[JOB OPP] Open Source Late-funded NSF REU Site

Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:08:06 -0400
From: Charles Kelemen 
To: job-opps@cs.swarthmore.edu
Subject: [JOB OPP] Open Source Late-funded NSF REU Site
Message-ID: <20090430140806.GA17014@cs.swarthmore.edu>
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Reply-To: Charles Kelemen 

Friends,

I know tom Naps and he is a ggod guy.

--charles

----- Forwarded message from Tom Naps  -----

Colleagues:

Federal stimulus funds recently allocated at the National Science
Foundation have resulted in several NSF Research Experience for
Undergraduates (REU) sites being awarded at a later than usual date.
We are fortunate enough to be one of those sites but now must make
students aware of this opportunity in a very compressed timeframe.  We
ask your assistance in helping us do this by distributing notice of
the REU site to students who might be interested.

Thanks,
Tom Naps and David Furcy

************************************************


NSF REU Site at the University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh

EXPLORING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE: DEVELOPMENT AND EFFICACY OF ONLINE
LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

http://www.uwosh.edu/computer_science/reu-site-summer-2009

Co-Principal Investigators:

David Furcy, 920-424-1182, furcyd@uwosh.edu
Tom Naps, 920-424-1388, naps@uwosh.edu

Application Deadline: May 11 or until all eight summer research
positions are filled.  Recipients will be notified by May 15.

The enormous growth of open source software presents both challenges
and opportunities for computer science research and education.
Preparation for careers in computing will require new ways of thinking
about software design that meet the needs of the open source
community.  The overarching theme of this REU site is the improvement
of computer science instruction through the development of more
effective open source online learning systems that address the unique
requirements of Computer Science. The JHAVE algorithm visualization
project (http://jhave.org), based at the REU site, is a highly
interactive approach to online learning in computer science and will
provide the foundation for the open source exploration.  Within that
context, two research threads will allow participants to create a
project aligned with their interests: 1) Design and development
focused on new features for JHAVE and its integration with other open
source projects such as Moodle and 2) Experiments that evaluate the
efficacy of these development efforts on instruction in computer
science.

Projects will incorporate interdisciplinary perspectives from computer
science, software engineering, and education.  Students from the
computing disciplines are encouraged to apply, but our research
projects also offer opportunities for educational psychology and
education majors with strong computing backgrounds, specifically at
least two semesters of object-oriented programming in Java.

Through a variety of ongoing collaborations between the faculty
mentors at Wisconsin -- Oshkosh and other developers worldwide, JHAVE
has already proven itself to be interoperable with a variety of
automated assessment, course management, and hypertextbook
systems. Our REU program will focus on efforts to continue this
interoperability and integration among systems. The developers on
several of these other projects -- for example, Lab-centric
instruction (WISE project) at UC-Berkeley, the Algo Viz Wiki at
Virginia Tech, Jawaa at Duke, Animal at Darmstadt Technical
University, Xaal and Matrix at the Helsinki University of Technology
-- will collaborate with our participants both electronically and by
visiting in person.  The participants will become integral members of
the very active open source software community currently working on
these projects.

The program will start on May 27th and run through July 22.
Participants will receive stipends of at least $4000 for the
eight-week period, travel expenses, and complete support for on-campus
lodging and food.  Interested students can apply by sending:

* A one-page single-spaced statement in which they speak to their
career intentions, how graduate school might play into those
intentions, and how the project described in the summary above would
be a good fit for those intentions

* A copy of their transcripts -- unofficial copy is OK

* A letter of reference/support from a faculty member

* Ethnicity and gender information are optional.  We strongly
  encourage underrepresented groups to apply

to Tom Naps at naps@uwosh.edu.  Postal mail applications will also be
accepted and can be sent to:

Tom Naps
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh
800 Algoma Blvd.
Oshkosh, WI 54901

----- End forwarded message -----
Charles F. Kelemen
Edward Hicks Magill Professor
Computer Science Department
Swarthmore College 
500 College Avenue			
Swarthmore, PA  19081 
610-328-8515   
cfk@cs.swarthmore.edu
kelemen@swarthmore.edu
________________________________________________________________________