Incorporating Undergraduates into Atmospheric Research: Practice at a Small Liberal Arts College

The presentation will focus on the challenges and benefits to providing undergraduate students meaningful research internship opportunities in the atmospheric sciences. Specifically, details of the undergraduate summer research program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, student outcomes, and pedagogic approaches developed, adopted, or adapted for use during the summer research program will be discussed. Research by student participants has ranged from mesoscale and climatological analysis of individual lake-effect snow storms associated with small and large lakes to investigation of weather impacts on bird migration events. Selected results from collaborative research investigations conducted with student participants during the last six years (2005 – 2010) will be presented to provide the audience with the scale, expectations, and outcomes of research conducted by undergraduates in a concentrated, full-time research internship setting.