Climate Literacy: Progress in Climate and Global Change Undergraduate Courses in Meteorology and Earth System Science Programs at Jackson State University

JSU Meteorology Program curriculum offers AMS Climate Studies undergraduate course under MET 210: Climatology. AMS Climate Studies is offered as a 3 credit hour laboratory course with 2 lectures and 1 lab sessions per week. Although this course places strong intellectual demands upon each student, the instructors' objective is to help each student to pass the course with an adequate understanding of the fundamentals and advanced and applied concepts of climatology, and climate change for him/her to understand basic atmospheric/climate processes, physical and dynamical climatology, regional and global climatology, past and future climates and statistical analysis using climate data and to be prepared to profit from studying more advanced courses. JSU Earth System Science Program curriculum developed a Global Change course under SCI 215. This is a content course in Earth Science. It introduces a new concept that views Earth as a synergistic physical system of interrelated phenomenon governed by complex processes involving the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the biosphere, and the solid Earth. The course emphasizes that the events that shape the physical, chemical, and biological processes of the Earth do not occur in isolation. Rather, there is a delicate relationship between the events that occur in the ocean, atmosphere, and the solid Earth. The course provides a multidimensional approach in solving scientific issues related to Earth-related sciences, namely geology, meteorology, oceanography, and ecology. The main objectives of this course are as follow. (1) To provide students with a comprehensive knowledge of the internal working of the oceans, the solid Earth, the atmosphere, and the biosphere. (2) To familiarize students with interrelated nature of the processes occurring on Earth. (3) To enhance general science education at Jackson State University. Students majoring in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Meteorology, Education, and General Science benefit from these courses.