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SC2002 Dedicates
Education Program to Maryland Educator
BALTIMORE, November 12, 2002--The SC2002 Education Program will be dedicated
to the memory of Mary Ellen Verona, Ph.D., who died Oct. 7 at age 56,
after a long battle with breast cancer.
A short dedication
ceremony will take place during the opening of the Education Program at
8:30 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 16. Verona's family will be on hand to accept
a framed memento honoring the longtime Maryland educator.
Verona was founder
of the Maryland Virtual High School of Science and Mathematics, a coalition
of high schools in Maryland linked via dedicated Internet connections,
which are used to conduct experiments, research topics, and collaborate
with other students and teachers. Verona was also a principal investigator
with the Education, Outreach, and Training Partnership for Advanced Computational
Infrastructure (EOT-PACI), the education and outreach component of the
National Science Foundation's PACI program, and a computer science, mathematics,
and science teacher in the Montgomery County Public Schools for more than
15 years.
"Mary Ellen will
be remembered as a visionary, who saw very early on the value of online
collaboration, modeling software, and computer visualization as tools
in teaching science," said Roscoe Giles, general chair of SC2002
and team leader of EOT-PACI.
"She will be
greatly missed by her colleagues and her students, however, through this
dedication, she will be remembered by all of us who believe in improving
the quality of math and science education and in merging real science
with real teaching," added Scott Lathrop, co-chair of the SC2002
Education Program.
The SC Education Program brings more than 140 undergraduate faculty and
K-12 teachers to the SC conference, the world's largest and most prestigious
high performance computing and networking conference. These educators
spend four days in hands-on workshops, where they learn how to incorporate
computing tools and applications into their classroom math and science
curricula. The educators receive support throughout the year as they work
to incorporate the appropriate tools into their courses.
In addition to the
dedication, numerous people have worked together to establish the Mary
Ellen Verona Memorial Award to recognize teachers with Verona's pioneering
spirit and commitment to using modeling and visualization tools to broaden
their own and their students' learning experiences.
SC2002, with the theme
From Terabytes to Insights, will be held Nov. 16 - 22 at the Baltimore
Convention Center. In addition to the Education Program, the conference
features tutorials, a four-day technical program, and an exhibit hall
with more than 220 displays of technology innovations, breathtaking visualizations,
and cutting-edge research results. For more information, see
Media Contact:
Karen Green, kareng@ncsa.uiuc.edu
217-265-0748
217-649-5631 (cell)
