Shodor
Established in Durham, NC, in 1994, Shodor is a nonprofit organization serving students and
educators by providing materials and instruction relating to computational science
(scientific, interactive computing).
With an Internet presence producing 3 to 4 million page views per month, Shodor has an international impact. Its award-winning free online education tools such as Interactivate are popular with students and educators alike.
Shodor is transforming learning through computational thinking. In the Raleigh-Durham, NC area, Shodor offers workshops, apprenticeships and internships for youth and teens to build excitement for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through interactive explorations using hands-on and computer-enhanced activities, giving them the experience they will need to pursue a technology-intensive career path.
Shodor educational philosophy believes that modern, scientifically valid models must be built on a firm foundation drawing from computation, theory, and experiment. Confidence in the computational aspects of such models is built from proper matching of the computer algorithm and architecture to the application. Helping educators, and thus students, to integrate theory, experimentation, and computation effectively requires increased sophistication in modeling and visualization, along with more powerful computational tools and technologies.
Internship Program
The goal of the Mentor Center Internship Program is to ensure that students are prepared to
enter into computationally intensive scientific research fields through appropriate
mentorships by active scientists. Shodor works towards this goal by providing students with
opportunities to work and develop their computation skills through hands-on experience. The
internship program builds off of the expertise of our Project SUCCEED and our SUCCEED
Apprenticeship Program, which have brought in over 1,000 local students for workshops and
research apprenticeships.
Stimulating Understanding of Computational science through Collaboration, Exploration, Experiment, and Discovery (SUCCEED) offers formal workshops and classes in the theory and practice of computational science, both as stand-alone classes and as a prelude to full research apprenticeships for some students. By computational science, we mean the aspect of any science in which the computation plays an essential role. With support from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF), we have developed and offer a range of content-rich workshops and classes that introduce area students to research methodologies, mathematical modeling, scientific computing, data visualization, and computer programming. Students learn to make the appropriate match of application, algorithm, and architecture, which is at the heart of computational science. While some short workshops (typically one or two sessions of a few hours duration) will focus on the foundational skills of a computational scientist, the longer classes will be built around topical areas such as computational chemistry, physics, biology, environmental sciences, forensics medical/biosciences, and/or mathematics. One such topical class is offered each semester, and several are offered over the summer.
The SUCCEED Apprenticeship Program is a two-year program that builds on a series of highly successful initiatives to bring the technologies, techniques, and tools of computational science and related information technology (IT) topics to local middle and high-school students. This project is targeted towards developing and evaluating activities and support mechanisms to move students from an excitement for computational science and IT (developed during initial SUCCEED program activities) to becoming an expert in one or more areas of computational science and associated IT components.
Computational science interns help develop curricular materials, create computer models for national distribution, assist with or teach classes to diverse audiences, and otherwise support the education outreach efforts of the organization. Successful interns have a high degree of interest in the sciences, with a special interest in advancing and supporting excellence in curriculum materials development and teaching. Students who are interested in teaching careers in STEM areas (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) are of particular interest for these internships.