How the Broadcasting Club became the Foundation for an AMS Pre-College Chapter

It is often difficult to get together a critical mass of students to form a high school meteorology club, especially at a smaller school. (The Oak Knoll School graduates 60-70 girls a year.) By leveraging the wide variety of skills and interests in meteorology, you can tap a larger portion of the student population.

Meteorology spans several different areas of interest: forecasting, observations, computer graphics, and video and audio broadcasting. This is where the Oak Knoll Broadcasting Club comes into play. This club is strongly rooted at Oak Knoll and already provides many services: producing videos for all school meetings, working with the communications department on promotional videos, and helping to create content for the Core Council. Meteorology connections can provide opportunities for content for the broadcasting club, plus a teachable moment to develop forecasting skills. It truly taps into one of the passions of this group of students.

As one of their first projects, In the spring of 2023 the Oak Knoll Broadcasting club initiated a connection with WIQH, the student radio station at Concord-Carlisle (MA) High School (CCHS) to provide recorded “hyper local” forecasts for the CCHS community. With students coming back to campus in the fall, the hope is to create many more opportunities to produce weather content.

By reaching out into this larger talent pool of students it will sustain the club and allow for the creation of AMS Pre-College Chapter, a process which is currently in the pipeline.