Advanced Computing for Social Change: Educating and Engaging Our Students to Compete in a Changing Workforce

Visualization taps into the very best capabilities of our brains, transforming data that is fundamentally abstract as numbers into something that communicates and illuminates information ranging from the simple to the complex. There is a growing interdependence amongst society, humanity, technology and science. Simultaneously, interdisciplinary science has taken a critical role in understanding and solving what has become a multi-faceted realm of large, complex problems. This is contrasted by a looming global workforce shortage in those educated in computational science. In response, we have developed a new model for engaging students, the advanced computing for social change initiative, teaching computational skills in the context of relevant social issues. This paper provides rationale for our inaugural challenge, including evaluation data and recommendations1.