The Physics department knew from surveys of alumnae/i that majors needed a stronger grounding in computational skills for both academic and non-academic career paths. The challenge was figuring out how to build opportunities to develop those skills into the major curriculum. A single course could introduce students to the field of computational physics, but wouldn't help them build core skills over time. However, not all physics faculty felt equipped to address computational skills in their own courses.

With a grant from the AAC&U's Teaching to Increase Diversity and Equity in STEM (TIDES) initiative, Elizabeth McCormack (Physics), Mark Matlin (Physics), and Doug Blank (Computer Science) developed a suite of online, interactive, computational skill-building instructional modules that could be incorporated into existing courses at all levels of the curriculum. As students complete these modules, they develop a portfolio of their skills which they can reflect on as part of the senior capstone experience. The TIDES initiative focuses on core skill development and culturally aware teaching methods as key tactics for encouraging low-income, first-generation, and under-represented minority undergraduates to consider and complete STEM majors, and both areas of focus are built into the computational modules. Elizabeth, Mark and Doug will demo some of the modules for this talk and discuss ways they might be "ported" to other disciplines.