METEOROLOGY CLIMATE SCIENCE · 2019-10-28 · Meteorology & Climate Science ‐ Program Planning...

Meteorology & Climate Science ‐ Program Planning Report – Spring, 2017 Pg. 1

PROGRAM PLANNING REPORT SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY

METEOROLOGY & CLIMATE SCIENCE

BS METEOROLOGY BS METEOROLOGY, CONCENTRATION CLIMATE SCIENCE

MS METEOROLOGY

COLLEGE OF SCIENCE WWW.SJSU.EDU/METEOROLOGY

Department Chair or School Director: Alison Bridger

Duncan Hall, [email protected], 4‐5206

Faculty Program Plan Leader: Self

External Reviewer: TBD

Date of Report: May, 2017

Date Due to PPC: May, 2017

Current Chair of Program Planning Committee: Brandon White, [email protected]

UGS Administrative Support for Program Planning: Nicole Loeser, [email protected]

Submissions: Reports are to be submitted electronically via email. Please email the program plan, request for

external reviewer (if applicable), and external reviewer’s report to [email protected]. In addition, please

cc the above email on all communications with the dean, external reviewer, Program Planning Committee, and

UGS on matters pertaining to your program plan.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS

a. Program Mission and Goals (page 3)

b. Curricular Content of Degrees, Minors, and Certificates (page 3)

c. Service Courses (page 4)

2. SUMMARY OF PROGRESS, CHANGES, AND PROPOSED ACTIONS

a. Progress on action plan of previous program review (page 4)

b. Significant changes to the program and context (page 5)

3. ASSESSMENT OF STUDENT LEARNING

a. Program Learning Objectives (PLO) (page 9)

b. Map of PLOs to University Learning Goals (ULG) (page 10)

c. Matrix of PLOs to Courses (page 12)

d. Assessment Data (page 13)

e. Assessment Results and Interpretation (page 14)

f. Placement of Graduates (page 15)

4. PROGRAM METRICS AND REQUIRED DATA

a. Enrollment, Retention, and Graduation rates (page 16)

b. Headcount in Sections (page 18)

c. FTES, Induced Load Matrix (page 19)

d. FTEF, SFR, Percentage T/TT Faculty (page 19)

5. PROGRAM RESOURCES

a. Faculty (page 20)

b. Support Staff (page 21)

c. Facilities (page 22)

6. OTHER STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES (page 26)

7. DEPARTMENT ACTION PLAN (page 30)

8. APPENDICES CONTENT (starts on page 30: many attachments)

a. Required Data Elements (many pages)

b. Grants funded (list)

c. General Education: classes and assessment (pages 31‐41)


1. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

The Department of Meteorology at SJSU was founded in 1960. It was re‐named to Meteorology and Climate Science in about 2010. We are a “discovery major”, one of the smaller programs on campus. However, in an era of unabated climate change, we believe we offer an important and unique opportunity for students (BS, MS and GE) to learn about our atmosphere, and it’s current and future weather and climate. We are the only such program in the CSU: a similar but smaller program at SFSU is being discontinued1. The UC has two similar programs (UCD and UCLA), but both are more geared towards their PhD programs and research, and less towards undergrad education.

Our paradigm is as follows: (1) we provide quality and interesting GE classes covering weather, climate, climate change, climate change solutions, air pollution, and fire weather. We strive to place good teachers into these classes, and we participate in and pay attention to assessment activities.

(2) We are very research‐active, with faculty securing $6.8m in the review period. The largest awards (over $1.7m for the CAARE center, just under $1.1m for the Green Ninja, just under $1m for the High Performance Computing center) benefit the entire university community – not just us. (3) Our numbers of majors and MS students are small, but we believe that (3) is always balanced by the sum

of (1) and (2).

We are located in Duncan Hall (why do you want to know this?), there is no accreditation process

for our field, and we are at www.sjsu.edu/meteorology.

1a. Program mission and goals

We provide students with an in‐depth knowledge of the atmosphere and prepare them for careers

in the atmospheric sciences. Meteorology faculty maintain active research programs that benefit

the science community and enhance our students' learning environment. Our goals include: (i)

continuing to provide an excellent education to our BS, MS and GE students; (ii) continuing to

expand our signature research productivity; (iii) striving to accomplish our mission and the mission

of SJSU; and (iv) staying alive in the age of ever‐reducing budgets.

1b. Curricular Content of Degrees, Minors, Certificates, and Credentials

We offer:

a. BS Meteorology

This is the core/original program, currently consisting of 38 units of GE, 27 units of MATH, PHYS

and CHEM, and 55 units of Meteorology and electives (1 unit). The curriculum is designed to

meet Federal Guidelines for a Federal Meteorologist hired by the Federal Government. Upon

completion of the degree, students are well‐positioned to continue to an MS and/or PhD

program, or to enter the workforce in either the public or private sector. Computational

experience and skills are highly sought after in the modern workforce, and in recent years we

have made changes to our curriculum to strengthen student skills in this area. Specifically: (i) we

have introduced teaching the Python language in our sophomore “Computing in Meteorology”

sequence (METR 50/51). And (ii) we have replaced a senior‐level class on weather analysis and

1 As their (three) senior faculty retire, they are not being replaced.


forecasting with an advanced Computing in Meteorology class (METR 150) in which these skills

are reinforced.

b. BS Meteorology, concentration Climate Science

This is a new concentration. The first cohort of students graduated in Spring 2015. The

curriculum includes some of the MATH, PHYS, CHEM, and BIO classes taken by the BS

Meteorology students, as well as a number from other units (e.g., ENVS, COMS etc.) Upon

completion of the degree, students have typically left to enter the workforce in emerging

climate change‐related fields.

c. MS Meteorology

This is another original program, consisting of 24 units (8 classes) of classwork and 6 of “other”.

Ours is an intensive research‐based MS program. Our students are required to conduct an

original research project, and write and present results in technical formats. This entire task

often takes about a year. We recently submitted paperwork to revise the balance of units to

“21+9”, which better reflects the reality of this degree2. There is a “Plan B”, but it is rarely used

and students cannot choose it. Upon completion, some students continue to a PhD program

(including some of the top programs in the US), while others leave for work in the public (e.g.,

LLNL) or private sector. Some have also entered the teaching profession.

d. Minor in Meteorology

The minor (14‐17 units3) consists of a selection of classes, mostly taught in the sophomore year

with mid‐level MATH and PHYS requirements (but not the entire MATH/PHYS sequences). Only

about one student per year enrolls, and as the CSU has moved aggressively towards a policy of

“take 120 units and get out”, it’s unlikely that higher enrollments will develop soon.

e. Minor in Atmospheric and Seismic Hazards

This minor (14‐17 units) consists of a selection of classes in METR and GEOL, and covering the

general area of “hazards”. Only about one student per year enrolls.

f. Minor in Climate Change Strategies

This is a new minor (18 units) recently developed between us and ENVS. It was designed to give

ENVS students experience in applied topics that involve measuring the changing environment

(via instrumentation), and performing analysis of data (via statistics). At the same time, METR

students taking the major would gain an understanding of Energy Generation and Policy issues.

The minor was designed to increase the employability of both sets of students (METR and ENVS)

in the world under climate change. So far, very few students have enrolled – many fewer than

expected. We have been talking with ENVS about this. Stay tuned.

1c. Service Courses

We have traditionally offered one service course, viz METR 110 on Aviation Weather, geared

towards aviation majors. This has been normally offered once a year, and the typical teacher has

been a senior lecturer who has flight experience4. As long as we have one such fellow around, we

2 This paperwork was submitted in April 2016, i.e., 13 months ago. We discovered recently (May 2017) that it had fallen through the cracks, never been received, never enacted. Re‐submission would be in Fall 2017, with enactment in – Fall 2018? The pace of curricular change at SJSU is ASTONISHINGLY and SHOCKINGLY and INDEFENSIBLY slow, compared with the accelerating pace of modern life. Unacceptable. 3 As required by the major department 4 But not as security personnel on United


have been fine. However, our latest such instructor has retired. At the same time, Aviation has made

an independence push and they need FTEs. As a result, we have allowed them to “take” METR 110,

which will become AVIA 110. There will be a small hit in our FTEs, but on the plus side we will lose

the annoyance of having to find an instructor for a very specialized class at silly wages. We believe

we can make up for the FTEs hit by offering one more section of a GE class.

1d. General Education

General education is addressed in the appendix.

2. SUMMARY OF PROGRESS, CHANGES, AND PROPOSED ACTIONS

2a. Progress on action plan of previous program review

Our last Action Plan followed a meeting on Friday December 20, 2013. Dr. Ellen Junn was Provost at

the time. The Action Plan asked us to:

I. Explore faculty replacement or FT temporary hires, and

II. Apply for SSETF funds for F14‐15 for reconfiguration of department space for laboratories

and teaching. Specifically look at tech staffing, and 7th floor accessibility issues.

We had these taken care of within a year – yay us!! Specifically:

I. We said goodbye to one Asst Prof (Menglin Jin) and were fortunate to be allowed to recruit

to replace her. We now have Asst Prof Minghui Diao in her 2nd year. Additionally, we were

able to secure an additional faculty slot to allow us to develop expertise in the broad area of

“Water”5. We now have Asst Prof Neil Lareau in his 1st year. We still need to explore FT

temporary hires. This is particularly germane now because Dr. Marty Leach is dropping from

FTPT to HTPT as he prepares to fully retire. Dr. Leach has for several years been our “go to”

guy to teach almost anything and everything, including at the MS‐level, for which we require

the PhD. Dr. Leach started with us around the time Dr. Jerry Steffens retired, and he had

been the same type of guy who would/could teach almost anything. We therefore are

approaching a critical need for a PhD‐level PT faculty member, perhaps FTPT. As a reminder,

in our college, the norm now is for new faculty to have reduced teaching loads in order to

get their research off the ground. Hence the addition of new faculty has not made much of a

dent in our need for PhD‐level teachers for graduate and upper‐division classes. Ideally, we

could recruit for a “permanent” appointment (3 years). These used to be common, then

they vanished, and then in and since the last review cycle they have been mentioned again

(e.g., by Presidents and Provosts at UCCD meetings). More about this later.

II. We did indeed apply for and receive the SSETF funds to allow for the renovation of DH 701.

We emptied the room of 40+ years of stored stuff and junk (mostly by the old lady and a

tiny SA), had it cleaned, had it painted, and had the lighting renovated. The whole thing then

came crashing down when we tried to order modular furniture to outfit the room as either a

grad student research facility, or as the CAARE facility for Prof. Sen Chiao. At this point, the

PDC wing of FD&O got involved, and informed us that the room was not fit for human

5 This was during the big drought.


habitation since it had neither fire alarms nor ventilation. So – the room has basically sat

there and gathered well‐lit dust ever since. The chair has efforted to trade the room with

other college departments, but there is no enthusiasm.

Other honorable mentions in the last Action Plan were:

I. Provost commends College for working with departments by developing a Space planning

committee; and

II. Provost also commended department for their efforts in expanding their outreach and

recruitment activities.

2b. Significant changes to the program and context, if any

There are two things that heavily constrain our collective ability to thrive and improve: (1) space;

and (2) support staff. We are certain that every other program at SJSU can/would/does say the

same thing, but that doesn’t make the subject irrelevant.

1. Space issues: when the current chair joined the pack, the core faculty all had office space within

a literal stone’s throw of the main office (DH 614). This meant that we could always easily and

informally talk to each other in the hallway about issues ranging from science (fun) to

assessment6 committee work (less fun). At the moment, we have:

a. Chair Bridger is in her 3rd term as chair. She occupies the Chair’s office (DH 620A), but has no

other space (e.g., no other faculty office, no research space). This will be a problem in Fall 17

when she is on sabbatical with no place to work (if another faculty member needs access to

the Chair’s office).

b. Prof Cordero shares a large office space with Asst Prof Walsh. Access to his office is via one

of two (currently reduced to one – see below) small front offices. Prof Cordero is currently

heavily involved with the Green Ninja (GN) project. The space once occupied by our tech

(DH 614A) is now allocated to GN. When the GN came back into the college from Tower

Hall, no other college space was offered to them.

c. Assoc Prof Clements’ office is on the 8th floor, co‐located with his research space and our

teaching lab. This means that we rarely see him, have no idea if he’s in the building, and his

GE students cannot easily get to him for office hours since the doors that lead above the 6th

floor are now locked. Prof Clements’ absence detracts from unit cohesion.

d. Prof Chiao has a single faculty office in DH 620B, but spends at least ½ each day down on the

2nd floor where his CAARE office (aka research space) is located. We are immensely grateful

to the college for finding this space, but Prof Chiao’s absence detracts from unit cohesion.

e. Asst Prof Walsh conducts confidential interviews as part of her research, and she requires

confidential space in which to work and store her records. Ideally, this would be a smallish

room kept locked 24‐7 with limited access (e.g., one door, few keys). In the short term, she

is using an office that leads back to the Cordero/Walsh office, but this is hardly ideal. First, it

means that we have to take one of our only two office spaces for PT faculty out of the

rotation. Second it means ALL foot traffic back to the Cordero/Walsh office now has to go

through our one remaining PT faculty office spaces – hardly an ideal work environment for

6 Had not been invented.


the occupants. To manage the loss of PT office/desk space, some of our PT faculty now use

the CAARE space on the 2nd floor (since these individuals also work with Prof Chiao). Again –

unit cohesion.

f. Asst Prof Diao has an individual office, but no research space, unlike the senior faculty.

There is no free space which we could re‐label as research space for her right now. At the

moment, her research work is largely computational, but she has indicated the need for

future lab space (actual lab space) in which she can work on instrumentation. The 8th floor

(with its attendant problems) remains an option.

g. Our newest faculty member, Asst Prof Lareau is currently housed in Chemistry, luckily on

the 6th floor of Duncan. Again – unit cohesion, since his office is non‐local. Last year, the

dean announced a policy that all new faculty would have roughly the same in the way of

faculty office space (paraphrasing here, but things like single faculty spaces etc.) As we

march now inexorably into summer, Chemistry has hired a new Biochemist who will need

this office in August. Thus – we are stuck with needing to find office space for Prof Lareau

where – per the above – we are already tapped out. At the moment, the plan is that Prof

Walsh’s confidential space will relocate down to the 2nd floor of DH (co‐located with SciEd),

and Prof Lareau will move into one of the two front offices that allow access back to the

Cordero/Walsh office space. Hardly ideal, and again – no idea of what we can do for

research space for him.

Efforts to improve our situation have repeatedly run into brick walls, including: (i) the lack of

ventilation in DH 701 which took that room out of the pool of possible spaces; (ii) the lack of an

elevator – even a “granny lift” to DH 801 – severely restricts possible usage of that space; (iii) we

efforted to renovate our “Grad Room” DH 617 into a set of small single faculty office spaces,

which would have freed up the Cordero/Walsh office space for research space for the new

faculty. But this plan ran aground due to costs associated with added costs triggered by ADA

issues; (iv) we explored “moving into” space occupied by nearby Chemistry faculty, but that lab

space has hoods, and these are in short supply in the college and thus precious. It really doesn’t

matter what wild ideas we have come up with – we are stymied at every turn. As stated above,

this impacts unit cohesion, the overall ability to get anything done, and in future could limit new

faculty research productivity due to lack of lab and research space.

Impacts on students include: (i) we have no space students can use as a “club room” – unlike

other programs in the college; (ii) the space we have used since the time of Moses for grad

student research (DH 617) probably violates fire code since there are too few power outlets.

This necessitates use of extension cords. As mentioned above, we have looked into renovating

this space but… (iii) students last year asked whether they could have a “green wall” against

which to practice making weather presentations. We only have two teaching rooms (both multi‐

purpose rooms), and there are no free walls to paint.

All in all – we need a bit more space in order to thrive and grow. We do appreciate the efforts of

the college to help us find some. At one point, we were “told” to utilize DH 801 better: we have

done this (over time, Prof Clements, two post‐docs, and his grad students have been up there),

but we have not been rewarded. The current Chair admits to being deaf to “wait till the new


building!!” since that’s for CHEM/BIO. Ditto on the renovation of Duncan since the Chair expects

to be retired by then.

2. Support issues: when the current chair joined the pack, the program had 1.5 technical support

positions (one individual plus a 2nd shared with Chemistry). Now – zero. At various times since

then, we have had zero or ½ or 1.0 admin support positions: currently we have ½ position, with

our Admin shared with Geology. As is well‐known, Provost Selter decided to absorb a budget cut

a few years back by cutting 70‐80 support positions on campus. Many positions were lost in this

college.

a. Technical (IT) support. In the area of technical (computational) support, the “Selter cuts”

hurt us and continues to hurt us. Unfortunately, our in‐house tech support guy (Mike, Voss,

MV) left at this same time, and his functionality has never been replaced. At the college

level, IT support has been centralized, and is insufficient to meet our specific needs due to

the technical and specialized nature of our work. So, our web presence – which imports

gigabytes of weather data and products, processes them and projects them online – has

become out of date, with broken links and a pressing need to be updated and modernized.

Merely to stay alive, the Chair has to allocate 3 WTUs per semester to Prof Chiao to

maintain the page.

By way of comparison, consider the College of DuPage near Chicago, a two‐year college.

In AY 16‐17 they narrowly beat SJSU in the Collegiate Weather Forecast contest. According

to their web page, they have two regular faculty, one part‐time faculty, a “web developer”,

a systems administrator, and an assistant systems administrator.

Another example involves the recent acquisition of a High Performance Computing

system (HPC), discussed in an Appendix. Since we have no in‐house IT personnel, the College

has allocated one of its people to the HPC center, leaving a very small support staff in the

wake.

It’s worth noting that increasing numbers of graduates will go into private sector jobs

upon graduation (as opposed to the National Weather Service etc.). Most modern jobs

require extensive computing skills, including the ability to run sophisticated models, and the

ability to access and visualize very large data sets. In recognition of this, during the review

period we have made two curricular changes, as outlined in section 1b.a above. In bringing

more computing curriculum into the classroom, we increase the pressure on “somebody” to

help us with tasks such as: accounts, specialized software configuration (a constant

problem), access through firewalls etc. That “somebody” will be one of us (often Prof Chiao)

or the understaffed college IT group.

A final issue with support is the fact that weather happens 24‐7. There are no “down

times”. This is frequently seen as odd by IT groups outside the program (e.g., college,

university‐level), who like to shut things down on Fridays. In‐house support would mitigate

this.

b. Instrument support. In the area of scientific instrumentation, lack of support also hurts us.

Support of our instruments lab used to be covered by the 1.5 technical support staff. In

those early days, PCs had not been invented (!), so we had 1.5 staff “just” to support

instruments! Now – nothing. Following the “Selter layoffs”, we understood that college

technical and instrumentation support had been centralized, but there is no practical


evidence of this. When Prof Clements needs help in fixing instruments, there is still no

mechanism to summon help from the college, other than a begging phone call. Certainly

there is no online “ticket” mechanism, although one was discussed in Council of Chairs

about 3 years ago. It’s also been suggested that we lurk in the hallway and hijack the Chem

instruments tech. Recall that Prof Clements was able to secure an NSF‐MRI grant to secure

an instrumented Fire Weather mobile lab, which is used both in teaching and research.

Between the DH 801 instruments lab (used in class), the rooftop weather instruments used

in class and for our web presence, the 8th floor Air Quality Lab (used in classes and online),

and this mobile Fire Weather lab, there seems plenty of tech support work to do, and yet we

are not resourced. Merely to keep everything running, the Chair will be allocating 3 WTUs

per semester to Prof Clements, as well as hiring SAs to maintain the lower‐level instruments.

Another factor is that we have two junior faculty who have an interest in conducting

research which would require not only lab space, but also technical support. Specifically,

Prof Lareau has submitted a proposal to secure a mobile radar package, and Prof Diao is

planning proposals which involve both electronics work and lab work. We’d like to remind

you that our faculty have been highly successful at securing large grants and NSF Career

Awards7. Thus it is likely that at least one of these two junior faculty will be successful in

their funding pursuits, and will therefore require technical support from the college.

c. Admin support. We currently have 0.5 admin support position assigned. As mentioned, our

support has ranged from zero (briefly) to 0.5 to 1.0 over the years, with the bulk of the time

at the 1.0 support level. Over this same time frame, more and more SJSU functions have

gone online (scheduling, appointments, recruitment etc.), and thus cannot be done by SAs

since they are not allowed access into the relevant parts of peoplesoft. So the number of

tasks that only the Admin can do alone has increased. In our case too, the Admin is doing

everything twice which appears to be soul‐destroying. In any event, our Admin helps

complete the task of keeping us going (faculty do get appointed and paid, classes do get

scheduled etc.) however, she has neither the time nor the inclination to provide any

assistance above and beyond. At times, it has been suggested that she could help with

outreach to alumni, or to prospective students. However, she shows neither desire nor

aptitude to do so. The result is that if any of this is to be done, it would have to be on the

shoulders of the chair and faculty – on top of everything else.

In summary, there may be abundant “rationale for other changes to the program since the last

program planning cycle”, and ditto desire from inside the program, but there are insufficient

resources to allow us to do anything.

3. ASSESSMENT OF STUDENT LEARNING

3a. Program Learning Objectives (PLO)

List PLOs of all degree programs (see below) and indicate any changes to them since the last

program planning cycle (none).

7 The NSF describes its Career Award as “most prestigious awards in support of the early career‐development activities of those teacher‐scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization”. Two of our 7 faculty are awardees.


BS Meteorology PLOs

1. Be able to read and interpret various meteorological diagrams, and develop and present a short‐to‐medium‐term forecast with considerable skill.

2. Be able to explain meteorological phenomena at various scales in terms of basic physical and dynamic processes, including radiative forcing, thermodynamics, microphysics, and dynamics.

3. Know the design and use of meteorological instruments, and techniques for collecting and interpreting the data.

4. Be able to explain current climate in terms of basic physical and dynamical processes, and explain the mechanisms responsible for climate change.

5. Be able to explain ideas and results through written, statistical, graphical, oral and computer‐based forms of communication.

BS Meteorology, concentration Climate Science PLOs

1. Be able to explain current climate in terms of basic physical and dynamic processes. 2. Be able to explain the mechanisms responsible for climate change. 3. Know and be able to practice the techniques used for collecting, analyzing, and

interpreting various forms of climate data. 4. Demonstrate an ability to synthesize concepts from a broad range of disciplines, and

apply them to problems in climate science 5. Be able to explain ideas and results through written, statistical, graphical, oral and computer‐

based forms of communication.

MS Meteorology, concentration Climate Science PLOs

1. Be able to conduct an independent research project, and communicate the results in written and oral form in acceptable professional formats.

2. Be able to explain meteorological phenomena in terms of advanced physical and dynamic concepts.

3. Understand and be able to apply advanced numerical methods to solve atmospheric and climate science problems

Note: Most faculty meetings have assessment topics discussed but we cannot provide the required

evidence. We all do actively participate. We are unaware of any “WASC PLO Rubrics”.

3b. Map (matrix) of PLOs to University Learning Goals (ULG)



3c. Linkage between PLOs and Courses


3d. Assessment Data


To be clear, you want a discussion of the types of data we collect to assess the various PLOs? Not the

data itself, and nothing to do with GE classes, right? It would take pages to describe each dataset for

each PLO in each program, so instead we will down‐select to a few typical examples. Suppose in a

given year we are assessing PLO‐5 in the BS programs. Each was written to focus on the capstone

course.

For the BS‐Meteorology, this involves (in METR 179 over 2 semesters): conducting a senior

thesis research project; writing a thesis in appropriate technical style; and making an acceptable

presentation of the work before the faculty. In doing this task, students may draw on material

from all core meteorology courses (dynamics, thermodynamics, climate dynamics, mesoscale,

forecasting ‐ depending on the exact topic). Students will typically gather, download, or

computationally create data, then analyze the data and present it. These latter tasks involve

statistical and computational skills from earlier classes (136, 50/51, 136, 150), as well as

technical writing and presentation skills (100W).

o At a faculty meeting, we would (all) discuss what type of data would be suitable to use

to determine whether students are/not meeting this PLO. An example might be an early

draft of the thesis. This would ideally demonstrate a full understanding of the

background meteorology, of the research topic being studied, and would be in the

appropriate style. Each of these aspects can be scored on a simple scale, such as: “2”

means fully meets required writing style, “1” means partially meets required writing

style but with flaws, and “0” means “OMG did this student sleep through 100W?????”

Likewise, we could/would score on how well the student explains their work in terms of

basic meteorology. So “at the end of the day”, we would have a dataset which we could

then analyze in terms of meetage of PLO‐5.

For the BS‐Meteorology concentration Climate Science, PLO‐5 is assessed in METR 174 in the

final semester. The class requires the student to: choose a research project typically along the

lines of “The impact of climate change on _____”; download relevant IPCC8 data; analyze the

data to answer the question; and present results in written and oral form. The tasks all involve

statistical, computational and technical writing skills from earlier classes, as well as material

from core classes.

o The process of deciding what data to collect and when and where takes place at a

faculty meeting in a manner very similar to that described above. The resulting data

would also be similar in form to that described above.

Turning now to the MS‐Meteorology program, suppose in a given year we are assessing PLO‐3. This

requires that the students can “apply advanced numerical methods”. This material is first covered in

METR 240 (required), and later in METR 241 (elective). Students learn the theory of various

numerical methods, and then apply them in assignment work, midterms, and finals. A lot of time on

coding and debugging is involved.

Again at a faculty meeting, we would (all) discuss what type of data would be suitable to use to

determine whether the graduate students are/not meeting this PLO. For example in this case,

we might use results from an assignment given mid‐semester and onwards. We have found that

8 We presume you know what the acronym IPCC refers to.


a good measure of students’ meetage of PLO‐3 is the time taken to complete the task, as well as

the number of times the faculty member has to help the student. In the most recent offering of

METR 241, the best student(s) were able to complete the assigned task9 in about 24 hours. At

the other end of the scale, some students were still struggling after several days.

o Again we would score on a simple scale, such as: “2” means fully meets PLO, “1” means

partially meets PLO, “0” means does not meet PLO.

Instruction: “The program plan should be based on a comprehensive data set encompassing all

PLOs, ideally obtained within two years prior to the date of the report”. This is puzzling: we have

been under the continuous impression that we are to evaluate roughly one PLO per year in such a

way as to cover all PLOs in one five‐year Program Planning cycle.

3e. Assessment Results and Interpretation

It is unclear if you want an analysis here of all assessments done in all programs of all PLOs in the

last five years. All of this analysis is contained in the annual assessment reports, which are posted

online. Also, our understanding is that each PLO should have been assessed at least once per five‐

year cycle (but not necessarily more often). By definition, this leaves us unable to track changes over

time to see “if students are consistently achieving PLOs upon graduation”. Also, we have no idea

how we might track “how SJSU students in program compare to students in comparable programs”

since we are the only such program in the CSU, and other programs in the US might conduct

assessment in entirely different ways, making comparisons meaningless. It would also take a lot of

time to dig out such assessment reports posted in other comparable institutions in other states. For

us, the main evidence that the program is successful with students accomplishing PLOs continues to

be that most of our students get jobs in the field, as discussed in 3f below.

One final point: suppose for example that we had assessed a certain PLO twice in the previous five‐

year period. Per our mapping (shown above), the assessment might even have been conducted in

the same class both times (e.g., in METR 121B). It is quite likely however that – due to turnover – the

two classes would have been taught by two different instructors who might have been tenured,

tenure‐track or part‐time. Each would have taken a different approach to the assessment process

(e.g., data gathering, question design). Believe it or not, we actually are interested in seeing how

well each of our courses is “working”. We examine this via the PLOs. We have no interest in

repeating the exact same assessment activity in every course every year. And thus we are

“comparing apples with oranges”.

With these caveats in place, and noting that the reports are online and on file with GUP, we believe

that:

None of our assessment activities to‐date have revealed any serious issues. Examples would

include: (a) a class with a high failure rate (we don't have any); (b) a class that clearly needs to

be offered earlier or later in the curriculum (we have been moving things around for over 30

years to test such hypotheses, and we keep cycling back to where we were! This does not mean

that the curriculum is 30 years old – just that we think we have the ordering of classes correct.) 9 “Task” here means designing, writing, and de‐bugging code to execute a given numerical task (e.g., solve a certain type of equation).


None of our assessment activities to‐date have revealed any PLOs that are not being met en

masse.

Often, since we are small, we are able to identify the student who does not meet a given PLO,

and explain why s/he did not. Like everybody else, we have the occasional student who chooses

not to come to every class. We have also had students with disabilities who have had problems

with some PLOs (example: a student with a serious speech defect might have difficulty fully

satisfying any requirements to make an acceptable oral presentation).

Quite often at the end of a cycle (identify PLO, gather data, analyze data, discuss analysis, make

needed changes), we have concluded that we should have gathered different data and maybe in

a different class in order to better assess the PLO. The process is iterative – none of us is quite

sure how to “do” assessment so we are learning by trying.

Students seem generally very happy in our program. We all hear this 24‐7 as we interact with

them, and we hear it after the fact from graduates. This is especially true in the Facebook era.

We are beginning an internal “assessment of assessment” survey. We are asking students how

much they know and understand of our in‐house program assessment. This will be discussed in

the AY 17‐18 program assessment cycle.

3f. Placement of Grads

Well…up until about 8 years ago, we had a staff member (Mike Voss, MV) who tracked graduating

students (BS and MS) and kept up with them. Results are posted online at

http://www.sjsu.edu/meteorology/people/alumni/index.html. This allows visitors to verify that our students do get jobs in

the field. The list (“sorted by date” option) is complete – up to about 2010, when MV left. Since the

College has never replaced that staff member, the task has fallen by the wayside10. We are currently

efforting to catch up with the assistance of a student assistant who is unafraid of web work.

Despite being incomplete, the list clearly shows that a number of our grads have gotten jobs in the

field, and some have risen high into management. Others have gone on to MS and PhD programs

elsewhere, and some of these are at the top institutions in our field (viz Colorado State U, U

Washington, Harvard). Still others have joined the uniformed services in the “weather” field.

Following the 2008 downturn, our graduates continued to get jobs – but it took longer. One big

change in our field is the growth of the private sector, which now eclipses the traditional National

Weather Service (NWS) hires. A significant number of our graduates move into the private sector,

while only a small number (two in the last seven years) have joined the NWS. With the anti‐science,

anti‐federal government current federal administration, we expect that still more of our graduates

will go into the private sector.

One anecdote: I received a call within the last year from a 1980’s‐generation MS graduate of the

program. He had been on a committee to recruit a new meteorologist to work in southern

California. The job would include fieldwork. One of our recent graduates applied and got the job.

The feedback I got from the entire committee via our alum was that this applicant really stood out in

her overall abilities, plus her fieldwork experience (gained on one of our field trips, and in the

Instruments class METR 163). It was clear the committee was impressed with our product. We hear

similar anecdotes from many others.

10 The Chair is 40% and currently teaching two classes. We have ½ of a staff admin position.


An alumni survey could be developed and conducted if/when we get more support resources.

4. PROGRAM METRICS AND REQUIRED DATA

The Required Data Elements discussed in this section are attached in Appendix A of this report.

4a. Enrollment, retention, graduation rates, and graduates

Enrollments:

Per Data Exhibit (DE) #5, freshman applications over the period have been 23,39,19,36,24. Quite

clearly, ours is a small major. It is important to recognize that ours is a small major nationwide:

we shall effort to find data supporting this statement. Of these applicants, 61‐85% were

accepted. Of these, the show rate was 11‐33%. So, only a small number of a small number start

in our program as freshmen. We generally make an effort to call all admitted students around

April to encourage attendance. Last year (spring 16), we forgot. We suggest this accounts for the

low show rate of 11% in Fall 16. We will not make that mistake again.

Transfer applications over the period have been 13,19,12,12,12. Of these, the show rate was 20‐

62%. We are seeing more students changing major into our program. We believe this is a result

of seeding our best instructors into our core GE classes in order to entrap disaffected

engineering students. Note that from DE#6, it used to be the case that #freshmen >

#sophomores. The reversal in the last two years can be attributed to more transfers and majors

changes.

There are no clear trends in either group: numbers go up and down and up and down.

The major used to be dominated by men11. The current senior and junior classes are 100%

female, which is a first. The current sophomore class is mixed in both gender and ethnicity. It is

certainly the first such well‐mixed group we’ve ever had.

As we all know, neither meteorology nor climate science are taught in California high schools. A

fair number of students take just biology and chemistry in high school. Hence, ours is a

“discovery major”. We expected that the growing alarm over “climate change” would have

attracted more students, but so far, they have not materialized. California students with high

GPAs look to the big PhD schools/programs, chiefly U Oklahoma and Penn State. We do not

seem to be on the radar despite our efforts to get noticed. There is definitely a class system in

California higher ed, and the CSU is not seen as 1st class education.

Graduate applications over the period have been 12,16,9,20,16. Of these, the show rate was 31‐

62%. Attracting new MS students to SJSU is tough, mainly because of money. In our field, it is

standard to offer a GRA to a student, at $20K+ per student. At the R‐1 institutions, where most

faculty have NSF, NASA etc. awards, this is the practice. At SJSU, where most faculty do not have

NSF etc. awards, this is challenging. In any given year, we have perhaps 1‐2 faculty who can

guarantee funding. Generally, our model is to accept students, and then find funding for them

after they have “proved” themselves in their 1st semester (via TA work, and some small research

projects). Especially given the cost of housing here, it is becoming more difficult to attract good

MS students. Although we have resources to offer scholarships of $5‐10K (discussed in §6), it is

often not enough.

11 The weather enterprise expanded tremendously after WW2 as servicemen mustered out and went into teaching and creating university programs (including SJSU).


Retention rates:

Looking at DE #9, the 1st year retention rate has ranged from 50‐100%. Really not sure what to

say about these data, except that the retention rate has been under 83% only once since 2009.

We think this means we’re doing pretty well. For transfer students since 2009, retention rates

have also been solid. Our transfers jump into the sophomore METR 60,61 sequence, for which

calculus 1 (MATH 30) is required, and physics 1 (PHYS 50) is a co‐requisite. Students who do not

progress are those who cannot pass PHYS 50 and/or MATH 31. With almost 100% certainty, we

can state that those are the classes that kill our majors – not the METR classes. This is not to

imply that our classes are easy or MATH/PHYS classes are bad – it’s just a tough hurdle that

some students cannot get over. We believe that the vast majority of students who make it to

our junior year classes successfully graduate.12 For new grad students, almost all make it to the

2nd year. We have raised our required GPA from 2.5 to 2.75, increasing our chances for getting

students who can survive our required grad courses. Any problems we have with the MS

program come from graduation – not retention.

Graduation rates:

Looking at DE #10, and keeping in mind the small sample size, our 6‐year graduation rate for 1st

time freshmen is generally not that good. If pressed, I would say this: in a typical year we might

get 20 applicants, of which 10 show, of which 6 make it to the sophomore year, of which 5 make

it to the junior year and then graduation. In other words, much of the washout occurs before

we ever see the students in our classes (i.e., when students take college MATH/PHYS). On the

other hand, once students are into our junior year, very few of them drop out, so the graduation

rate for that cohort is over 90%. It is also well‐established that this IEA analysis does not

properly account for students who switch out of our major, and still graduate from SJSU. Note

that as reported above, ours is still a 3‐year program for entering transfers (once MATH 30 is

completed), so a 3‐year graduation rate assumes the best. The 5‐year rate looks better for this

cohort. Likewise, our MS program really cannot be completed in 2 years due to the heavy

research component. The fastest students get out in 2.5 years. The 3‐year graduation analysis

handily shows this! We’re at a loss to explain the “0% across the board” report in the 5‐year MS

graduation rate. I myself have been to final presentations and submitted several “culminating

activity” reports to GS&R, so these IEA data are wrong.

Numbers of graduates:

Didn’t we just cover this in the graduation rate? Looking at DE #10, last column (Fall 2010), what

does “5” refer to? The number of students who did graduate? Or the “number entering”, and if

so – entering what? And what does “20%” mean?

Again as stated above, for every 20 who enter, we suspect that about 5 graduate. We would

love to have 40 entering instead of 20. We suspect we would then have 10 graduating. Again,

we are a “discovery major”, and some of those students who find us go on to fail at

MATH/PHYS. We have had 1‐8 MS students graduate each year, per the table, and each of these

numbers equate to “0%”. Zero percent of what?????

Summary:

12 Note about MATH 30/PHYS 50‐type classes: the trend has been to add more and more workshop and activity sections. However, this results in a serious time burden for students, and also messes up our roadmap in terms of keeping students to 15 units per semester. Yes – we know the data shows that they work, but…


We (especially the chair) would love to double the number of freshmen and transfers. We are

looking at targeted approaches, as opposed to visiting every high school in California and begging

students to attend SJSU. A recent MS grad of ours is a new hire at Foothill, and we plan to effort to

develop a pipeline. We also hope that there is more extreme weather in the west, which will attract

more students into our major13.

4b. Headcount in sections

Majors: each of our majors courses is offered once per year. As a result, if we have N seniors, our

enrollments in our senior classes is N and so forth. If N were to double (2N), enrollments would go

to 2N. So there is nothing much more to say here (DE #1).

Core GE classes (METR 10,12): METR 12 (climate change) was introduced in the review period with

the goal of attracting more FTEs (which generates funding) and more majors into our new Climate

Science concentration (which should generate more majors overall). Thus the number of sections (of

METR 10 & 12) has risen over the period.

Upper‐division GE classes (METR 112,113,115): Early in the 5‐year period, enrollments were very

high in METR 112 (Climate Change) and 113 (Pollution), with all sections filled. Over the past couple

of years, they have fallen off. We have no idea why. We keep expecting somebody in IEA or GUP to

(a) explain the trend, and (b) forecast the next trend. We offered more sections of METR 112 and

developed an online version. We had full enrollments in METR 113, and developed and offered a

new class (METR 115 on Fire Weather). In the past couple of years, we have had to cancel 113 for

low enrollment, and ditto at least one section of 112. Just as enrollments in 112 and 113 fell, those

in 10 and 12 rose: these classes typically fill.

Summarizing: Looking at DE#2, headcounts are dominated by the filled GE classes, per the above

discussion. Looking at Fall headcounts, upper‐division peaked at 30.7 in F07, fell to 18 in F12, rose

again to 26.9 in F14, and have fallen again. Looking at Spring doesn’t add much more to the

discussion. Looking at Fall headcounts in lower‐division classes, headcounts were 43 in F03, then

fell, then rose, then fell, then rose again, and remain in the low 40’s.

Important note: we have but ONE room we control in scheduling, viz DH 515, cap 48. For core GE

classes therefore, we are constrained to have 48 enrolled @ start of semester, and then less as

students drop out. Likewise for upper‐division GE classes, we are required to limit enrollments to

4014, which means more like 35 after students drop out. The chair has been able to elbow our way

into a couple of other rooms, but we are often saturated in offerings. Translation: we would like to

be able to offer MET 10 and 12 and 112 and 113 and 115 on TR at 1030‐1145. But we only have one

room guaranteed. If we offer core GE classes after noon, students will NOT enroll. So we could

certainly increase FTEs if we had more access to rooms at prime time.

A comparison to college and university averages under these conditions is meaningless. If there are

four prime time slots (MW and TR at 9 and 1030) and we have one room of cap 48, we cannot

13 As of June 2017, we do appear to have a bumper crop of freshmen and transfers this year (Fall 17 start). 14 We slipped into the habit of scheduling our upper‐division GE classes into a cap 70 room a few years ago. These classes were filling at the time, whereas core GE classes were not (so we put those in our cap 48 room). This no doubt helped us achieve FTEs up around 160. Once we were reminded of the limit of 40 on upper‐division classes, we went back to putting them in the cap 48 room (with cap 40). BTW, there have been times when scheduling has insisted that we set the class cap to equal the room cap. You can figure out the rest of this sentence…


improve upon four high‐enrolled classes and the accompanying FTEs. Different majors/programs/

colleges have different rooms and class size limitations, so comparisons are more “apples and

oranges”.

4c. FTES, Induced Load Matrix

FTEs: Looking at DE #3 2nd sub‐table (REDIST‐FTES), our FTEs do indicate that our efforts to grow

(measured by FTEs) are being successful under the leadership of Queen Bridger. We were at 114.7

@ start of period, peaked at 176 in F15, and were at 143.5 in F16. There has been a drop out in the

college this year – perhaps this is why our numbers are down right now. We are happy with the

growth, and we have capacity to grow in all arenas (all sections could fill a bit, especially in the

majors classes, but GE too).

ICLM: Quite clearly, this is a measure that is of high importance to the campus since it gets talked

about a lot in chairs meetings. But we cannot figure what it is, or why it matters. Looking down DE

#4 to Meteorology, then reading across, we find: 37,35,46,27, and 108. What do these mean? On

the other hand, if we choose the 2nd column (lower division), and read down, we some big numbers

such as: Art 11; Bus Admin 12, Comp Sci 24 and so forth). Perhaps this tells us that 11 of our GE

students are Art majors? But – so what?

4d. FTEF, SFR, Percentage T/TT Faculty

FTEF: Looking back at DE #3 3rd sub‐table (FTEF), we find that FTEFs have bubbled along in the range

6.0‐6.5. We currently (Sp17) have seven T/TR faculty, one brand new this AY year, and one new last

AY. We have also had some sabbaticals in the review period, so for much of the time we have had to

rely heavily on P/T faculty. The high FTEF values in F11 and F12 reflect the high FTEs at those times:

you gotta hire ‘em to teach ‘em.

SFR: Looking again at DE #3 1st sub‐table (SFR), we find that SFRs have been as low as 17.8 in the bad

old days (F08) and as high as 27.5 in F14. During the period, enrollments in GE sections has both

soared and crashed, faculty have left, and new faculty have been hired with reduced teaching loads.

So again, apples and oranges in terms of treating one year like the next. However, we do seem to be

puttering along with an SFR in the low 20s. We will try to compare this with other programs

(depends on IEA).

Percentages: In Fall 16 by the chair’s headcount, we had 3 Asst Profs (Walsh, Lareau, Diao), 2 Assoc

Profs (Chiao, Clements), and 2 Full Profs (Bridger @ 0.6 (0.4 chair), Cordero). So that makes either 7

warm bodies or 6.6 FTEF in the T/TR track. DE #3, 3rd sub‐table, Fall 16 (page 2) quotes 6.4. DE #3

page 8 which is for F16 (1st mention in DE #3 of “faculty” category), the 3rd sub‐table, last row shows:

1.0 Asst Profs (?), 1.1 Assoc Profs (?), 0.6 Full Profs (?), some bits of lecturers (2.0,0.7,0.5), and ditto

TAs (0.5). We agree that these add to 6.4. The captions to the DEs are inadequate to figure how the

numbers are arrived at15. As a result, we’re not confident of which people these numbers represent!

Forming percentages from the 2nd and 3rd sub‐tables, we find that 91.4/143.5 of FTEs were taught by

Lecturer A’s (63.7%). This accords with the present‐day approach in the US of teaching as many

students for as few dollars as possible. Other lecturers and TAs accounted for 18.6%, and T/TR

faculty for the rest.

15 Such poor captioning would not pass muster in any of our MS theses.


Important note: Our program is one in which we have been very successful at securing external

grants (see section 6). The only way this can happen is via reduced teaching loads – made possible

largely by the College. As a result, tenured faculty will teach only 1‐2 sections per semester. The

chair has to populate the graduate and upper‐division majors classes with these faculty, so as a

result the bulk of our FTEs (i.e., in GE sections) are taught by lecturers.

5. PROGRAM RESOURCES

We list below all resources, which are: (a) our version of what we all have (faculty, office space etc.);

and (b) things that are unique to this program.

5a. Faculty

In AY 16‐17, we have 3 Asst Profs (Walsh, Lareau, Diao), 2 Assoc Profs (Chiao16, Clements), and 2

Full Profs (Bridger (0.4 chair), Cordero). In the forthcoming 5 years, we expect Bridger to retire,

Clements and Chiao to become Full, Walsh to become tenured Assoc., and both Lareau and Diao on

the verge of tenure and promotion. As mentioned, our model is to reduce teaching in order that

faculty can develop and maintain their highly successful record of securing external funding and

publishing scholarly work. As a result, we cannot fully staff the classes we believe require PhD‐level

instruction, viz all grad, senior, and junior classes (required and elective). Until about five years ago,

we were very ably assisted by a PhD full‐time part‐timer (Jerry Steffens, JS). JS was one of those

people who could and would teach almost any class, and he was responsible for the growth of our

GE METR 112 class. As JS retired, we were lucky to hire another senior PhD‐level full‐time part‐timer

(Marty Leach, ML). ML is also one of those people who can and will teach almost any class, and has

been a tremendous resource. He also assisted the chair in assessment activities. As of Fall 17, he is

set to drop down to ½ time, and will retire not long after. With his departure, we will urgently need

to find P/T assistance at the PhD level, and this is one of our immediate goals. A couple of years ago,

we had two faculty due for sabbatical in the same year, which accentuates the need for PhD‐level

instructors.

At the moment, we are able/forced to have several classes taught by our current MS students

(generally core GE classes). This is good experience for them, plus they get a tuition fee waiver as

well as a small salary (about $550/month pre‐tax). It’s not clear if this is good for the students

enrolled in the classes. The senior faculty pay very close attention to SOTEs, which resulted in the

release of a couple of poor‐performing P/T faculty in the last three years (one PhD, one MS). So we

do effort to maintain standards. As mentioned in section 3, it’s difficult to attract many MS students

since we cannot offer a full GRA @ $20+K/year. There is a worry then that we might “run out of”

grad student to teach our GE classes. Right now, there does not seem to be a line of applicants

looking for P/T jobs. As we all know, the pay is very low. Also, a newcomer would prefer at least 2

classes in order to get health care; it’s often the case that we need a lecturer for one section of MET

10, and/or one section of MET 112 etc.

5b. Support staff

Support staff is a very sore topic in the program, and we all feel that the lack of support holds us

back. Lack of support impacts faculty in their teaching endeavors, and thus impacts student success.

Additionally, faculty are forced to take care of grad student and part‐time faculty needs, taking time

away from other possibilities. And faculty are forced to take care of their own technical and lab

16 Chiao was promoted to Full after this report was written!


needs in the absence of college support. All of this takes time away from the busy faculty members’

days.

Looking at Admin support, we currently have ½ person (Leslie Blum, LB). She is shared with

Geology. Since the chair’s arrival in 1984, we have had 1.0 Admin support for most of the time,

with a few lean semesters at ½ person. Over the years, more and more duties have gone online,

meaning that only the Admin can do it (as opposed to an SA). Examples include entering the

schedule, assisting with recruitment, and endless iterations of appointment paperwork. As a

result, the Admin appears to have no time left over for any support functions. One example of

help we could use mentioned above (3f) is our effort to reconnect with alumni. However, our

Admin shows no enthusiasm for these tasks. Increasingly, the faculty no longer rely on our

Admin for support: we do not think our Admin is happy with her circumstances.

Looking at Tech support, we are a very tech‐intensive field in two respects:

o Computational. Weather Forecasting was one of the very first fields to use mainframe

computers when they were invented (1945‐1950), and we have remained at the

forefront. Thus we use high‐end computers (linux‐based workstations and clusters),

with specialized needs in the areas of Linux System Administration and of complex

meteorological software.

o Lab & Field work. All observational weather data comes from the field. This broadly

includes satellites, data via the internet, taking us back to the previous category. Field

work involves instruments, and thus we have a need for instrument support, which

includes electronics support.

Right now, as far as any of us can see, our technical support is virtually nil. In the area of

instrumentation, support is ZERO. The chair has discussed this more than once @ Council of

Chairs, and we were promised support before, but it never materialized17. As a result, we have

tenured faculty having to do their own field work tech support as well as their own lab class

(METR 163) tech support. We are under the STRONG impression that ALL other departments

have de facto in‐house tech support: we have none. Back when Provost Selter laid off 70+ staff

across campus, our college lost heavily. The dean then chose to consolidate all remaining staff

into a college “pool” from which all could draw, in theory. In practice, however, staff were not

moved into “pool” spaces, and instead remained in their original departments. So today,

departments including Chemistry, Physics, and Biology refer to “their” staff, leaving us zero.

In the area of computation, we also have zero in‐house support. When the current chair (AB)

started at SJSU, we had 1.5 Tech positions in‐house. Desktops did not yet exist and all

computation was done via the single campus mainframe. When AB became chair, we had 1.0

Tech positions in‐house. At the college level after the layoffs, the tech staff joined to become

the IT department. There were at most 4 Linux system support staff to cover the college. Two of

these appeared (to us) to work almost exclusively with Comp Sci, leaving 2 staff for the rest of

the college. One of these left abruptly in Fall, and was not replaced for at least 6 months (salary

issue?) The one remaining is currently drawn into the new HPC18 project, so coverage for

everything else can best be described as “thin”. Computation is such a high profile and

important aspect of our enterprise that it is standard in the US for departments to have

17 Specifically, we were assured a ticketing system would be put in place, allowing us to request support from college resources (people). This never happened. 18 High Performance Computing. Discussed in section 6.


specialized in‐house tech support. Our tech guy left 5+ years ago and it was a huge setback for

our programs. Going forward over the next 5‐10 years, as we teach more courses with

computational needs (e.g., running forecast and research models in class) and as we conduct

increasing numbers of research projects that involve computational resources, it is essential to

have an in‐house IT support position to enable our activities in a timely manner.

It is to our credit – and detriment at the same time – that the department has managed to

survive without IT support, but it is wearing the faculty thin (especially Clements, Chiao, Bridger,

and soon Lareau). In order to be more productive in our educational mission (e.g.,

undergraduate and graduate enrollments) and in our research, we need support in both IT and

instrumentation. We urge the college to provide this support.

5c. Facilities

Our facilities are lame. Under five years ago when we last did program planning, the external

reviewer was a 1980s graduate of the BS program (now faculty at U Utah). He expressed

astonishment at how everything looked the same (note: walls have been painted and modern

furniture procured since he was here). Narrowing down:

Faculty offices: We currently have three rooms that function quite well as single faculty offices.

Two additional faculty share a large room. Access to this room is via two smaller front offices.

Neither of these can serve easily as a single faculty office due to the foot traffic to/from the

large back office. One faculty member (Clements) has his office on the 8th floor. This is where his

research and teaching lab spaces are, so that makes some sense, but floors above the 6th are

locked, so GE students etc. cannot get up to find him. Further, there is no elevator to the 8th

floor. In terms of “unit cohesion” since we are so small, it would be preferable to have another

single faculty office on the 6th floor for Clements. Most egregiously, our newest hire (Neil

Lareau, NL) is currently housed in a Chemistry office on the 6th floor since we clearly had no

suitable space. This is a one‐year offer. We will be forced to re‐house him into one of the small

front rooms mentioned in 1b. Other departments are extremely hesitant to give up any space,

no matter how ratty.

To conduct her research, Dr. Walsh requires confidential space in which to keep video, audio

and other data and conduct analysis, per the requirements of the SJSU Institutional Review

Board (IRB). Since arriving at SJSU, she had not been allocated an appropriate space for this. In

Spring 2017, the front office of DH 618 was allocated as confidential space temporarily until a

more permanent solution could be found. The science education conference room (DH 224) is

being repurposed and refurnished during Spring 2017 for all education researchers who require

this kind of space as a permanent confidential research area.

5d. Other Resources

The department has the following resources for conducting teaching and research. Many of these

are unique to the CSU.

State of the art computer facilities

Our work is highly computer‐intensive. National weather forecasts are made multiple times per day by running multiple sophisticated computer simulations of the atmosphere on some of the biggest computing systems in the world. Climate forecasts are made via multiple simulations of


sophisticated models of the atmosphere and ocean etc. Once such simulations have been made, a task for all of us is to graphically display results in ways that are pleasing and informative. Our students need to learn skills in all these areas in order to be competitive in the workforce, and the ability to teach these skills requires continuous (24‐7) access to an array of increasingly sophisticated computing platforms and software, and weather/climate data.

Most students will do most of their computing work (learning and then research) on one of our suite of 7‐9 Linux servers, which are housed and maintained by the college IT staff. Recently, the main “login server” (blizzard) was replaced by a virtual machine “housed” on‐campus. So far so good (after several initial outages). It remains to be seen whether we can function with all our servers “in the cloud” on campus (as opposed to be being an actual machine on a shelf). This is a great example of where we need specialized direction on where our field is headed in the world of computing. We can all run models on single Linux boxes – it’s virtually the only resource we have. But is everybody else in the field going “into the cloud”? This author has no clue, and the college and campus IT are not cognizant of our specialized needs.

The new “cluster” (HPC – see 6.3 below). A cluster is a number of servers/workstations networked together, thus providing far more computing power than you can get with a single server. The first named cluster was a “Beowulf Cluster”, first created in 1994. In other words, clusters and the capabilities they offer have been around for over 2 decades. SJSU IT leadership has shown little interest or ability in recognizing or providing these resources, so a collaborative led by our Prof Chiao secured funds (about $1m) to purchase a cluster. The college is providing one or part of one IT person to manage it, and SJSURF is providing space to house it (with a generous donation of funds to upgrade power and cooling). At the moment (6/17), the servers arrived a couple months ago, and software is still being installed, so the cluster is not yet in use. We expect that once it’s running, it will allow faculty and students – some in our program – to perform more sophisticated experiments and simulations. We are extremely happy to have this new facility coming online. It should have been here at least a decade ago.

In response to anticipated questions of: “Why don’t you do your work “in the cloud”?”, two points: (a) although some meteorological work is no doubt starting to be done in the cloud, it’s still a very new field and we have neither local expertise nor support. In‐house IT support could help here. As far as we know19, all forecasting work is being done on high‐end computing/cluster systems. (b) Working in the cloud is not free (data/code upload, data download, access). We have no allocation for this resource.

Locally, we maintain a computer lab with 12 workstations. These are used in various classes, and in senior thesis research work.

We have a bank of about 20 laptops which students can check out. Increasingly, students have their own laptops so it’s not clear if this resource will be maintained.

There are about 20 other desktops scattered around in faculty offices and lab spaces and in the grad room.

We maintain an electronic “map wall”. In the olden days, walls in meteorology departments would be covered with difax paper maps of various weather elements and forecasts. This map wall would be the focus of the daily weather discussion. The modern equivalent is an electronic map wall featuring display screens attached to computers. Our wall has a 2x4 display, which can be expanded. Students and faculty use the wall to view weather and climate events, data and forecasts. The equipment was purchased with a grant from the Unidata20 organization.

19 The author has spoken with government people who work on developing these models, and has no knowledge of immediate plans to go “into the cloud”. 20 Unidata is a program of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Its aim is to support data sharing and visualization in the university community.


Also through Unidata, we have access to real time satellite, model, and radar data. This is used daily in classes from GE through graduate. Products are also used in research projects (undergrad, grad, faculty).

Rooftop and 8th floor facilities for studying all aspects of the atmosphere

The department’s Instrument Teaching Laboratory is located in Duncan Hall 801. This is the

same space the Clements group uses for the Fire Weather Research Laboratory. There is also a

Rooftop Observatory where instruments are operated and tested. This is a unique facility for any

meteorology department, and was established in 1968 shortly after Duncan Hall was built.

We maintain a large suite of instrumentation that has been added to the department since 2010

as part of a number of research grants including a grant from the competitive NSF Major

Research Instrumentation (MRI) program. The instrument suite includes: a Doppler Lidar; a

portable acoustic wind profiler (Sodar) mounted on a trailer and stored on campus; a number of

portable weather stations; multiple upper‐air sounding systems (weather balloons); and other

various sensors and electronics equipment to support the instruments. Some of the mobile

instruments are set up and operated on the roof when not in the field (e.g., our lidar).

In addition to these instruments, the department manages the rooftop weather station that

serves the community and is accessible from the department webpage as well as from the

National Weather Service database. Data from this station are often requested by the public.

A few years ago we installed three webcams on the roof looking towards downtown, Los Gatos,

and Mt Hamilton. People tune in from all over to view: we know this because when they fail (or

the network fails), we get emails from all over. Our live cam views have been shown on TV e.g.,

on the WeatherNation channel.

The instrumentation laboratory (DH 801) is equipped with a variety of lab equipment for

teaching instrumentation including multi‐meters, DC power supplies, soldering tools, and other

tools. These were purchased using Prof. Clements’ grant funds and department funds.

The lab bench in DH 801 can only hold twelve students at a time, two students per station. This

is usually OK, but there are semesters where some stations must have 3 students per station.

Mobile instrumentation to study severe weather and fire weather

Prof Clements’ Fire Weather Research Laboratory has a long‐term collaboration with California

State Parks and with Cal Fire to manage and maintain two weather stations on state property

(Mt. Diablo and Henry Coe State Parks), with a third to be commissioned in June 2017 near Mt.

Umunhum. These weather stations are important for regional weather observations as well as

teaching and maintaining community relationships. So far, instruments and supplies for these

weather stations have been supported by Clements’ research grants.

Another unique resource within the department is a 2012 Ford 4x4 Pickup truck. This vehicle

was purchased by the Clements group for research and teaching. This vehicle allows for mobile

field deployments for research projects, towing of equipment trailers, and launching of weather

balloons at remote sites. The vehicle is maintained by the university’s motor pool. Some

additional resources for the vehicle maintenance come from Clements’ research grants.

Research instrumentation for studying air quality


The department also maintains and operates a state‐of‐the‐art air quality research laboratory

located in DH 801B. The instrumentation includes instruments that measure the following: O3,

NOx, CO, CO2, Black Carbon particulates, and PM2.5. In addition, a recent NASA faculty grant has

added a new greenhouse gas analyzer for measurements of CH4, CO2, and CO. Data from all

these instruments are posted online to serve public and community air quality concerns21.

Issues

We are very pleased and proud of the facilities we have established here, and are always on the

lookout to expand. However, there are some problems that are created. Some acknowledgement

and assistance from the college and from SJSU would be useful.

Management of the air quality lab is not trivial. These instruments require constant calibration

(daily to weekly) in order to provide quality data to the public. The calibration equipment and

supplies have been purchased from faculty grants (Clements) and department funds. Generally,

calibration gasses are purchased every two years, and zero‐air is purchased three times a year. A

large investment (in dollars and faculty time) has been made by the department to set up and

maintain this facility. It must operate continuously in order to provide students in our GE classes

(especially METR 113) and majors pollution classes access to cutting‐edge technology and data

for learning.

Problems with maintaining equipment have arisen over the years. For example, the Doppler

lidar system was damaged in 2013 during shipping. The university had failed to insure it

properly. The damage had to be repaired in order for research and teaching to continue, so Prof.

Clements had to use funds from the salaries fund to cover the costs which totaled $40K. This

was a big setback in terms of student support – and therefore learning. One lesson learned from

this experience is that the faculty (and grad students) now handle all shipping of equipment

outside of the university shipping and receiving department. This takes additional time and

energy from faculty.

Another issue that has come up recently is the need for help with managing and maintaining

instruments. While Clements teaches students to maintain the instruments in the air quality lab,

there are times that a faculty member cannot accomplish all the technical needs due to

teaching, mentoring, grant writing, etc. An example of how this impacted students occurred this

spring semester, 2017. A graduating senior student was using the air quality lab for her senior

thesis. The goal was to get the new Methane analyzer to sample very rapidly for flux

calculations. This takes time to set up, and problems occurred that required too much time to

diagnose for a faculty member. One problem is that the Verizon cell transmitters located on the

roof observatory of Duncan Hall interfere with the instruments, causing data spikes due to RF

interference. This, plus the fact that the instrument needed some special care to make work,

made the project too time consuming for the faculty mentor. This is where a lab technician

would have made a huge impact on student learning outcomes. The fact that the instruments

could not be set up to achieve the science goals proposed by the student, clearly shows that

there is limited support for meteorological instruments within the college.

21 The display is at http://www.met.sjsu.edu/wx/currentfull.php.


Indeed, it's not obvious that FD&O etc. know that we are up there on the roof with a working

lab! When the Verizon towers were installed, we were neither told nor asked about whether

they might cause RF interference (they did) or possible health impacts. From time to time, the

campus police come up out of suspicion. We’ve been up there since the mid 1960’s.

6. OTHER STRENGTHS AND SO FORTH

6.1. Green Ninja (Prof Cordero)

The Green Ninja (GN) is an educational initiative that started at SJSU to inspire interest in the

science and solutions associated with our changing climate (www.greenninja.org). Dr. Cordero

started GN in 2010 and has since built a strong multidisciplinary initiative that includes faculty and

students from the College of Science, the College of Education, the College of Humanities and the

Arts and the College of Engineering. GN activities include: 1) creating videos and games designed to

engage students in climate science and climate solutions; 2) supporting middle and high school

teachers through professional development workshops, and 3) developing educational materials for

classroom use. Over the past seven years, GN‐related programs have raised nearly $2 million in

public and private funding, and has been nationally recognized with awards including the STEM

Innovation Award from the Silicon Valley Education Foundation. With this success, the program

continues to grow, and presently employs over 10 staff and students to support ongoing programs.

Dr. Cordero directs GN's ongoing educational programs and he is also involved in related

education research activities. This work occupies a large percentage of his time and energy, while

also requiring some department resources. With current staffing levels, GN occupies about 400

square feet. Dr. Cordero also has a shared office that he uses for advising, research and meetings.

The Department also supports GN through some limited administrative support, although this is

very minimal.

In the next five years, Dr. Cordero expects that GN will continue to expand. Through research

funding by NSF, the Department of Education and/or through private sources, GN will be looking to

expand their research and project activities to other states outside of California. Although such an

endeavor is ambitious, it could serve the Department and University well through both external

funding and by creating a center of excellence in science education. Through growth, additional

resources will be needed including office space. Given the challenge of current office space, we

expect that extra attention will be needed to address the shortfall in space.

6.2. CAARE Center (Prof Chiao)

In May 2015, the Center for Applied Atmospheric Research and Education (CAARE) was awarded

a cooperative agreement with the NASA Minority University Research and Education Project

(MUREP). CAARE is a cooperative partnership between four institutions: San Jose State University

(SJSU) ‐ the lead institution, the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH), the Universities Space

Research Association (USRA), and the Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College (FDLTCC). These

four partner institutions include underrepresented minorities (URMs) in atmospheric‐related

disciplines, including meteorology, climate, physics, hydrology, public health, and engineering, at the

undergraduate and graduate levels.

This cooperative agreement, and the related activities under the CAARE and other cooperative

programs at SJSU, are aimed at establishing the capacity to make sustainable research contributions


that are valuable to NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) long‐term goals and Strategic Plan, as

well as to provide a diverse, well‐qualified workforce to achieve those goals. CAARE is dedicated

to: (1) establishing a multi‐disciplinary research and education group in the areas of applied

atmospheric sciences; and (2) producing a diverse group of highly‐trained professionals for NASA

and the broader atmospheric and environmental sciences workforce.

Mission Objectives include: (1) Contribute to NASA Centers’ research programs in urban heat

islands, air quality, public health, hydrology and climate variations through the use of in situ and

remotely‐sensed observations, geospatial technologies and models; (2) Train underrepresented

STEM students, with emphasis on understanding atmospheric processes through the use of state‐of‐

the‐art atmospheric observing instruments, modeling techniques, analytical approaches and

remotely‐sensed data; (3) Inspire and engage community college students through outreach,

expanded degree opportunities and summer internship experiences; (4) Engage in basic research

with faculty members and students at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) with the view that the

resulting knowledge will advance weather, climate and air quality prediction through intensive and

long‐term field atmospheric observations and measurements.

6.3. HPC Center (Prof Chiao)

As mentioned in section 5d, Prof Chiao has recently had a central role in acquiring our high‐

performance computing (HPC) system, a cluster computing facility. This is supported by the National

Science Foundation (NSF) and by the SJSU Research Foundation. The HPC is designed to provide

faculty and students regular access to a modern, on‐campus facility for computational science and

engineering teaching and research. The system will support faculty and students from meteorology

and climate science, biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, aerospace engineering,

computer engineering, physics, astronomy, mathematics and statistics.

As a key hub for STEM fields in the San Francisco Bay Area, this facility will promote the progress

of science and engineering, as well as offer a wide diversity of experiences for our students, through

required laboratory courses and research opportunities. It is estimated that more than 200 students

a year will benefit from access to the HPC system in STEM‐related courses and research. Some

projects that will be undertaken with the new computing system include: on‐demand numerical

weather prediction, assimilation, and analysis (Atmospheric Science); dynamical modeling of orbits

and dark matter in gas‐poor galaxies (Physics and Astronomy); computational modeling of Tat

peptide mutants binding to BIV TAR RNA and protein‐protein interfaces (Biochemistry); quantum

mechanical properties of materials in the atomic scale (Physics and Astronomy); guidance and

trajectory optimization strategies in presence of wind, and spacecraft and orbital trajectory

optimization (Aerospace Engineering); genomic assessment of adaptation, and pharmacological and

evolutionary perspective on bioactive compounds in marine invertebrates (Biological Science); high‐

resolution simulations of weather phenomena, dust transport, and climate on Mars (Planetary

Science); and efficient algorithms for modeling large amount of data in high dimensions

(Mathematics and Statistics).

6.4. CSU‐MAPS (Prof Clements)

The California State University Mobile Atmospheric Profiling System (CSU‐MAPS) is a state‐of‐the‐art

atmospheric research facility that is shared between SJSU and SFSU. The facility was funded by the

NSF MRI program, and includes a 2012 Ford 250 4x4 truck and a 32‐meter, fast‐deploy


meteorological tower mounted on a large dual‐axle trailer. The instruments include a Doppler Lidar,

microwave profiling radiometer, upper‐air radiosonde (balloon) system, and a number of turbulence

and meteorological sensors mounted on the trailer. This system is one of the only mobile systems in

the US, and the only system available in the western US. The CSU‐MAPS provides researchers with

tools to study a range of atmospheric phenomena ranging from fire weather, winter storms, and

severe weather. Additionally, the system has been used for outreach to local K‐12 schools. The total

cost of the system is $850,000.

6.5. CSU‐Fire Weather research (Prof Clements)

The Fire Weather Research Laboratory at SJSU (www.fireweather.org) was started as a result of

Dr. Clements’ research expertise and furthered by his NSF CAREER award in 2012. The lab has now

become internationally recognized as one of the only academic programs worldwide that specializes

in fire weather. The goals of the laboratory are to study the weather conditions associated with

extreme fire behavior and how wildfires create their own weather. Additionally, the lab provides

outreach in the form of K‐12 teacher training, school visits, and firefighter training. Since 2007, Dr.

Clements has secured over $3M in funding for fire related projects. Currently the Fire Weather Lab

has collaborations with the USFS, Cal Fire, and California State parks for managing remote fire

weather stations in the SF Bay Area. Additional partnerships include a 5‐year international project

with SCION New Zealand for studies of extreme fire behavior. In 2014‐2015, the lab supported one

Post‐Doctoral Researcher (Dr. Lareau, now Assistant Prof in Dept.), one Research Associate (MS‐

holder), and six graduate students. The lab currently employs three full‐time graduate students and

two undergraduate students. Since 2013, the collective activities have resulted in 18 peer‐reviewed

articles associated with fire and boundary layer meteorology.

The Fire Weather Lab is recognized as the only meteorological research team in the US that is

listed as a national resource in the National Resource Ordering System (ROSS) as part of an MOU

between the USFS and SJSURF. This allows the team to be assigned and requested to active wildfire

incidents, and as a result the lab receives a lot of media attention. Since 2015, the lab has been

featured in over 15 media interviews and news stories including Wired Magazine, The Weather

Channel, High Country News, San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronical, and KQED.

In the next five years, Dr. Clements anticipates the lab will participate in two large field

campaigns that will support up to two post‐doc researchers and 6‐8 graduate students.

Furthermore, more relationships will be made within the state of California and abroad.

6.6. NSF Career Fellows (Cordero, Clements)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) states that the Early Career Fellow Program is “The National

Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of early‐career faculty who have the

potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the

mission of their department or organization”. Since SJSU is not a research‐heavy university, we don’t

have many Career Fellows. However, our department has TWO: Prof Cordero (2005‐2011) and Prof

Clements (2012‐2017). In the next year, Prof Diao will be submitting a proposal to the same program

– we hope she will be successful!

To put this into context:


According to AVP‐Research Stacks, during the period 2010‐2015, 159 CAREER awards went

to California institutions, and of these ONLY FIVE WENT TO THE ENTIRE CSU (one of these

was at SJSU).

According to a recent news release, in the current awards cycle, a total of 14 CAREER awards

were made to Arizona State University, an R‐1 research university.

The fact that two of our 7 faculty are or have been CAREER faculty is a remarkable

accomplishment.

6.7. Walker and Monteverdi scholarships

Several years ago, a scholarship program was established in our name. The Walker family left

money jointly to us and Music. The money (just under $800K) is invested, yielding an annual sum

that has ranged from $30‐40K. We have been receiving these funds for about 5 years. Funds are

earmarked for upper‐division and graduate student support only. This means that we cannot use the

funds to try to pull in more freshmen, as we might like to do, or to support faculty buy‐out or

purchase equipment etc. Instead, we have used the funds to attract students into our MS program.

Our funding paradigm has varied from year‐to‐year as we seek a “best practice”. Recently we

offered scholarships of as much as $5K for the best‐qualified MS applicants (according to GPA and

GRE scores), down to $1‐2K for weaker applicants. Interestingly, this has not been enough to attract

the best students, who typically can get a “full ride” at bigger schools. The next approach we might

try is to give out just 1‐2 awards. We have also used these funds to send our students (BS and MS) to

national conferences, principally the annual meeting of the AMS. Here, students network, attend

the Student Conference, and can work in support of conference sessions (e.g., AV work). We feel

that this opportunity is invaluable for the professional development of our students.

About two years ago, we received a gift that allows us to offer a new scholarship, the

Monteverdi Scholarship. The donor is an SJSU BA graduate who spent his career as a faculty

member at SFSU. This scholarship is for $10K/year, renewable for a 2nd year. The first recipient of

this is just completing her 2nd year in the MS program (she received the award for two years), and

will be defending soon.

6.8. External funding

We have traditionally supported our small undergrad and grad programs with a combination of high

GE enrollments and fund‐raising via our research. We have attached two documents in an appendix:

Total funding awarded in the period 1/1/13 – 5/31/17.

The total awarded is $6,811,045 associated with faculty members Chiao, Clements, Cordero, Freedman, Jin, and Walsh.

The largest awards were over $1.7m for the CAARE center (Chiao, see below), just under $1.1m for the Green Ninja (Cordero, see above), and $900K for the High Performance Computing center (see above)

Total funding requested in the period 1/1/13 – 5/31/17.

The total requested is $35,798,490 submitted by all faculty members.


Funding was requested from a variety of sources, ranging from the “big” federal programs (NSF, NASA), down to various private agencies (Wind Harvest International, Toyota).

If you’ve read this far and deeply, give me a call to claim your $5.

Summarizing, we are one of the most heavily research‐active and productive units on campus. As

mentioned, our research activity – specifically our success at generating funds to support research

and overhead funds to support the university – is one of three legs of our program. Our success in

this area allows us to continue our small (majors) teaching program.

6.9. External committee memberships

Each of the core faculty members serves on at least one national‐level committee. This is another

way in which we contribute to our field, and showcase the talent at SJSU.

Alison Bridger American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) Board of Higher Education

Eugene Cordero AMS Board of Environmental Sustainability , Chair and member 2010‐2015

Craig Clements AMS Measurements Committee, 12/2009‐2015

NOAA‐USFS MOU Fire Weather Working Group, 03/2017‐ Present

National Wildfire Coordinating Group, Fire Weather Subcommittee. 07/2009‐2015

WRF‐FIRE steering committee, 11/2009‐11/2016

Sen Chiao Editorial Board member of the Open Atmospheric Science Journal (2017 – present)

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research/Unidata Users Committee (2013 – 2016)

Editorial Board of Atmospheric Science, Frontiers in Earth Science (2015 ‐ present)

California State University Water Resources and Policy Initiatives (WRPI) planning committee (2015 – present)

Elizabeth Walsh

Minghui Diao (2nd year @ SJSU) AMS Cloud Physics Committee

Neil Lareau (1st year @ SJSU) AMS Mountain Meteorology Committee

Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Systems Research (ASR) Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) working group

7. DEPARTMENT ACTION PLAN

Each and every one of us is going to experience weather, climate, and climate change each and

every day of the rest of our lives. Weather is interesting. More importantly, weather impacts our

everyday lives: think of economic impacts of flooding, heatwaves, drought, wildfires etc. In reading

back over this report, we think we’re a pretty darned good program. We offer interesting GE classes,

and we strive to offer classes at times students want and taught by quality instructors. With the BS

program, almost every student who makes it to the junior classes goes on to graduate, and most

then go on to gainful employment in public and private sector jobs. Our curriculum satisfies

requirements set by the Federal Govt. etc. for employment with the National Weather Service etc. A

number of our MS students have gone on to top‐tier PhD programs. Over the years, a number of our


graduates (both BS and MS) have gained leadership positions in various government agencies. We

do a good job, and we believe the data backs this up.

Two of our seven faculty are NSF CAREER Awardees, an excellent achievement which speaks highly

of the quality of our faculty. As the data indicates, the faculty have been highly successful at

generating research dollars from agencies such as NSF and NASA. Much of these funds have been

used to support graduate student and faculty research time. Funds have also been secured to

improve the general STEM infrastructure. In particular we mention: the Fire Weather and CSU‐MAPS

facilities, the NASA CAARE Center, the Green Ninja, and the HPC facility.

We have made efforts to grow our visibility, in part motivated by the realization that SJSU will not

help with this. We developed a department Facebook page and post to it frequently. The

department runs three Twitter accounts with around 2K followers: main account, Fire Weather Lab,

and Green Ninja22. Department social media is handled by? The chair23. The chair has also upped her

TV and radio game by agreeing to be interviewed on a variety of topics (heat, cold, rain, El Niño

etc.)24. We hope this raises our visibility. We use Walker Scholarship resources to help students

(mostly graduate and seniors) attend the AMS Annual Meeting, where they “man” a booth with

information about our program, thus providing outreach. An alumnus is now at Foothill College, and

we hope to develop a pipeline from there to here. As mentioned above, we used to be more active

in keeping tabs on alumni, but this is just one more thing added to the chair’s list of duties, and

generally it has not gotten done. Interactions with Tower Foundation are minimal: it’s not clear if we

should be fundraising for us, or if they should be fundraising for us (we get opposing answers every

other year, and right now we haven’t heard from them for months). Prof Cordero has led an

outreach effort to hire “Ambassadors” who are outreaching to local schools. We need to step this up

to counter the efforts of Betsy DeVos.

We’ve done all this with minimal support, especially over the last seven years. So it’s amazing that

we have this productivity! But it’s quite clear that we cannot do more without more institutional

support. Here’s a list of what we need, and what we can do:

1. As we have shown, we maintain a large suite of instrumentation to support our teaching and

research activities, as well as provide weather and air quality data to the general public. We do this

without a single iota of support from the college. Not only is there no support, but also there is no

method to request support. We remember two things: (a) we were promised an online “ticket”

system to get tech support for instrumentation – it was never delivered. (b) Prof Clements was

verbally promised a tech support (person) when he was on the verge of leaving for ASU – it was

never delivered.

22 @SJSUmeteorology, @FireWeatherLab, @ourgreenninja 23 FYI the Chair is a 0.4 appointment. She currently also teaches 2 classes/semester. After teaching and administration duties, she tries to devote whatever time is left over for her research program. This leaves zero for things like increased outreach, connecting with alumni etc. 24 Links here: http://www.sjsu.edu/meteorology/about_us/met‐media/index.html


We estimate that we need at ½ staff position to cover this need. If unmet, sooner or later the

faculty will leave, and this substantial aspect of the program will fall into disrepair.

2.As we have shown, we are a highly computationally intensive field, and have been so since the

advent of computers in the late 1940’s. The standard model among programs like ours in the US is

to have in‐house tech support25. We believe passionately that the “centralized IT support” model

has not worked for us. We note here that, until recently, 2 of the 4 college IT server team were

basically seconded to CS (where they came from before centralization). So the college was happy to

support CS in this way. We need this level of support too.

3.We need to update our web‐based weather products. On a 24‐7 basis, our servers ingest vast

quantities of “weather data” (observations, forecast model products, satellite imagery etc.) The data

are then processed, and the finished products put online. These are the familiar loops of thinks like

forecast temperatures, winds, radar images etc. we see on TV etc. Our products were state‐of‐the‐

art when created (10+ years ago), but are now dated. Additionally, parts keep breaking, and the

college IT group admits they cannot fix things (since they don’t understand the step‐by‐step creation

process). We have been lucky lately to have a CS student help us fix a couple of breaks, but we need

more dedicated/less piecemeal support. Please note that this is not the same as updating the main

web page.

At the moment, we estimate we need ½ IT person to get us “back in the game”. After that, we

could cut back to ¼ time. If met, this will allow us to develop a state‐of‐the‐art weather center (to

update this very dated one) and provide this resource to the campus, local community and western

weather community. This will aid in promoting and growing our program. If unmet, the old page will

gradually break (as has already been happening) and make us look broken to the outside world.

3a.Funding to support outreach in the form of funding for ¼ person to assist with social media and

web outreach work. An important web need is to develop a program homepage which can be

viewed on a cell phone. This issue has been targeted as a campus‐wide need.

4.Putting the above items together, what would be ideal would be a 1.0 person, who could bring

both Unix‐based IT skills, and instrumentation skills (mainly electronics) – both with some weather

knowledge.

5.Both new faculty (Diao and Lareau) need to have some kind of lab space in which to conduct their

research work, including guiding student research. Prof Diao has expressed a desire to start some

electronics work (regarding airborne instruments) but we have no space in which she can do this

work. Both new faculty are concerned about external funding in the Trump era, and are expanding

their research horizons to increase chances of getting funding. We need the flexibility to support

this. The nature of our faculty has changed over the years; our space facilities have not.

25 Here’s an example at Lyndon State in Vermont. Here’s their home page (nice than SJSU): http://meteorology.lyndonstate.edu/ ; here’s their faculty/staff page – note only FOUR faculty but one “Data Systems Administrator”: http://meteorology.lyndonstate.edu/about/faculty/ ; and here’s that guy – note his qualifications: http://meteorology.lyndonstate.edu/team/jason‐kaiser/ .


6.In the review period, a few requests have been made requiring little bits of extra space. Examples

include: (i) a green wall for students to practice broadcasting in front of. Shared space would be fine.

(ii) “Weather on the sphere” is a recent development in which weather displays are made on a

sphere suspended from the ceiling. This allows for a better and more natural visualization of

weather elements worldwide. We were offered an opportunity to have a “½ globe” version, which is

mounted on a wall. But – we have no free walls – once you factor in windows, white boards, the

mapwall etc. (iii) Space for a student gathering space. In short – we are spaced‐starved. When we

compare our space situation (lab, research, office space) with that of the next smallest program

(Geology), we feel that we are short‐changed.

What we need: more usable space. If met, this will allow us to continue to expand our research

activities, which includes research opportunities for undergrads and grad students, and

opportunities to bring in more funding. If unmet, I guess we can take over the restrooms for extra

space.

In the “space” arena, a few words about the new building. (i) the new building is designed with

certain disciplines of Chemistry and Biology in mind. We have not been part of the discussion. (ii) As

CHEM and BIO faculty move out of Duncan Hall (DH) into the new building, we would hope we could

be allowed a modest expansion on the 6th floor. (iii) On the other hand, as soon as the new building

is built, Duncan Hall is to be renovated with significant disruption to the occupants. (iv) Since the

new building will be upwind of DH, we have campaigned to move our outdoor instruments lab to

the roof of the new building. Disappointingly, the instrument roof of DH is flat but the roof of the

new building will have several items on it (HVAC things, elevator hut etc.). It will therefore NOT be a

perfect substitute for the roof of DH. It will be vital to keep using the roof of DH for various

instruments.

7.We can handle (and would like) more undergrad students (in terms of available seats in

classrooms). We could also handle more graduate numbers, both in our classes and in terms of

faculty advising loads. As discussed, it is common in our field to offer assistantships of $20‐30K/year.

SJSU cannot help with this, but SJSU could provide tuition waiver for GRAs so that faculty money can

spread further. Also, more graduate student housing would help since housing process are so

frightening.

What we need: (i) Enact tuition waivers for GRAs in the same manner as Teaching Associates

receive. (ii) Provide more affordable student housing dedicated to grad students. If met, this will

allow us to recruit larger graduate classes in future, which in turn will help grow our research profile.

Finally, we note forlornly that previous Program Reviews – both internal and by the external

reviewer – have made a variety of recommendations which have not come to fruition. Examples

include:

A. From the 2012 external reviewer: “However, maintaining the status quo, let alone taking

advantage of growth opportunities, is unsustainable given the present highly stressed faculty,

staff, and infrastructure resources in the department.”


I (the chair) would say that faculty now (2017) are less stressed, but the rest remains the

same. That reviewer specifically referred to two “growth areas”: wildfire research and

climate science. For each, we have but one person to develop/ grow/sustain the area

(Clements & Cordero, respectively) – that’s just not enough.

The 2012 reviewer also remarked on being “surprised to find the physical footprint of the

department to be virtually unchanged” since he was a student here in the early 80’s (he is

now a faculty member at U Utah).

B. The 2001 external reviewer referred to our fund‐raising activity level then as “astonishing” and

it has continued to grow. We feel we get little recognition for this activity, although the

emerging RSCA activities in this college are hopefully an indication of a different future. That

reviewer also noted that “Low enrollments in the BS programs in atmospheric sciences is a

national problem…”. Finally, that reviewer noted about our in‐house IT staff member: “His

departure would be seen as a fatal blow to the program”. The skills of Prof Chiao have been

critical to preventing a collapse.

8. APPENDICES

A. Required Data Elements (RDEs)

From www.iea.sjsu.edu/Courses/default.cfm#Prefix, select your program

Exhibit 1 Number of Course Sections (printed/attached)

Exhibit 2 Average Headcount per Section (printed/attached)

Exhibit 3 Student to Faculty Ratio (printed/attached)

Exhibit 4 Induced Course Load Matrix (printed/attached)

From www.iea.sjsu.edu/Assessment/ProgRev/default.cfm, select your program

Exhibit 5 Applied, Admitted, Enrolled (printed/attached)

Exhibit 6 Enrollment by Class Level with FTES (printed/attached)

Exhibit 7 Enrollment by Major and Concentration (printed/attached)

Exhibit 8 Degrees Awarded (printed/attached)

From www.iea.sjsu.edu/RetnGrad/default.cfm#Prefix, select your program

Exhibit 9 First Year Retention Rates (printed/attached)

Exhibit 10 Graduation Rates (printed/attached)

Also calculate T/TT instructional faculty percentage. From , select your department.

Under “Instructional Faculty – FTEF”, select “by Tenure Status”. Add together “Tenured” and

B. List of grants awarded (3 pages, $6.8m total) and grants submitted (8 pages, $35.8m total)

C. List of major grants and their significance


D. Program Review: GE Component

Part I: The department summarizes its involvement in GE over the past program planning cycle and any plans for the next program planning cycle. It also reflects on how well its courses contribute to their GE Area Goals and to the larger General Education Program Outcomes. (This summary and reflection shall be no more than two pages.) The department must also include an assessment schedule for all GE courses for the next program planning cycle.

We offer now six GE classes, many in multiple sections, as tabulated below.

CLASS Typical # “live”

sections per year

Online sections

per year

Enrollment per

section

10 10 4 40‐50

12 4 0 40‐70

112 8‐10 4 40 max

113 1‐2 0 40 max

115 1 0 40 max

100W 1 0 10

Generally

In general, of course, we all live in – and courtesy of – our atmosphere. We are adapted to breathe the

correct mixture of oxygen etc. Pollutants, including ground‐level ozone, cause damage to our lungs and

bodies, while ozone in the stratosphere shields us from damage to our DNA. Weather systems and

clouds bring rain and the water we need to survive. Severe weather events (severe thunderstorms,

tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards) bring hazards that we need to be aware of. Our society is much more

mobile and global than it used to be, so that many of our students may end up living in regions with

vastly different weather and climate compared to the calm weather we think we get in California. For

these reasons, it makes every sense to educate our students about the atmosphere, and the wide array

of weather events we/they can experience. It also makes sense to discuss air pollution: imagine a

review of how pollution used to be (e.g., smog in LA) versus how it is now (much improved) versus how

it might be in 4 years after the EPA is abolished.

And then of course, there’s climate change. By all measures, the evidence for climate change is

overwhelming, and the number of deniers is shrinking, although sadly these few hold national power at

the moment. About 20 years ago in our GE classes, we would discuss the emerging evidence, often in

the presence of a fair number of students who were disbelievers. Today, there might be one disbeliever

or denier per class section; the rest of the students are more interested in exploring what can be done

and how we can cope. Climate Change is something none of us can hide from. It’s impossible to

imagine a college campus that does not offer classes on climate change in this age26.

MET 10 is our longest‐standing GE class, entitled Weather & Climate (area “B”). At the moment, it is

filling well – so long as we offer sections MTWR mornings. The online sections also fill well. Through our

annual GE assessment exercise, we are confident that this course does contribute to Area “B” Goals

26 OK – maybe Liberty University?


and the larger GE Program Outcomes. We strive to seed top instructors into our GE courses with a view

to recruiting students into the major (as discussed above). At the same time, some sections are taught

by grad students, which gives them teaching experience, pay, and a fee waiver. We keep a close eye on

these instructors to ensure we offer the best quality of instruction we can. We recently “let go” of a

PhD‐level P/T faculty teaching in our area “B” classes due to poor performance.

MET 12 is a newish core GE class, entitled Global Warming: Science and Solutions. It too is filling well,

and we again strive to seed top instructors into this course in order to recruit students into the

concentration Climate Science major. Through our annual GE assessment exercise, we are confident

that this course does contribute to Area “B” Goals and the larger GE Program Outcomes. We hope it

goes without saying that a course such as this is invaluable to students in an age of unrelenting climate

change.

MET 112 was established over 20 years ago as an upper‐division GE class on the topic of Climate

Change (area “R”)27. Within this review period, all our area “R” classes have gone from filled to under‐

enrolled, and we have no idea why. We suspect there must be a combination of: the pool of seniors has

shrunk; the pool of available area “R” classes has grown. Note too that our online sections fill fast –

seniors who need just one class to graduate pour into our online sections. We do inspect SOTEs from

these classes, and we have no suspicion that low enrollments are due to poor instructors. Through our

annual GE assessment exercise, we are confident that this course does contribute to Area “R” Goals

and the larger GE Program Outcomes. Many of our T/TR faculty teach sections of this class – they are

passionate about the material! Other sections are taught by PhD‐ and MS‐holding P/T faculty.

MET 113 is also long‐established and covers Atmospheric Pollution (area “R”). Up to about 10 years

ago, we could only offer one section per year, with an enrollment of about 20, about half of whom

were ENVS students (this class is required for some ENVS students). We suspect the then‐instructor

was ineffective. With staffing changes, the course grew to two sections per year, each with an

enrollment of about 40. Now we have slumped back to one section a year with around 20 students. As

with MET 112, we genuinely have no idea what is going on with enrollments. Through our annual GE

assessment exercise, we are confident that this course does contribute to Area “R” Goals and the larger

GE Program Outcomes.

MET 115 is our newest GE course on the topic of Wildfire in the Earth System (area “R”). It was first

offered in Fall 16 and filled. It was then offered in Spring 17. However, some boob (not the chair)

moved it to run Friday 9‐12, so of course nobody signed up! We will try again in Fall 17. Since this is

newly‐approved, by definition is MUST contribute to Area “R” Goals and the larger GE Program

Outcomes!

MET 100W is our in‐house 100W course, offered only in Fall per the roadmaps. Many moons ago, we

tried having students take 100W in other departments, but results were very poor. During the review

period, we have reached out to other departments (principally Geology and Physics) and tried to have

their students take our 100W (since neither department offered 100W). This has had some success,

although it does appear now that each department wants to offer its own class. We often forget that

100W is a GE class, since it “feels like” a majors class. As a result – since we always teach the class in

Fall and always conduct GE assessment in Spring – we have sometimes forgotten to factor 100W into

GE assessment.

27 Isn’t it amazing that we’ve been teaching this material for over 20 years – basically a generation – and yet there are still deniers out there!!!


Summary and “plans for the next program planning cycle” – Present: we are satisfied that things are

going well. Whenever students have complained (a rare occurrence), the chair has worked diligently to

address issues (usually crappy instructors). Our annual assessment results and student SOTE scores

indicate that students are happy with the classes. Not that we’re perfect! But we do strive for

excellence especially as it pertains to meeting GEPLOs. Future: A cursory inspection of our GE

enrollment trends over the last 5‐10 years suggests that when our area “B” enrollments increase, our

area “R” enrollments decrease. We are not able to predict when the next up/downturn will happen.

Surely there are units on campus that can predict this and tell us? As a result, it’s difficult to know what

we will do in future. Should we offer more sections overall? Should we change the balance of sections

of 10 versus 12? Should we offer fewer sections of 112, and/or more online sections? And of course we

continue to modify as informed by assessment.

Part II: Continuing Certification and Assessment.

The chair has solicited input from one instructor of each of our GE classes being taught right now. Each instructor supplied a greensheet (attached), as well as a discussion of how they strive to meet their GELOs. Each input is copied verbatim below.

MET 10 (input from Henry B)

1.1 One sample green‐sheet reflecting how the course is currently taught, with up to two pages of commentary explaining how the course accomplishes its GE SLOs. The greensheet is attached with others @ end of this section. Below is the “commentary”:

Use the methods of science and knowledge derived from current scientific inquiry in life or physical

science to question existing explanations.

One common misconception among the general public about the reason for a blue sky is reflection off

the oceans. The instructor explained how nitrogen and oxygen molecules (which make up the

overwhelming majority of air) scatter shorter wavelengths of light (violet, blue, and green) more

effectively than longer wavelengths (yellow, orange, and red). Another misconception related to

weather is that tornadoes can change their direction and speed of movement quite suddenly. The

instructor explained that while they may wobble slightly, tornadoes follow the general motion of the

thunderstorms from which they form, and do not “have a mind of their own.”

Demonstrate ways in which science influences and is influenced by complex societies, including

political and moral issues.

During class, the instructor referenced the recent change in administrations. This was particularly

important when discussing the issue of global warming. For example, President Trump has called global

warming a hoax, and numerous times confused the concepts of weather and climate. This is in stark

contrast to President Obama, who made fighting global warming a principle issue of his administration.

When teaching global warming, the instructor makes sure to show observations that it is happening.

Examples include 9 of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record occurring in the past

15 years, and a 2.39°F rise in global average surface temperature from 1916 to 2016.


Recognize methods of science, in which quantitative, analytical reasoning techniques are used.

Math has been called the language of science. Within the first week of class, the instructor was

introducing numerical values found in meteorology, such as the standard sea‐level pressure value of

1013.25 millibars, or 29.92” of mercury. By the second week, students were converting temperatures

between the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales, and vice versa – this material was part of the first homework

assignment. The instructor showed mathematical equations in class, such as relative humidity = vapor

pressure/saturation vapor pressure * 100%. Students used this formula both on a homework

assignment and an exam.

1.2 Assessment reports for this class during the review period are attached @end after the greensheets (and also posted online). All assessment reports contain: (i) a comprehensive evaluation of the course that may include a focus on the GE Goals for its area or other course goals; (ii) changes that the department has made to try to improve student success with respect to the GE SLOs; (iii) future plans for course modifications.

MET 12 (input from Frank F)


A core objective of the course content in Meteorology 12 is to satisfy each of the Area B learning objectives. GELO 1: Students should be able to use the methods of science and knowledge derived from current scientific inquiry in life or physical science to question existing explanations. The topics covered in METR12 develop student ability to question existing explanations based on scientific understanding. During METR12, students study various plots of climate data to understand the scientific evidence that recent climate is changing, and that this is primarily caused by human activity. These plots are often not simple to understand due to the inherent noise in climate data as well as the often‐esoteric jargon and concepts used in climate science. By drawing attention to distinguishing long‐term climate trends from the noise, students are better able to understand and question data, which helps them distinguish true from false scientific claims. Second, climate model output is studied in METR12, which is a prime tool climate scientists have used to determine evidence for a human signal in climate data. These models are run with and without human influence, in effect a form of a controlled scientific experiment. By studying this, students appreciate the necessity of careful study design to provide objectively evidence behind a scientific claim. Students can apply this thought process in everyday life to question scientific explanations. GELO 2: Students should be able to demonstrate ways in which science influences and is influenced by complex societies, including political and moral issues. METR12coverstheindustrialcausesaswellasproposedsolutionsandregulationstomitigateclimatechange.Thecoursematerialrelatedtothistopicdirectlydealswiththeinteractionbetweenhumansocietyandenvironmentalconsequences,whichsciencehasbeenprimaryinuncovering.Examplesoftopicscoveredarethebasisforthehumancausesofclimatechangeandthescientificanalysisoffutureclimatechange,bothofwhichdirectlyshapefederalandstateclimatechange


regulations.Thecoursealsocoversfossil‐basedversusless‐carbonintensiveelectricity,transportation,andfoodsources.Studentscanbetterappreciatehowsocietalchoicescollectivelycontributetoenvironmentaldamage,placesocietyatrisk,andhowalternativesocietalchoicescancounteractthis.Thisprovidesaplatformforstudentstograpplewithmoralissuesbehindsocietalchoices. GELO 3: Students should be able to use the methods of science, in which quantitative, analytical reasoning techniques are used. METR12coverstopicsthatrequirestudentstoapplyquantitativereasoningtoarriveatconclusions.Anexampleisthetopicofradiativeforcing,wherequantitativeanalyticaldataofhumaninfluencesonclimateduetodifferentfactorsindividuallyarecompared.Fromstudyingthis,studentsarriveattheconclusionforprimaryinfluenceonclimatechangethroughquantitativecomparisonofindividualpiecesofdata.Anothertopiccoveredareenergysources–onesthatarefossil‐basedversusthosethatarelesscarbonintensiveand/orrenewable.Weintroducestudentstothistopicof“carbonintensity”,whichisaquantitativemeasureofthecarbonemissionsbehindagivenenergysource.Carbonintensitiesforvariousenergychoicesareintercompared,allowingstudentstoapplyaquantitivelythoughtprocesstodeterminebestchoicesofaction.Thedistinctionbetweendirectversusindirectemissionsisalsoemphasizedinthiscoursecontent,theformerduetoenergyuseandthelatterduetoitsproductionsandtransfertomarket.Thisfurtherenhancesstudentabilitytoapplyacareful,quantitativethoughtprocessbyemphasizingthemulti‐facetedissuesbehindquantifyingcarbonemissions.


MET 112 (input from Neil L)


Overview of how METR112 address learning objectives (LO): LO1: A student should be able to demonstrate an understanding of the methods and limits of scientific investigation. This LO is addressed continuously throughout the class as we examine a broad range of climate science methods and data and explore some of their limitations, especially uncertainty in measurements and predictions. Examples of how we address this LO follow below. Large portions of this course examine the methods of modern climate science. This includes measurements of temperature and precipitation, aspects of computer simulations, dating of paleoclimate proxy data, and more. For example, one class is devoted to the role of satellite remote sensing in observing the climate system using a NOVA episode produced in conjunction with NASA. Another lecture examines the inner working of a climate model, detailing the way earth system processes are represented in grid cells and simulated into the future.


Limitations of these scientific methods are primarily addressed from a perspective of uncertainty, which is a fundamental principal in climate science. The sources of uncertainty that we cover include: Incompleteness of our understanding of some atmospheric processes (e.g., cloud physics) and feedbacks amongst components of the climate system (e.g., cloud and albedo feedbacks). Limits on our ability to numerically simulate certain processes, especially as it relates to climate model grid‐cell resolution for fine‐scale process. Again clouds are a key example of this. Uncertainties in establishing the link between climate proxies and atmospheric temperature, for example ice core data from Antarctica and Greenland. We also cover sources of societal uncertainty that affects our scientific uncertainty. This is addressed in terms of uncertainty in the future behavior of humans, especially our energy consumption and population growth. These uncertainties are highlighted when we review the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emissions scenarios which bracket the range of possible outcomes for developing economies and our global consumption of fossil fuels. The overarching goal of this portion of the class is to emphasize that uncertainty is integral to our understanding, and a strength in the way climate science is conducted. We account for uncertainty in our observations and simulations and build the uncertainty into our conclusion. Thus when we present future projections of the climate they include a range of possible outcomes. Student progress towards meeting LO1 is assessed through assignments, exams, and in class discussion. For example, we frequently ask students during lectures to speculate as to what the limits of some measurement or analysis might be: “why might we be less certain in changes in arctic sea ice prior to 1979?” This opens a conversation about the advent of satellite data as a tool for earth system science and provides a basis to establish our growing confidence in climate observations. In addition, in assignments students are required to read and summarize short peer reviewed journal articles. One question that they must answer in these summaries is “what are some of the limits of this study?” LO2: A student should be able to distinguish science from pseudo‐science. This LO is most specifically addressed in the context of “climate skepticism” as a form of pseudo‐science. We discuss factual statements, peer reviewed findings, and interpretation of data. For example, in one class we examine the data that have been used to assert false claims about a “pause” in global warming. Specifically, students are presented with temperature anomaly time series and different approaches at assessing the trends in the data. We examine the “cherry picking” approach used by those espousing the climate “pause” as compared to a more scientifically justified analysis of the total trend apparent in the data. We also discuss many other false claims about climate that appear in the media. One way in which this LO is assessed is in requiring students to find, read, and synthesize 3 peer reviewed journal articles for their final term paper. The topics span contemporary issues in climate science including, drought in California, wildfires and climate change, recent changes in artic sea ice, and topics in geoengineering. The process of selecting peer reviewed sources for this project is a real life exercise in distinguishing between reputably sourced information and the clutter of misinformation and pseudoscientific claims available online. LO3. A student should be able to apply a scientific approach to answer questions about the earth and environment. Interpretation of scientific data to reach conclusions is integral to this course. In fact, 1/3 of each exam requires students to interpret sets of graphs in order to draw conclusions about some aspect of the climate system. This requires students to interpret the data units, assess trends, and link disparate


pieces of information to reach a conclusion. For example, one question asks students to describe and explain the link between reconstructed CO2 records and global temperatures. Furthermore, most of the lectures focus on graphs of a similar nature, and thus these test questions render an assessment of the degree to which the lecture material and explanations in class inform a students’ ability to use a scientific approach to answer questions. In addition, students complete a number of written summaries of impactful or timely journal articles pertaining to aspects of climate change.


MET 113 (input from Arthur E)


GELOs for Area‐R

GELO 1: Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the methods and limits of scientific

investigation.

For METR 113, the first learning objective for Area R classes, mentioned above, is met by three primary

ways.

The first objective is met by testing the students on the scientific method, which is reviewed and

introduced to the them on the first full day of instruction before the first air pollution lectures of class

even begin. We go over the individual steps of the scientific method and discuss as a class what they

refer to. I give plenty examples for each one, and it turns out that most students have heard of the

scientific method before, so it is mainly a review for how it is applied today, and what challenges exist

for the limits of scientific investigation. The students are tested on the scientific method, which usually

involves a written question that they must answer on the first Exam. In addition, within the first air

pollution lecture of this class, I introduce the concepts of exposure and risk. We review how air pollution

studies were born from the first basic epidemiological studies that show how difficult it is statistically to

prove the origins and causes of diseases or cancer (i.e., cigarettes and lung cancer, some smokers never

get lung cancer, etc.)

The second way METR 113 meets this learning objective is by introducing the students to current peer‐

reviewed research regarding air quality problems throughout the course. For each major lecture topic

(i.e., photochemical smog, polluting aerosols, stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change) I introduce

them to a well‐known recently published paper of the subject. As a class, we discuss the journal article

or study’s organization, strengths, conclusions, limits, and future research plans. One of the final class

assignments is a 5‐page literature‐review style research paper on an air pollution subject of their choice

where they have to use peer‐reviewed literature only.


The third way METR 113 meets the first Area R learning objective is by teaching the current ways various

air pollutants are measured by air quality instrumentation. They learn the physical theory behind air

quality instrumentation and how these pollutants are physically measured. For example, for ozone and

fine particulate matter, we review both in situ (i.e., ground sensors and ozonesondes) and remote

sensing instrumentation (air quality satellite sensors). We review the advantages and disadvantages of

measuring the same pollutant with both (i.e. ozone and particulate matter). By knowing these

advantages and disadvantages, the students should be able to understand the limits that real air quality

scientists face today. At the end of the course they are tested on this.

GELO 2: Students will be able to distinguish science from pseudo‐science.

The second GE learning objective is brought up first in the beginning of the course and a second time at

the end of the course.

Again, on the first day when the scientific method is taught and discussed, I review many examples of

science versus pseudo‐science, particularly pseudoscience examples and how to identify pseudoscience

logic. On the first exam, they are given a certain scenario and they must identify and explain why the

scenario is an example of either science or pseudoscience.

The second way this learning objective is met during the course is during the lecture that ties air

pollution to climate change. In this lecture, the main difference between general weather and climate is

taught, and in that explanation, a few of the main climate change denier pseudoscience examples are

reviewed (i.e., “New England sure did get a lot of snow this year so global warming is false”, “Sea Ice

grew this year so global warming is not real.”) Also, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s

identity and purpose is reviewed, which helps to reinforce the concept of importance of peer‐reviewed

scientific research to eliminate pseudoscience.

GELO 3: Students will be able to apply a scientific approach to answer questions about the earth and

environment.

The last learning objective is met in this course is primarily by designing short‐answer and short‐essay

questions on all exams based on scientific figures, and asking them to explain what specific trends they

see and identify potential reasons based on what they learn from the lectures. Also, exams based on all

the examples already mentioned in the first two Area‐R GE learning objectives.

An example question of this may be: “Explain based from the figures below, why the air quality in

California has significantly improved despite CA’s population increasing dramatically.” where ground‐

level ozone trends over the last 40 years are shown next to a figure of population trends over those

same 40 years.

Another example of this may be: “Describe the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide trends

versus global average surface temperature anomaly trends over the last 1000 years.”

1.8 Assessment reports for this class during the review period are attached @end after the greensheets (and also posted online). All assessment reports contain: (i) a comprehensive evaluation of the course that may include a focus on the GE Goals for its area or other course goals; (ii) changes that


the department has made to try to improve student success with respect to the GE SLOs; (iii) future plans for course modifications.

MET 115 (input from Craig C)


Metr 115 GELOs for Area‐R

GELO 1: Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the methods and limits of scientific investigation.

For METR 115, the students were introduced to various ways in which fire behavior is studied including laboratory methods. This is after the students are exposed to a lecture and discussion on the scientific method. The class is exposed to hands‐on activities that illustrate the development of an experiment and scientific method. The class employed a couple on‐campus, outside activities. One was to collect pine needles from nearby pine trees and take these samples to the lab (Prof. Clements’ lab equipped with a drying oven and scales) to weigh and dry the samples. The students were then asked to use the lab results to calculate fuel moisture content of the samples. The samples were then subsequently used for a burning experiment that was conducted at the AS BBQ pits near Duncan Hall. The samples were ignited and using a fan, the fire propagated through the fuel bed. The students are asked to analyze the burn experiments and describe in a short report, the limitations of the experimental design. Additionally, they are asked to compare to previous literature assigned in class to the methods used in the outdoor experiments. This exercise was then used to demonstrate scientific method and limits of scientific investigation. Students really liked to see the effects of dry fuels and ignition patterns on resulting fire behavior. These experiences helped illustrate key properties of fire behavior. One limitation of this experiment is the lack of proper teaching lab space where samples can be burned. If a proper burn table and hood vent was available, the class could design other experiments which would be very unique for an Area R course.

The second way METR 115 meets this learning objective is by introducing the students to current peer‐ reviewed research regarding wildfire research throughout the course. Throughout the semester, up to five journal articles are assigned for students to read and write a review (1‐2 pages). After the reviews are turned in, I lead a discussion where students can discuss what they liked most about the paper. One of the final class assignments is a 6‐page literature‐review style research paper on any topic in wildfire science of their choice. The students are then asked to present their reports key finding in a short presentation.

GELO 2: Students will be able to distinguish science from pseudo‐science.

The second GE learning objective is brought up after the beginning of the semester after students have been exposed to leading peer‐review research. I use a set of lecture slides to illustrate examples of science versus pseudo‐science. Examples used are generally related to climate science, but discussion on wildfire and climate are followed.

GELO 3: Students will be able to apply a scientific approach to answer questions about the earth and environment. A number of problems are given throughout the semester. The first series of problems has students taking fuels data and calculating fuel moisture contents. From this experience, students are then given


national maps of weather and fuel conditions for a given day and asked to determine fire danger ratings for various regions throughout the US. They decide what regions are more prone to high fire danger given the environmental conditions. The results are then compared to actual observations from the National Fire Sanger Rating System.


MET 100W (input from Marty L)


The METR 100W course is a general education course in area Z. The overall goal for the course is to prepare students to make a professional level presentation at a scientific conference and prepare an article for submission to professional journals or prepare a thesis to satisfy graduation requirements. The syllabus for the course reflects the overall goal, as well as the specific GE SLOs for area Z. By the end of the course, the students will have accessed tools necessary to meet the goals, including organizational techniques, reviews of grammar and punctuation, and relevant publication standards. Before the first graded presentations and paper submissions, the students are given rubrics (attached) to show the weights given to various components of a paper and indicate what constitutes a “professional” paper or presentation. Most students early in the course write “student” papers and make “student” presentations. They have trouble with precision and concision, proper reference citing, and overall organization of their papers. Their presentations also tend to be inadequate, especially with the organization and improper citing of the work of others. The content of the course addresses these issues particularly. By the end of the course, all students improve. Some students don’t reach the professional standard and need to continue to work on their skills. Over the past three years, 41 students from meteorology, physics, geology, and chemistry completed the class. Nine of those were judged to make professional presentations and write professional‐level papers, twenty others were close, but lacking in one area or another, and twelve needed to continue working on their overall skills. There are no plans to change the content or approach of the course as over 70 percent (29/41) improved their skills to a professional or near‐professional level.

1.12 Assessment reports for this class during the review period are attached @end after the greensheets (and also posted online). All assessment reports contain: (i) a comprehensive evaluation of the course that may include a focus on the GE Goals for its area or other course goals; (ii) changes


that the department has made to try to improve student success with respect to the GE SLOs; (iii) future plans for course modifications.

E. Program Review: GE Component: Green Sheets are attached (in the order of:

10,12,112,113,115,100W)

F. Program Review: GE Component: Assessment Reports are attached (in the order of: 10(GEPLOs

1,2,3),12(1,2,3),112(1,2,3),113(1,2,3),100W(1,2,3,4,5…). METR 115 has not yet been reviewed

since this is the 1st years it’s been offered. Area Z courses have a new/expanded set of LOs.

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METEOROLOGY CLIMATE SCIENCE · 2019-10-28 · Meteorology & Climate Science ‐ Program Planning...

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