Before the Internet era, many people in engineering, math, and physics actually had already practiced computer programming, similar to what SWC’s audiences are pursuing now. I would say the human genome project probably is the turning point. With the success of genome sequencing, biologists quickly realized biology can be “computational.” Such “computational” interests gradually spread to cognitive science, linguistics, and so on, not to mention other quantitative science. In social studies, although there remain debates on quan vs. qual, many social scientists are eager to learn how to manipulate their data by themselves with computer programming. I would anticipate more and more demands from “non-traditional” fields for basic programming trainings. SWC without doubt is on the wave. I agree with the observation in the cited document that computer science may have to spawn a computer education branch in response to the strong demand.
On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 5:41 PM, Terri Yu <[email protected]> wrote: > This isn't scientific computation, but it's very interesting and related. > > Some slides from a recent presentation about skyrocketing demand for CS > classes and degrees in US universities. The data seems to be from elite > private and public universities. > > http://lazowska.cs.washington.edu/NCWIT.pdf > > There's heavy demand not just from undergraduates wanting to major in CS, > but also undergraduates from other departments, and even grad students from > other departments. > > The part relevant to Software Carpentry is whether the CS faculty should > teach students from other departments or whether those departments should > be teaching their own students. > > Some interesting ideas suggested in the slides: > > - CS departments might consider becoming their own school or college > instead of being a department. UMass Amherst just put CS in its own > college this past year. > - there should be more graduate programs focused on CS education > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >
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