Introductory computational science using MATLAB and image processing

We describe a new course designed to introduce engineering students to computational thinking. One of the most significant challenges in teaching an introductory-level applied computing course is that students are not expected to have substantial math and science experience. To address this, we have developed exercises which use edge detection and basic image processing to motivate the use of programming MATLAB in a non-trivial scientific application. MATLAB is a popular high-level programming language and environment which supports a wide range of computational science applications. MATLAB has strong support for operating on image data, which allows us to balance solving practical engineering problems with basic core concepts of computer science such as functional abstraction, conditional execution, and iteration.