The HiPerCiC initiative creates custom web applications for professors and campus entities through collaboration between computer science students and domain specialists. Some examples of apps created are the Alabama app which helps visualize 19th century election data, the Music Quiz app which helps students learn music pieces, an app for theater production crew management, an app to manage alumni interviews, and a new app to generate the online student newspaper. The initiative focuses on building these custom apps through interdisciplinary collaboration to meet specific user needs.

1. Abstract
The High-Performance Computing in Context (HiPerCiC)
initiative creates custom web sites, called apps, produced
collaboratively by computer science (CS) undergraduates
working with users of those apps. The HiPerCiC effort focuses
primarily on creating apps specifically supporting professors
across campus with their scholarly or educational work. For
example, the Alabama app (recently reimplemented) helps Prof.
Fitzgerald visualize results from reconstruction-era Alabama
elections. Also, the Music Quiz app created for Prof. Epstein
supports a new interactive approach to learning example pieces
in Music History. Some recent/new HiPerCiC apps now support
campus entities, such as the Theater Department (ProdCrews
management of student positions on theater production teams),
the Alumni Office (Big Discovery alumni interview report and
management) and the Manitou Messenger student newspaper
(generating a new online edition).
HiPerCiC Custom Web Applications
Rodney LaLonde ‘16, Jonathan Featherstone ‘17, Omar Shehata ’18, Andrew Altmaier ‘17
Advisor: Dick Brown
HiPerCiC
The High-Performance Computing in Context (HiPerCiC)
initiative creates custom web sites (called apps) for the needs of
specific users, through interdisciplinary collaboration. Typically,
teams of undergraduate CS students and end-users (called the
domain specialists) interactively design and develop HiPerCiC
apps, each person bringing their personal expertise to the effort.
The programmers build HiPerCiC apps over a foundational
framework of code called Hipercore, in order to speed
development, simplify upgrades, and facilitate software sharing
between apps. Over two dozen HiPerCiC apps have been
created to date for persons across the St. Olaf campus.
Alabama
The Alabama HiPerCiC app enables Prof. Michael Fitzgerald (History) to visualize election
results for reconstruction-era Alabama counties. Through the use of geographic information
systems (GIS), we generated historically accurate and interactive maps for 1800s Alabama.
Various technologies were researched both for the visualization (e.g. Highsoft AS and Leaflet)
and storage (e.g. PostGIS and GeoDjango) of this GIS data. These visualizations contain rich
information about the socio-political trends from political party shifts, to voter turnout rates, to
racial influences, and many more.
Music Quiz
The Music Quiz HiPerCiC app aims to help Prof. Louis Epstein’s Music History students learn to
recognize the characteristics of several dozen music excerpts through a self-paced web-based
interactive game, rather than the traditional rote memorization. This app allows managers to
easily input a large amount of questions into a database, which can then be organized in
multiple ways to create a game atmosphere. As students answer questions, complete “Levels”,
and receive immediate feedback, the game is constantly recording data and logging statistics.
These statistics can automatically help the game tune itself, adjusting difficulties and assisting
users in places they struggle. Additionally, this database can be explored to make various
discoveries, such as which questions are more difficult than expected, or what sections take the
most time for students to complete. Because the app was built with expansion in mind, and is
very general in its overall implementation, it could possibly be used in almost any department,
aiding in both study, and the analysis of study.
Custom Web Apps For Professors
The HiPerCiC initiative’s original and primary focus remains the construction of
custom web apps to support the research and teaching of faculty in any discipline.
Other Custom Web Apps
Beginning in 2015, HiPerCiC has widened its mission to
include custom web apps that serve non-academic
entities on campus.
Theater Production Crews
Work has completed on the ProdCrews HiPerCiC app, which
Theater Prof. Todd Edwards will use to collect student interests
and preferences and make assignments for the various jobs on
theater production crews for the upcoming 2015-16 season.
Interdisciplinary
Collaboration
Effective interdisciplinary collaboration is essential for teams
creating HiPerCiC apps, since CS students cannot know what
will make an app comfortable, natural, and useful in the
application domain without directly interacting with the domain
specialist. Key elements of the interaction include an early
prototype demonstration of an app for domain-specialist
feedback, frequent brief updates and sharing of ideas after that
first demo, and a final demonstration before deployment as the
time for development concludes.
The Big Discovery HiPerCiC app
supports contact management,
reporting, and management activities
for an Alumni Office initiative in which
current students personally interview
St. Olaf alumni about their experiences
and attitudes toward the College. By
integrating map, calendar, text,
checkbox, and image features into a
single form, we created a convenient
and efficient place where interviewers
could enter all of the data collected
from their interviews as well as any
expenses they wish to have
reimbursed. The Alumni Office can
view the results and track and
reimburse interviewer expenses. To
manage the scheduling of interviews,
research was conducted into
geocoding addresses of over 4,000
alumni and 15 students to calculate
distance of travel and maximize
happiness.
Manitou Messenger
A new HiPerCiC app produce the online version of the Manitou
Messenger student newspaper, beginning in Fall 2015. The
newspaper editors will use the app to upload articles, determine
where and when they will appear, add advertisements, and
perform other managerial operations. That app will generate the
online newspaper according to that input. In addition,
Messenger photographers will use the app to upload their
images (without access to the management functions reserved
for editors).
Big Discovery