Charter
Foundations for Research Computing: Purpose and Mission
Computation has become deeply ingrained in nearly every aspect of research, and traditional curricula do not evolve fast enough to optimally prepare students to exploit current and emerging practices in computation. Surveys of both departments and graduate students demonstrate a need to support graduate students across the University interested in developing fundamental skills for harnessing computation, such as core languages and libraries, software development tools, best practices, and computational problem-solving. Foundations organizes and supports not-for-credit activities to augment graduate student training and engagement. The episodic boot camps, workshops, and help sessions contemplated for Foundations are explicitly not a substitute for the courses of study and for-credit classes offered by Columbia’s schools and institutes.