The program will involve taking eight high school teams consisting of an Earth Science teacher, a math teacher, and two high school students (promising juniors or seniors) and showing them how to perform research in meteorology in their schools. With the help of the students who will participate during the summer and the project personnel, the teachers will then set up research activities involving students. During a four-week period during July and August, 2000, the teachers will commute to campus. The students will live on campus to give them a supervised learning experience. In the fall and spring, all of the participants will meet monthly to go over their accomplishments and discuss how to move forward. During summer 2001, four teachers who went through the process the previous year will help train a new set of teachers and students. This will then be repeated in summer 2002, so that a total of 24 schools (48 teachers and 48 students) will have completed the program.
The research taught will relate to some of SUNY Oswego's current and recent projects supported by the National Science Foundation and Cooperative Program Meteorology Education and Training (COMET). The goal of a recently completed NSF research grant was to improve the understanding of winter storms in the Great Lakes region. The COMET grant is a cooperative effort with the National Weather Service to improve lake effect snow forecasts by providing data from the Penn State / National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesoscale Model (MM5) to forecasters at the National Weather Service offices in Binghamton and Buffalo. Teachers and students will learn how to analyze and display MM5 output and to verify model forecasts using observed precipitation, surface and upper-air reports, and satellite and radar imagery. After returning to their schools, the teachers and their students will be able to gain access to radar and satellite imagery and other weather data from the SUNY Oswego World Wide Web site. Teachers and students will also be trained to use climate and air pollution data and to run an Environmental Protection Agency dispersion model. This training will prepare the teachers to carry out research in their classrooms with their students; the high school student participants will serve as mentors for their younger peers.
Teachers will earn three graduate credits by participating in this program. For the first year, teachers will be recruited from nearby school districts, some of which are in resourcepoor rural areas. The teachers, in turn, will select the students. In subsequent years, teachers will be recruited from a wider area, including the inner city high schools of Syracuse, New York. An important part of meteorological research is measuring current weather at the schools. Thus, participating schools that do not have continuously monitoring weather instruments are expected to purchase a $600 weather station and provide the data from it to the college researchers and to other participating schools. This will provide a network of weather data, which can be used in the initialization and verification of regional weather forecast models.
The overall goal of the project is to give the participants the opportunity to experience the discipline of scientific inquiry and the excitement of discovery in a setting that encourages exploration, inquiry, and cooperation. The participants will formulate and test conjectures, learn the methods and processes of research, and gain experience in working cooperatively to solve problems. This goal is closely aligned with the New York Mathematics, Science & Technology (MST) Standards, which call for an integrated, problemsolving, constructivist approach to mathematics and science teaching that is connected to real world applications. The meteorology and mathematics used in the project will be consistent with secondary school curricula. The technology involves using computer programs, such as regional weather forecast models, weather analysis and display programs, dispersion models, and spreadsheets. In addition, participants will learn to interpret satellite and radar imagery, and wind profiler data, as well as learn how to set up and use meteorological measuring and recording devices.
The project will be evaluated by measuring changes in the way the participants think about meteorology rather than changes in knowledge or behavior. The purpose of the project is to change the way that teachers perceive meteorology, from a series of concepts and principles to be delivered to students, to an emphasis on the process of scientific inquiry. It is based on the assumption that changes in teachers' modes of thinking about their subjects will ultimately change the ways that they deliver instruction and the ways that their students learn. The idea is to give teachers a positive attitude toward themselves and their responsibilities. Many people learn by observing others and then modeling their own behaviors on the behaviors of others they perceive to be effective. Exposing teachers to an opportunity to model their teaching on the behavior of active researchers and transferring their learning to their classrooms is the anticipated outcome of the project.