The curriculum in introductory science courses is typically dictated “top-down,” i.e. by the instructor and the course materials. While there are many compelling reasons for the experts in a subject to set the curriculum, this approach runs the risk that introductory courses may be geared toward developing new experts rather than educating newcomers to the subject in ways that are relevant to their lives. This is a particularly crucial concern in a small discipline such as meteorology: in our experience, up to 95% of the students in a large introductory meteorology course at a research university may be non-science majors, and 99% may major in a subject other than meteorology or atmospheric science. If these courses are geared primarily to would-be atmospheric scientists, they target only a tiny sliver of the student population.

Would the introductory meteorology curriculum be different if the students themselves decided what should be taught? As a first step toward answering this question, we have surveyed hundreds of students in introductory meteorology/weather and climate courses at the University of Georgia and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These simple first-day-of-class surveys have asked students what one question or topic they would most like to see answered or covered during the semester.

Results of these surveys reveal key differences between what students want to learn versus what they are usually taught in introductory classes. These differences are not primarily due to a skewing of student responses toward severe weather. Instead, it appears that introductory non-science-major students already have sufficiently broad exposure to atmospheric science that their responses lay the groundwork for a comprehensive curriculum. Notably, some key interest areas among students, such as weather forecasting and atmospheric optics, are not covered in commensurate depth by most instructors and textbooks. We will discuss the implications of our results for developing introductory courses and materials that may benefit from combining the perspective of experts with the desires of students to achieve improved student learning in introductory undergraduate courses in meteorology.