All students entering this master's degree program should have a strong desire to do computational science.However, we can broadly classify students into two groups and have developed the program to meet the needs of these two groups. The first group of students are those pursuing a Ph.D. in Computational Science and who want to complete the requirements for a Master's degree; these students will follow the major track. The second group of students are interested in acquiring a terminal Master's degree with the expectation of obtaining employment in industry or a government facility. For this group of students, we have established p.s.m. tracks, which meet the Sloan Foundation's criteria.

The p.s.m. is a two year, professional degree program that prepares students to work outside of an academic setting in industry, government or a national laboratory. The goal of the program is to train students to be technically adept in computational science, to acquire knowledge of an applied science, as well as to be able to manage a project, work in teams and to effectively communicate ideas and results. The p.s.m. program differs from other master's degree programs in science and mathematics at FSU due to its business component and the ties to industry, government and laboratories through the summer internship and the seminar/colloquium series.

In addition, the innovative computational science curriculum endeavors to provide students with a working knowledge of a wide variety of tools and algorithms and the ability to combine these tools and understand their inter-relationships.