A Hands-On, Interdisciplinary Laboratory Program and Educational Model to Strengthen a Radar Curriculum for Broad Distribution

This paper describes the details of a National Science Foundation multi-year educational project at the University of Oklahoma (OU). The goal of this comprehensive active-learning and hands-on laboratory program is to develop an interdisciplinary program, in which engineering, geoscience, and meteorology students participate, which forms a community of university scholars. The program is intended to generate a unique, interdisciplinary, research-oriented learning environment that will train future engineers and meteorologists in the full set of competencies needed to take raw radar data to detect weather and aircraft. The program involves new coursework and is oriented around other successful programs to ensure wide distribution by many students and scientists. Supported by the Division of Undergraduate at the NSF, the project began with a Phase II grant in the fall of 2004, which also recently received a Phase II grant to refine the project through 2010. In keeping with the global movement of electronic knowledge delivery via written, as well as visual media, several weblinks have been established for this paper.