VANCOUVER – The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant of $382,109 to WSU Vancouver and Scott Wallace, assistant professor of computer science, in support of the Northwest Distributed Computer Science Department. The project seeks to develop a unique educational community within the Pacific Northwest by uniting educations who are devoted to sharing knowledge, resources and expertise to transform computing education across the region.
“This will help similar schools share research ideas and bring them into the classroom,” said Wallace. “We also hope to host after-school sessions and information nights for K-12 students to show them the changing image of computer science, show them this is something they really might want to do.”
Together, the Northwest Distributed Computer Science Department will focus on:
– Enabling and fostering innovative change within the computer science curriculum.
– Sharing knowledge and resources as innovation takes place.
– Enabling heightened outreach to K-12 schools.
– Integrating computational thinking into a variety of disciplines.
– Enabling heightened ability to evaluate new educational strategies.
In addition to Wallace, the project is led by Robert Bryant from Gonzaga University and Genevieve Orr from Willamette University. The community will include other computer science educators from across the region. Find out more about the project at http://ai.vancouver.wsu.edu/nwdcsd.
