM and related faculty plus a research project supervised by a member of the CSEM faculty, which would be taken as a Research Methods/Individual Instruction class. This project could include mentoring by ICES postdoctoral fellows and CSEM graduate students as part of a vertical instructional research team. Course substitutions within the broad area of computational science could be made with faculty approval. Opportunities for up to eight ICES internships would be available for the summer prior to student graduation. For administrative purposes, this program would be jointly associated with the Graduate Program CSEM and ICES. It extends the CSEM Program to include advanced senior-level undergraduates engaged in computational science and engineering (CSE) related research projects. There would be no development or unit costs for the University. Primary program identification would be under the three colleges: Engineering, Geosciences, and Natural Sciences, and include the new Division of Statistics and Computational Science in CNS. We would look to coordinate this interdisciplinary initiative with related ongoing programs in the three colleges, especially those related to the computational life sciences. This proposal supports the effort for undergraduate curriculum reform by adding an interdisciplinary senior-level program that enhances undergraduate instructional opportunities in computational methods, quantitative reasoning and scientific computing. Models for the type of program we envision include the CNS certificate program in Elements of Computing, upper-division majors at Carnegie Mellon and Rice, and the undergraduate certificate program in Princeton’s Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. Outstanding programs such as those at Caltech, Princeton, and Stanford exhibit some of the objectives that we would like to accomplish at UT: engineering and science increasingly use advanced mathematical and computational techniques to model both experiment and theory, and well-trained research students are essential for continued growth in these disciplines. Computational resources are available to provide exceptional graphical visualization and data analysis. Complex and nonlinear interdisciplinary problems are approached with a strong likelihood of successful analysis. Modeling and simulation techniques are increasingly used in the biological and social sciences, especially biomedical engineering, computational biology, economics, neurobiology, and risk management/mathematical and quantitative finance. The natural time for students to be introduced to such problems is at the senior-level undergraduate curriculum, and clearly there is positive advantage for this to be in an interactive interdisciplinary environment. This program constitutes a natural extension of the CSEM Graduate Program to include highly motivated senior-level undergraduates with strong academic interest in computational science and engineering. The CSEM/ICES faculty is uniquely positioned to lead this instructional initiative at UT Austin. A Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC), as noted above in Point 6, would direct this program. Included are faculty members Alter (Biomedical Engineering), Arbogast (Mathematics), Caffarelli (Mathematics), Dawson (Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics), Demkowicz (Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics), Engquist (Mathematics), Ghattas (Geological Sciences and Mechanical Engineering), Gutell (Computational Biology), Oden (Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics), and van de Geijn (Computer Sciences). In addition to the members of the FAC, the Program Faculty would include a larger group of faculty who regularly teach and develop courses in Computational Science and Engineering. Their responsibilities would include academic advising for students who elect this certificate program and supervision of the senior-level research projects. The FAC would initially serve for a three-year term to establish this program. The FAC selects its own chair. After establishment of the program, the FAC is envisioned to be smaller in size. This proposal was developed by the (at that time) CAM Challenges Subcommittee in ICES [Beckner (chair), Arbogast, Bass, Caffarelli, Dawson, Demkowicz, Engquist, Ghattas, Hughes, and Oden] over the period July-August 2006, and subsequently revised following review in November 2008, which included discussion in the ICES Advisory Board and consultation with the Division of Statistics and Scientific Computation. The certificate program was initially approved by CAM on September 18, 2006, and earlier reviewed by the ICES Advisory Board on September 1, 2006. More recently, it was endorsed in the meeting of the ICES Advisory Board on November 7, 2008, in connection with the ICES Strategic Plan for 2008. COLLEGE/SCHOOL APPROVAL PROCESS: Approver: Juan M. Sanchez Title: Vice President for Research Date: 4/2/09 Approver: Randy Diehl Title: dean, College of Liberal Arts Date: 4/13/2009 Approver: Gregory Fenves Title: dean, Cockrell School of Engineering Date: 4/8/2009 Approver: Charles Groat Title: dean, Jackson School of Geosciences Date: 4/10/2009 Approver: Maryann Rankin Title: dean, College of Natural Sciences Date: 4/22/2009 To view the edited version of the catalog changes click the PDF link at the beginning of this document.