Class gives UND students a chance to chase storms, get experiential learning

Yahoo

6 hours ago

Jun. 18—GRAND FORKS — The first day of storm chasing for the University of North Dakota's storm experience class featured a weather phenomenon that would be one of the key memories for the students and professor.
In Colorado, the 22 members of the multi-state trip watched a tornado touch the earth. It was a favorite moment for several of the storm chasing students.
Sam Johnson, in his third year at UND studying atmospheric sciences, said it was his first time seeing a tornado in person, and though he wouldn't describe it as exactly "world changing," it was along those lines for him.
"You hear stories about how powerful and destructive they are, and there's one right in front of you," he said. "It's really cool."
The storm experience class, held during the last two weeks of May, started with two days of instruction and travel before chasing. In the two vans that went as far as Texas were four teaching assistants who also served as drivers; 18 students; Montana Etten-Bohm, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences and the professor for the course; and Jake Mulholland, a professor who led the class last year.
The class offered the chance for experiential learning, Etten-Bohm said, teaching the students an equivalent of a 16-week class in two weeks of real-life experience. Along with the tornado sighting, the class visited different atmospheric research facilities, toured a facility for developing new technologies on a weather research plane, and toured the plane itself.
The students, gathered into different groups, took time bonding and stopped at a teaching assistant's house for a meal. The students also got to meet up with other storm chasers on a day in Texas, tracking the only storm in the state as part of ICECHIP (In-situ Collaborative Experiment for the Collection of Haile In the Plains).
Brenden Marto, a senior double majoring in commercial aviation and air traffic management, said that was one of his favorite days. There were more than 50 cars stopped at a truck stop, all following the storm.
"My little kid dream of wanting to be a storm chaser was kind of all coming true when I'm walking through this parking lot and seeing all these cars that I've known for years, but never seen in person up close and live," he said.
The students were split into three groups that rotated through three kinds of teams: logistics, social media and forecasting. The logistics team focused on finding places to eat and sleep while on the road; the social media team posted the goings-on of the trip online; and the forecasting team tracked the weather and decided where the class would go.
"It's really rewarding when you do all this timing and take all these considerations into effect and have to give a forecast in the morning," Marto said. "And everybody has to agree with you on where you guys want to go for the day."
Etten-Bohm believes the logistics team was underappreciated, as its responsibility was finding hotels that weren't expensive, but still quality, as well as finding where to eat and get fuel.
Etten-Bohm had been on the previous year's trip more as an observer, which she said was beneficial to her being the instructor this year. Her top priority was safety, but she still wanted to get the students into weather situations, she said. One thing that stood out to her was the number of students who attended who weren't majoring in atmospheric sciences.
"One thing that makes this trip and this class more unique than other classes out there, not just at UND but other similar storm chasing classes out there, is that the predominant majority of our students that go on this trip are atmospheric sciences minors," she said. "They're not majoring in atmospheric sciences. ... They still want to go and want to learn and have this really unique and cool experience. I think, too, it also motivates them to be more involved in atmospheric sciences. ... I think this is one of the benefits of this class — to help students get more engaged in meteorology."
Sophomore Sophia Barton, who has been studying commercial aviation, said she might be changing her major or adding on the atmospheric sciences major following the class.
"A lot of the people, especially the teaching assistants, they major in atmospheric sciences, and it brings a lot of different perspectives on you," she said. "They were telling me about it, and there's one person who actually does fly and does atmospheric sciences, who encouraged me to do both because I knew it'd be possible to do it."
Some of the students said the members of the group were mostly strangers to them, but by the end of the trip, they had all become close.
Colin Gilley, who will be going into his senior year in the fall studying commercial aviation, minoring in atmospheric sciences and specializing in aviation safety, said he was nervous at first, but by the end of the trip, it felt like being with co-workers rather than strangers. Connection was part of the trip, along with the knowledge portion, he said, and he still spends time with those he was with.
"Some of the people that were in my group, we've been going out and hanging out after we do our class work, or start studying together," he said.
Joslyn Sutton, a sophomore majoring in air traffic management and minoring in meteorology and space studies, said her mom encouraged her to go on the trip. Her biggest takeaway from the class is "just do it," which she encourages others to do who might be interested in taking the class.
"Just do the thing," she said. "I was nervous. ... At the end, we were all hugging like, 'Man, I don't want to leave this group.' It fostered such a great experience for all of us."