Outreach

The four partner institutions were committed to leveraging SEAR-MAR for outreach to the public, academic, and scientific communities. This took on several different forms depending on the institution and the logistics of engaging their communities. UMBC and Millersville created PR media overviews for SEAR-MAR, which bookmark this final report at the beginning and end, and/or were interviewed for the local news media distribution with articles appearing in local newspapers and online media or as video segments on local TV stations. The photos in Fig. 39 below of a Millersville undergraduate (left) and a UMBC Ph.D. student (right) are example of the interaction with media.

Figure 39: Engaging the media was one form of successful outreach during SEAR-MAR. Left: Tim Keebler (MU, undergraduate meteorology) is interviewed by the NBC news affiliate WGAL TV8, Lancaster, PA during an open house at the UWKA hangar. Right: Zhifeng Yang (UMBC, Ph.D. atmospheric physics) describes his participation in SEAR-MAR before one of the boundary layer missions.

 

More substantive outreach had many tentacles including a special Millersville University Weather Watch segment produced by students who took part in SEAR-MAR (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlQxwsfX5CY&feature=youtu.be (see time between 1:54 to 5:09 minutes). MU had the advantage of having the UWKA nearby at KLNS so that we were able to host visits such as the STEM Sisters, a group of middle school girls who participate in a program of this name, which is offered by the North Museum of Nature and Science in Lancaster, PA (https://northmuseum.org/stemsisters/), and over 50 freshmen meteorology majors from MU program. In addition, 58 6th-graders and half-dozen teachers and the principal from Ann LeTort Elementary School in Manor Township, Lancaster County had the chance to see the plane as it flew a low over the school and launch and track a radiosonde as part of a visit during SEAR-MAR. Two Millersville students spoke to the 6th-graders about SEAR-MAR and weather in general. PI Clark discussed general topics in science and careers in atmospheric science. The visit to LeTort School was coincidentally aligned with their current lesson about weather and climate, so our timing could not have been better. Students were highly engaged and participatory. 

Figure 41: A photo collage of the outreach activities during the MU visit to Ann LeTort School. In all, 58 students took part in these activities.



The period from 4-18 NOV 2017 when the partner institutions were actively involved in the UWKA deployment, spending extended time on outreach was a challenge. Now that the field campaign is behind us, the partners are committed to continued collaboration and outreach. On April 26 Dr. Ken Davis from PSU will give a seminar at MU on methane emissions, which will include the SEAR-MAR data collected over western PA during the coal mine and Sugar Run missions. With this spring and summer offering opportunity for further investigation of the scientific missions, we anticipate that students and project scientists will be invited to give talks at partner institutions, non-partner institutions, and present papers at professional conferences on SEAR-MAR. One event currently on the calendar is that R. Clark will lead a break-out session at the UCAR October Meeting on the value of using the NSF-NCAR/EOL deployment pool for educational enhancements.