AMS education program - a collegial success story

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) significantly contributes toward making all young people scientifically literate, enabling them to lead more satisfying and productive lives in a democratic society. The aim of the program is to better equip students to face the challenges and opportunities of human interactions with the Earth system, a growing and competitive economy, and the global spread of technology and information access.

The AMS developed its precollege education program from an educational initiative passed by its Council in 1990. With U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) support, Project ATMOSPHERE was launched in 1991 to develop a cadre of master teachers, Atmospheric Education Resource Agents, who would peer-train colleagues on atmospheric science topics with the goal of increasing science, math and technology literacy via telecommunicated current and real-world weather information. The entry point for teachers to Project ATMOSPHERE was a two-week summer workshop on weather topics hosted by the National Weather Service at their Training Center (NWSTC) in Kansas City, Missouri.

The success of the NWSTC workshop and Project ATMOSPHERE peer trainers led to another NSF-supported program on the physical foundations of oceanography, the Maury Project. Based on a two-week summer workshop at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the Maury Project was initiated in 1994.

Extending the availability of weather content for teacher enhancement purposes was accomplished in 1996 with the initial offering of the DataStreme Project, a blended learning course on the fundamental understandings of meteorology facilitated by the AMS Education Program, offered through Local Implementation Teams consisting of master teacher and scientists for participants in local settings. Course delivery components include a customized textbook, investigations manual and course website where the second parts of twice-weekly investigations are made available to participants. Individual weekly mentoring and several team meetings provided the course learning materials, motivation and collegial interaction.

The success of the DataStreme Project, since designated DataStreme Atmosphere, inspired development of DataStreme Water in the Earth System on the flow and transformations of water and energy in the global water cycle, and DataStreme Ocean on the foundations of oceanography. All three DataStreme courses utilize the same delivery model. Teachers who successfully complete a DataStreme course receive three semester hours of graduate credit (tuition-free) from the State University of New York at Brockport. Successful completion of the DataStreme courses commits teachers to providing peer training for their colleagues in their schools and districts.

The DataStreme precollege teacher enhancement program led to the development of introductory college science courses in meteorology (Online Weather Studies) and oceanography (Online Ocean Studies). The Online courses are designed for local college offering and taught by science faculty from a range of geoscience education and teaching backgrounds.

In all AMS educational initiatives, including two week workshops and semester courses, efforts have been made to increase the participation by underrepresented groups in the geosciences. Special efforts are supported by NSF to bring the introductory college courses to minority serving institutions.

Hallmarks of all AMS Education Program activities have been the use of inquiry based investigations with telecommunicated current environmental information to provide exciting learning experiences for teachers trained in a collegial fashion who, in turn, bring that excitement and learning style to their classrooms. To date about 11,000 precollege teachers have completed summer workshops or DataStreme courses. Over 300 institutions have now licensed Online courses including more than 100 minority serving institutions.