2025 Summer Teacher Institute
This is a professional development sequence for teachers who
intend to bring a team to the 2025-2026 Supercomputing
Challenge.
This year the courses are taught by the Institute for
Computing in Research, a non-profit whose goal is
to prepare
youth to do research and advanced academic work. Your
instructor for most of the workshops will be Dr. Mark Galassi,
research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. You can
find information about
Mark Galassi here.
The four workshops
We will teach four courses as part of this summer institute:
- Modern Software Engineering
-
Three sessions taught by Mark Galassi, 1hr15min each, with
15min at the end for Q&A.
The purpose is to give teachers
a broad view of the world of computing, starting with
historical background and moving on to discuss the current
"grand challenges" in the world of computing and software.
The final lecture will also go in to some specifics of
effective computing.
- Clear Writing ↔ Clear Thinking and project
management
-
Three sessions taught by Mark Galassi, Ed Fenimore, and
experienced science/technical writers as guests.
We will discuss writing nonfiction based on
cognitive factors, rather than prescriptive style guides. We
will also discuss scholarship and grant applications, and how
to teach students to give a "vision of depth" when they apply
for opportunities.
The third day of the workshop will focus on how students can
carry out project management, using the unique abilities that
youths have, and avoiding typical management pitfalls for
youth.
- Encouraging Young Women in Computer Programming
-
Two sessions taught by Leina Gries, Rhonda Crespo, and Mark
Galassi, 1hr15min each, with 15min at the end for Q&A.
We start by discussing the scale of the problem of
underrepresentation in mathematically based disciplines. We
then discuss the solutions that get attempted, and finally we
demonstrate the approach taken by the Institute for Computing
in Research to achieve full gender balance in a research
program in which all interns do advanced software development.
But one of the most important parts of this workshop will be
opening up the floor to discuss the approaches that teachers
have seen, and how effective they have been.
- Python in 3 parts
-
Three sessions taught by Mark Galassi, 1hr15min each, with
15min at the end for Q&A.
Read the notes
on necessary preparation
for the Python workshop.
The first two sessions will teach the Python
language, and the third will be a joint programming and
debugging session in which we learn how to help our students
debug problems in their code.
Logistics and schedule
Questions: please email Mark Galassi
<mark@galassi.org> or call +1-505-629-0759
(voice only).
For the Python workshop we need to do some preparation ahead of
time so that we do not waste time on the day itself. We will
write you with some time slots in the days before the workshop
begins. In those sessions we will verify that you can share
your screen (for debugging help) and that you have Python and a
programming editor installed. You will need to attend one of
those brief sessions.
All courses are taught by videocon using the jitsi platform. We
will send the link out to participants as the time approaches.
The instructor will contact all participants by email
All times below are in US/Mountain time.
Thursday June 26:
8pm-9:30pm: option 1 for tech check
Saturday June 28:
8am-9:30am: option 2 for tech check
Sunday June 29:
10am-11:30am: option 3 for tech check
Monday June 30:
9:00am: "Modern Software Engineering", tutorial 1
10:30am: "Python in 3 parts", lesson 1
1:00pm: "Clear Writing <-> Clear Thinking", tutorial 1
2:30pm: "Encouraging Young Women in Computer Programming", tutorial 1
Tuesday July 1:
9:00am: "Modern Software Engineering", tutorial 2
10:30am: "Python in 3 parts", lesson 2
1:00pm: "Clear Writing <-> Clear Thinking", tutorial 2
2:30pm: "Encouraging Young Women in Computer Programming", tutorial 2
Wednesday July 2:
9:00am: "Modern Software Engineering", tutorial 3
10:30am: "Python in 3 parts", lesson and practice on debugging
1:00pm: "Project management for students"
2:30pm: Unstructured "programming together" time