Innovations and Opportunities

SIGCSE 2022 Affiliated Event by the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges

The Doane University Institute for Computing

Doane University

Contributed by Alec J. Engebretson, alec.engebretson@doane.edu, and Mark M. Meysenburg, mark.meysenburg@doane.edu

Institutional and departmental context

Description of Curricular Innovation

At Doane University we have instituted an on-campus entity designed to spread a culture of computing throughout the university. This entity is the Doane University Institute for Computing. We define computing as “the skill of solving problems in such a way that the solution can be carried out by a computer.” With this definition, the mission of the Institute for Computing is to create a culture of computing at Doane University that affords integrity, innovation, and transformation, by supporting any member of the Doane community who applies computing, and by promoting to the community and beyond through outreach. Two key components of the institute are the Center for Computing in the Liberal Arts (CCLA), and funding for computing micro-grants and computing fellows.

The Doane University Center for Computing in the Liberal Arts (CCLA) provides a collaborative and supportive environment for Doane students, faculty, and staff, who are interested in incorporating computing into their schoolwork, projects, or research. Our operating analogy is that the CCLA is like a Writing Center, but for computing instead of prose.

Ultimately, the Institute for Computing aims to foster a culture of computing at Doane – all of Doane. Therefore, the CCLA supports any academic discipline on campus: STEM disciplines, Business, Art, Social Sciences, Theater, and so on. Likewise, the CCLA supports a wide range of computing skills, from spreadsheets and word processing through databases and programming and into more advanced technologies such as machine learning and high-performance computing. The CCLA’s mission is to be available to help any student, faculty, or staff member with any computer-related problem-solving task. Creating this culture of computing at the university will help equip our students with the computing skills necessary to become outstanding contributors and leaders in both the public and private sectors.

Through the Institute, we have established programs to provide micro-grants to Doane community members and to help support outside computing experts who visit the university. The Wiley micro-grants program helps to fund projects that apply and/or promote computing with grants of $500 or less. These funds might be used to fund special software or hardware needed for a project, specialized training on a particular tool, or for travel to present the results of computing-related projects. The Mekota-Moore Fellows program provides small amounts of money to help fund stipends and travel for speakers, teachers, or researchers that visit the university to talk about computing. Visiting fellows will help connect students and faculty with professionals who apply or promote computing in their fields.

Challenges/Limitations

There are several challenges the Institute will face as we move forward. Some challenges are enumerated below, along with our ideas on how to meet these challenges.