Using graphics research to teach freshman computer science.

Although research is often a daunting task for undergraduates, early exposure to research topics and papers can be an effective means of stimulating interest and teaching students about realworld solutions to non-trivial problems. To that end, we have initiated a new educational project, termed [abstract contained text which couldn't be captured], to teach general concepts in computer science by infusing large-scale problems in computer graphics into the undergraduate curriculum. In this paper, we present our approach to teaching a first course in computer science (CS1) using a recently published graphics research problem. The results from our first semester offering are promising, as students, energized by the subject matter and visual output, produced excellent work and evaluated the class highly.