Professor D.E. (Steve) Stevenson is an associate professor of computer science at Clemson University, where he is also the director of Institute for Modeling and Simulation Applications. He received a B.A. in mathematics in 1965 from Eastern Michigan University, an M.S. in computer science from Rutgers University in 1975, and a Ph.D. in mathematical sciences from Clemson in 1983.

He was an infantry officer for four plus years from 1965–1969. He spent one year in Korea and one year in Viet Nam, where he was an advisor to the 3/3 Battalion, 1st ARVN Division. After leaving the military, he was employed at Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1969–1980. While at Bell Labs, he worked on system support, IMS development (loaned to IBM), and as an internal consultant on performance and database design. Dr. Stevenson worked with early versions of C and Unix. He also worked in many interdisciplinary activities involving modeling and simulation; such activities are now known as computational science and engineering.

Computational science led Dr. Stevenson to leave Bell Labs in 1980 to pursue a Ph.D. degree in mathematical sciences at Clemson, specializing in numerical analysis. Since arriving at Clemson, he has worked to develop computational science concepts. Along with Drs. Robert M. Panoff, Holly P. Hirst, and D.D. Warner, he founded the Shodor Education Foundation, Inc. Shodor is recognized as a premier computational science education materials developer and is known for its education of college and university faculty in authentic modeling and simulation activities for science education. The Shodor activities led Dr. Stevenson to investigate new pedagogies; hence, this text is the culmination of some 40 years of experience in interdisciplinary educational and professional activities.

This work is driven by two sayings, the first attributed to Confucius:

“I hear, and I forget.

I see, and I remember.

I do, and I understand.”

The second saying comes from Plato: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”