Equipment: Enhancing Undergraduate Education for Artificial Intelligence Applications

Through support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this project will revitalize core STEM courses by integrating interdisciplinary high-performance computing applications. The resources made available by the Educational Instrumentation program will strengthen undergraduate learning in computational mathematics, statistics, data sciences, and computer sciences at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. The project will secure cluster computing resources allowing students to perform high-throughput computations that will be integrated into the curriculum in courses including Linear Algebra, Probability and Statistics, Introduction to Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Statistical Computing and Data Management, and Special Topics in Statistics. An estimated 1000 students and 10 faculty will utilize the project-funded equipment each year. In addition to providing improved experience in mathematics and data science courses, the new equipment will also be used in undergraduate research and capstone projects. The goals of this project are to enrich the learning and experiences of undergraduate students by providing critical computing resources in mathematics, statistics, data sciences, and computer science. The project will result in the development of new modules and practical exercises in the targeted courses leveraging HPC resources. The courses will utilize the GPU cluster for hands-on student projects and research. The impact of the project will be assessed using analytic software to track statistics of usage in active users on the cluster. Student and faculty experience will be gauged with various instruments. This project will result in student-faculty research output published in peer-reviewed journals. The updated course content will be disseminated and made available for other institutions to incorporate into their core courses. Additionally, the program will feature deliverables presented at conferences and other venues. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and increase capacity to engage in the development and implementation of innovations to improve STEM learning and teaching at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.