Webster University Wins $746,008 NSF Grant to Expand Missouri HPC Training to 800 Students
Updated
Updated · news.webster.edu · Aug 13
Webster University Wins $746,008 NSF Grant to Expand Missouri HPC Training to 800 Students
1 articles · Updated · news.webster.edu · Aug 13
Summary
$746,008 from the National Science Foundation will fund Webster University's three-year Connect-HPC project, aimed at broadening high-performance computing education across five Missouri institutions.
40 STEM instructors will be trained through summer workshops and ongoing mentoring to embed HPC and computational methods into existing introductory and intermediate courses without overhauling curricula.
More than 800 undergraduates are expected to benefit, with student instructional facilitators providing peer support as the program scales across Webster, Missouri Western, Drury, Truman State and Southeast Missouri State.
Professor Xiaoyuan Suo leads the project as principal investigator, marking his second NSF award this year after a separate $300,000 CyberTraining grant for an undergraduate HPC summer bootcamp.
The grant extends Webster's broader push into advanced computing education after the university was among four Missouri institutions that received NSF support in 2023 to expand HPC teaching.
How might this $746K blueprint for teaching advanced computing without creating new classes reshape university STEM education nationwide?
Will a low-barrier taste of high-performance computing actually give undergrads the competitive edge that corporate recruiters are desperately seeking?