This past summer five TCNJ students participated in IMPRESS-Ed. These students were: Rachel Goldberg, Dana Dispoto and Joanna Papadopoulos who are Math/Science/ Technology majors, as well as Will Dybus, and Tom O’Del both Secondary Education and Physics majors. IMPRESS-Ed is a summer program, at The College of New Jersey, which gives students who are interested in becoming teachers, particularly science educators, the opportunity to learn more about and conduct research in earth sciences. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) funded the program, with enough funding for three years. This past summer was the first year of the program. The program ran a course of eight weeks from June 6th to July 29th. The first two weeks of the program consisted of a common module, which gave students the opportunity to learn about atmospheric physics, geophysics, and astrophysics. In the final six weeks of the program, students were paired up with a mentor to work on research they were currently interested in.
During the common module students learned the content that would pertain to the research they would do in the following six weeks, as well as some of the pedagogy involved in teaching sciences. Dr. Magee, Dr. Benoit, Dr. Kavic, and Dr. Wiita, who were mentors in this program, gave their students useful lessons and resources to use when they become educators. Students had the opportunity to learn first-hand how to use the planetarium, discover the types of software that can enhance their lessons in geology and astronomy, and do hands-on activities regarding the atmosphere around them.
On the first day of the program, the students were paired up with faculty mentors in order to work on a particular project; for instance Rachel Goldberg worked with Dr. Magee on a project entitled “Cloud Altitude Determination of Overshooting Tops in Severe Thunderstorms.” In their six weeks of research, Rachel catalogued all of the instances of deep convection, better known as thunderstorms, over the course of 2011 thus far. To determine deep convection, Dr. Magee and Rachel used three satellites from NASA: CloudSat, CALIPSO, and Aqua MODIS. After cataloguing these instances, they determined the cloud top heights using CALIPSO, CloudSat, Doppler Radar, and modeling data. Once determining all of the cloud top heights using these different methods, they performed statistics in order to compare them. The program ended at this point. Since the program occurred in association with TCNJ’s summer research program, MUSE, they presented their findings at MUSE’s symposium.
According to Rachel; “Through this program, I learned an immense amount of information that taught me so much about a subject that I absolutely love that I never really had gotten a chance to learn about before. Meteorology had always been a passion of mine, but never had I been able to take a class about it. I was a freshman last year so I had not taken any of the earth science courses before IMPRESS-Ed. Through this program, I learned about all the kinds of clouds, the complexity of the formation of thunderstorms, and the amazing amounts of data that are widely available. I got the chance to research a topic that I never thought I would be able to and loved doing it so much that I am continuing my research this fall with Dr. Magee. We are going to look to see if there is a relationship between overshooting tops and the onset of tornadoes. This December, through a travel grant from NASA, Dr. Magee and I are going to the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco to present our findings. Will and Dr. Benoit are also presenting their findings there. Had I not applied and gotten accepted to this program, I never would have had the opportunity to conduct research about thunderstorms, let alone contribute to the field by presenting our research. This program was absolutely amazing and if I were given the opportunity to do it all over again, I would.”
Speaking for the faculty involved, Dr. Magee adds “we were really pleased with the work the students did over the summer. We are continuing to do research with these students and look forward to continuing the program next summer.”
Students in the MST majors focus on understanding how human knowledge is integrated in solving problems in technology and engineering (STEM). The major is housed in the School of Engineering Department of Technological Studies.
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