Land, Air and Water Resources

The use of computing resources varies dramatically among the faculty in Land, Air and Water Resources (LAWR). Some faculty are interested in only the most basic uses of a Mac or PC, while others have considerable expertise in computer modeling, visualization, and programming. Recognizing this great diversity, LAWR provides these comments concerning the CS&E Initiative:

• Desirable Priorities for CS&E. Two items were identified: (i) Continued instruction of introductory FORTRAN is quite important to atmospheric science (AS) and hydrologic science (HS) programs. (ii) Easier access to introductory C programming courses is highly desirable.
• Faculty. LAWR did not have the resources to develop a list of potential high-caliber faculty candidates in the available time.
• Teaching. LAWR can identify at least four ways in which CS&E appointments would contribute to departmental teaching programs. (i) The continuation of ENG5 or an equivalent introduction to FORTRAN is a prime concern. FORTRAN remains the primary tool our students use for computation that they write themselves. A Hydrologic Science (HS) faculty member complained that ENG5 was hard to get into. LAWR uses ENG5 as a base for several courses in AS, and it is a requirement of the AS major. (ii) Some students feel that the C language has become important to learn as a means to improve their job prospects. Yet, access to courses concerned with this subject matter has in the past been very restrictive. (iii) Hydrologic science (HS) faculty have an interest in having a course in environmental visualization and manipulating data structures. One HS faculty member has tried to develop such a course recently. (iv) The AS program has a high level of computational fluid dynamics expertise. There are potential benefits from some coordination with the existing AS program.
• Resources. As indicated in item (iii) in the previous paragraph, LAWR faculty have a lot of expertise in CS&E-related fields.