The Weather Classroom: How about a Career in Meteorology!

Educators and professional meteorologists that work with students studying the atmosphere are inevitably faced with the question--what IS a meteorologist and how do they know when the next earthquake will happen??? The Weather Classroom, the educational branch of The Weather Channel (TWC), attempts to debunk these misconceptions by providing educationally sound broadcast and print materials for those engaged in the study of weather. TWC has recently begun a yearlong expansion and restructuring of their educational materials for the Weather Classroom. This campaign kicked off in October of 2000 with a new segment highlighting various careers in the atmospheric and related sciences. This sexy M-TV/Bill Nye the Science Guy-style video highlights the broad spectrum of jobs professional meteorologists do while also introducing the viewer to a diverse group of people engaged in these various endeavors.

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) Board on Women and Minorities (BoWM) inspired this video project after reviewing demographic information rcently gathered by the AMS. Membership data collected through the 1999 AMS survey illustrated two trends:

1) The numbers of females in the Society has been slowly but steadily increasing since the first survey was done in 1975. At that time, 2.4% of the membership was female. Today 10.6% of the AMS membership is female. The percentage of female members in the AMS increases with a decrease in age so that the median age of women in the data set was 37 years old versus 47 for males that responded to the survey. Based on the latest numbers, 27.8% of the graduate population is female and 22.8% of undergraduate students are of that gender.

Figure 1. Percentage of women respondents by survey year.

2) Growth in minority populations has largely been flat over the last 25 years and although the trend is in a positive direction in the educational pipeline, the population is likely insufficient to drastically diversify the Society within the next 5-10 years.

Table 1. Distribution of responses (in percent) by ethnic background in survey year.

In the spring of 2000, the BoWM pitched the idea for a careers video to TWC and they executed the project with incredible skill and speed. This new video is targeted to a middle school audience. The hope is that the dramatic images and personal narratives presented in an interesting and engaging light will attract a diverse group of students to pursue careers in the atmospheric and related sciences. The AMS will make copies of the video and the companion print materials widely available at the Annual conference in January of 2001. A second career video will be completed by TWC in the fall of 2001.