Summer 06: Rebirth of a Numerical Analyst as a Computer Game Enthusiast

Kris Stewart Summer 06 Ocean swims

Kris Stewart was trained as a numerical analyst, completing her PhD in 1987 at the University of New Mexico, working with Dr. Larry Shampine, Dr. Richard Allen, Dr. Cleve Moler, Dr. Steve Pruess and Dr. Stanly Steinberg. She was hired as a numerical analyst at SDSU in 1984 (ABD) in the Mathematical Sciences Department and focussed on curriculum development in the Math 541, 542, 693a, 693b numerical analysis courses to effectively including computing. She also began collaborating with colleagues at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, which was one of the compute locations where data was collected for her dissertation code STRUT, so solve Stiff Ordinary Differential Equations. She developed an undergraduate course at SDSU on supercomputing, organized and gave summer workshops at SDSC for faculty interested in undergraduate high performance computing. This was called the Supercomputer for Undergraduate Education (SUE, SDSC G/S Nov92, and SUE participants). Stewart was asked to represent CSU/SDSU on the SDSC Steering Committee. In 1993, after receiving tenure at SDSU, she was asked by Dan Sulzbach at SDSC to organize and teacher summer workshops for high school sciene teachers interested in learning about computational science and how computing might augment their student learning outcomes. This program was named the Supercomputer Teacher Enhancement Program (STEP nominated for Computerworld/Smithsonian Award). [more articles on STEP: SDSCwire, G/S fall94, GSfall96]. Additional SDSC articles: NSF CISE/EHR workshop on CS Research Agenda for Ed Tech, Education at SDSC G/S winter 97, Stewart & McKeon to Ernest L. Boyer Summit 25apr97, USC, SC97 with Stewart's presentation at ACM SIGCSE 28feb97. Kris has also archived her "life with computing" and more in her personal timeline of technology. Hope you find it interesting!