Pasadena City College is an urban, publicly funded 2-year college that serves over 29,000 students on a single 53-acre campus. The student body is approximately 37 % Hispanic, 30% Asian/Pacific Islander, 20% White, 7% African American and 5% Filipino. While the college offers many vocational programs, in 2001 nearly 1400 students transferred to local 4-year colleges and universities.

The American Meteorological Society Online Weather Studies Program (OWS) is being implemented in 2 principle ways. A pre-existing course, Science of the Atmosphere (Geology 24) has been expanded and re-worked to fully integrate OWS into the curriculum. The class will be offered in biweekly 1.5 - hour blocks of time in a computer-equipped classroom designed for both lecture and laboratory work. Expected enrollment will be approximately 30 students per section. We anticipate high demand for the course particularly among non-science majors seeking an interesting course to fulfill a general education physical science requirement. Pending curriculum committee approval, this course will be offered fall semester 2005.

Beginning fall semester 2004, two additional courses will begin using portions of the OWS curriculum. Earth and Space Science (Geology 3) is a 6-hour lecture-lab course designed specifically for pre-service K-12 teachers. Approximately 1/3 of the course is dedicated to weather and climate and the course schedule has been re-aligned such that several of the OWS modules can be utilized as laboratory exercises. A second course, Physical Oceanography (Geology 12) contains a significant meteorology component and the course syllabus has also been adjusted to utilize OWS modules. Integration of OWS modules has helped to significantly improve the focus of meteorology pedagogy within our courses here at Pasadena City College.