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. Galassi will be joined by Andrea Bruno of Stony Brook University, director of the Research Skills Academy, who will lead a couple of the sessions.

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 link is now set to https://meet.jit.si/SummerTeacherInstitute

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