Cottrell Scholars Create Thriving Coding Community
January 2023 ESCIP workshop at Santa Clara University
A Cottrell Scholars Collaborative project to help integrate Python coding into STEM courses has helped coalesce a robust, interdisciplinary network extending beyond the Cottrell Scholar community.
Following the Cottrell Scholar Conference in 2019, Research Corporation for Science Advancement funded the project Enhancing Science Courses by Integrating Python (ESCIP). It enabled project lead CS 2018 Grace Stokes, chemistry, Santa Clara University, and her colleagues to establish a network of chemistry, physics, and astronomy faculty who use Python to teach undergraduate courses.
“In the current job market, and in the current research environment, computer programming is something that chemistry, physics, and astronomy majors should know, but you don't necessarily have time in your curriculum to dedicate a whole course or a whole portion of your curriculum to computer programming or these types of tools,” Stokes said. “Integrating computer programming into our classes can satisfy some of those learning goals while helping students visually understand some of the mathematical equations they have to work with.”
Besides Stokes, the group included: CS 2018 Claude-André Faucher-Giguére, astronomy, Northwestern University; CS 2019 Jay Foley, chemistry, University of North Carolina, Charlotte CS 2016 Dusan Keres, physics, University of California, San Diego; CS 2017 Tyler Luchko, physics, California State University, Northridge; CS 2018 Chad Risko, chemistry, University of Kentucky; CS 2019 Christina Vizcarra, chemistry, Barnard College; and Fulbright-Cottrell Scholar 2019 Hongbin Zhang, physics, Technische Universität Darmstadt.
The group held two virtual workshops in 2020 and one in-person workshop in Tucson in 2022, which together drew more than 55 faculty from the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Participants shared resources and developed new Python coding exercises that would allow undergraduate students to achieve course learning objectives while gaining experience with computer programming and data science in their chemistry, physics, or astronomy classes.
Even before the first workshop, the group created an active Slack group where faculty can pose technical and pedagogical questions, share updated resources, and discuss new methods for teaching and learning with Python. Their discussions provide members with insights into best practices and effective methods for implementing exercises for different audiences. By early 2023, 140 chemistry, physics and astronomy faculty were connected. Today, 177 people are on the Slack channel.
The group has also created a website with a searchable Jupyter Notebook repository, group contact information, and news about upcoming workshops, training sessions and other community-building activities.
Growing interest in the subject, and the success of the growing ESCIP network, has sparked further meetings, workshops, and collaborations.
RCSA awarded Stokes a Regional Meeting Grant to hold an in-person ESCIP workshop at Santa Clara University in January 2023. During this meeting, attended by 37 chemists and physicists, the National Science Foundation’s Molecular Sciences Software Institute (MolSSI) provided education and training for faculty to learn about innovative Python libraries and tools that can be incorporated into their physics and chemistry courses.
“The workshops allow us to make connections with people,” Stokes said. “That's really important, because younger faculty aren't necessarily connected to other faculty who are teaching similar classes and who have similar interests in incorporating coding into their classes.”
Energy around the ESCIP project has sparked even further collaborations.
Several Cottrell Scholars who participated in the project contributed to an American Chemical Society (ACS) Symposium Series book published in 2021, "Teaching Programming across the Chemistry Curriculum." CS 2003 Daniel Crawford, chemistry, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, wrote the preface. Chapter authors included Foley, Stokes, and CS 2012 Geoffrey Hutchison, chemistry, University of Pittsburgh.
In a related new effort, Foley, Hutchison, and Stokes are now serving on the advisory board of MolSSI’s new education and faculty development program that recently received NSF funding: Accelerating Curricular Transformation in the Computational Molecular Sciences. It aims to transform science curricula by accelerating the integration of programming and computation into existing molecular science courses through faculty training and the development of open and reusable curricular modules.
Extending the trajectory of the original project, RCSA funded a 2022 Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Award to broaden and deepen the ESCIP network.
Infusing Computational Science Concepts into STEM Courses through Multidisciplinary Instructor Collaborative Networks is led by CS 2021 Davit Potoyan, chemistry, Iowa State University, in collaboration with additional Cottrell Scholars: CS 2015 Tim Atherton, physics, Tufts University; CS 2021 Justin Caram, chemistry, University of California, Los Angeles; Jay Foley; Geoff Hutchinson; CS 2022 Daniel Keedy, chemistry, City College of New York; CS 2008 Casey Londergan, chemistry, Haverford College; Tyler Luchko; CS 2020 Britt Lundgren, astronomy, University of North Carolina, Ashville; CS 2020 Dennis Perepelitsa, physics, University of Colorado Boulder; CS 2020 Brenda Rubenstein, chemistry, Brown University; CS 2021 Brian Shuve, physics, Harvey Mudd; Fulbright-Cottrell Scholar 2021 Juliane Simmchen, chemistry, Technische Universität Dresden; Grace Stokes; CS 2021 Ruby Sullan, chemistry, University of Toronto, Scarborough; and Christina Vizcarra.
The latest collaboration has hosted two workshops and is planning more.
Vizcarra and Glen Hocky of New York University organized a workshop in April 2023 cosponsored by the Simons Center for Computational Physical Chemistry at NYU and MolSSI. With 27 faculty participants from chemistry, physics and astronomy departments, the workshop was organized around small group work time so that faculty from different institutions but with shared interests could share teaching materials, challenges, and ideas. There were also more formal talks about course design.
Presenters included Ashley Ringer McDonald from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Jessica Nash of MolSSI, and Marie van Staveren of University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Hocky's talk about using large language models like ChatGPT to write code spurred a lot of discussion and became the focus of a May 2024 workshop Potoyan hosted at Iowa State.
Attended by 25 participants from institutions around the country, the workshop focused on devising new strategies for teaching scientific computing as ChatGPT and similar disruptive generative AI technologies are changing the way people learn and solve problems.
Faculty from a wide range of universities and disciplines gave talks, including: Tom Holme, Iowa State University; Ratul Chowdhury, Iowa State; Gianmarc Grazioli, San Jose State University; Ted Clark, Ohio State University; Pavel Lukashev, University of Northern Iowa; Shanshan Rodriguez, Grinell College; Subhadip Biswas, Iowa State; Mark Perry, Sonoma State University; and Ardith Bravenec, University of Washington.
“We talked about some of the most pressing issues regarding the impact of ChatGPT on the classroom, what it means to learn, and how to measure understanding in the age of AI,” Potoyan said.
Potoyan said feedback from the workshop was so positive he is planning another next year, possibly at a different location, dedicated to the role of ChatGPT on STEM education.
“This is a well-designed and well-executed example of the potential for impact of the CS Collaborative,” said Senior Program Director Silvia Ronco. “I love the interdisciplinary nature of it, the impressive number of participants, and the fact that so many different Cottrell Scholars have become involved.”
