1.4 Computational Science Education

	If you want to study computational science, you may not find a "Computational Science" department at your local university. Since it is a relatively new discipline, computational science education is quite varied in its forms. Some universities will teach computational courses in their various scientific disciplines. You may find computational physics in the Physics department, computational chemistry in the Chemistry Department, and compuational biology in the Biology Department. These courses tend to be both undergraduate and graduate and somewhat introductory. More advanced courses are usually centered in Mathematics or Computer Science Departments. Occasionally, there are departments that concentrate on computational science. At Rice University, the authors' institution, The Computational and Applied Mathematics Department, (CAAM)1 has maintained computational science undergraduate and graduate degree programs since 1968. Undergraduates choose courses2 from the areas of Numerical Analysis, Operations Research, Optimization, Differential Equations, or Physical Modeling. CAAM courses are also valuable to undergraduate and graduate majors in computer science, engineering, physical sciences, life sciences, and social sciences. Graduate students pursue the curriculum in greater breadth and depth, and doctoral students do original research in one of the areas. In 1998, CAAM, along with the Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Computer Science, Chemical Engineering, Geology and Geophysics, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Statistics Departments, added the Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) Degree Program. CSE produces practitioners at the Masters level and researchers at the Ph.D. level. A number of institutions have similar programs in place, including Stanford University, California Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois at Urbana.
Rice University since 1968 has provided computational science undergraduate and graduate degrees in its Computational and Applied Mathematics Department.
Note: The following links will open in a new window. Computational Science Education Links 1 Rice University CAAM Department 2 List of CAAM courses