PICUP and the national scene for integrating computing in physics education*

Computational skills are becoming more and more important to Physics students’ success in both industry and graduate school [1]. In order to help students develop these skills, Physics faculty need to modify the curriculum and provide scaffolding throughout the four years of an undergraduate education. How do we support the faculty? The Partnership for Integrating Computation into Undergraduate Physics (PICUP) supports a growing community of faculty who share the goal of integrating computation into Physics courses. PICUP runs workshops at regional and national meetings, hosts an online peer-reviewed collection of curricular materials (www.gopicup.org), and connects faculty through a Slack channel, monthly webinars, and conferences. In this talk, I will give a brief history of the partnership and how it has impacted the national scene for integrating computing in physics, pointing out the many resources and support available for faculty. I will highlight materials in the PICUP collection that I and others have adapted for a variety of courses, from introductory to advanced, and from small classes to those with hundreds of students, and discuss how those materials fit into and enhance those courses. Finally, I will discuss some of the curriculum development faculty have engaged in as a result of their involvement with PICUP, and advertise upcoming events and ways faculty can get involved.

[1] See for example the EP3 chapter on “Computational Skills”, https://ep3guide.org/guide-overview/computational-skills , the Joint Task Force on Undergraduate Physics Programs Report, https://www.compadre.org/JTUPP/ , the AIP surveys on “Knowledge and Skills Regularly Used by Physics Bachelors Employed in the Private Sector”, www.aip.org/statistics , and the AAPT Recommendations for Computational Physics in the Undergraduate Physics Curriculum, https://www.aapt.org/Resources/upload/AAPT_UCTF_CompPhysReport_final_B.pdf