1 / 6

Educating tomorrow’s space weather researchers and professionals

Educating tomorrow’s space weather researchers and professionals. W. Jeffrey Hughes Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling Boston University. Background.

ecantu
Download Presentation

Educating tomorrow’s space weather researchers and professionals

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Educating tomorrow’s space weather researchers and professionals W. Jeffrey Hughes Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling Boston University

  2. Background • Space Physics education is almost exclusively at the graduate level, very few undergraduates get any exposure. (There are a handful but growing number of undergraduate courses being offered.) • Graduate programs have concentrated on educating the next generation of research specialists – often very specialized – not generalists. • Only about a dozen universities have space physics programs, and almost none of these have faculty expertise in all components of the sun-earth system (sun, solar wind, magnetosphere, upper atmosphere).

  3. Issues and Problems • How do you make research students to think about the broad context of their specialized research problem? • How do you convince students immersed in an academic environment of the practical aspects of what they study? • Where can non-researchers get a broad technical introduction to space weather?

  4. One solution: The CISM Summer School • Two weeks in the summer – long enough to absorb concepts and form relationships, short enough to be able to afford the time. • Introductory graduate level – give the students a broad picture early. • Emphasize concepts rather than math and theory – broad audience. • Introduce modern pedagogy to graduate education.

  5. The Format • Morning lectures: one each on • The space environment – Reality • Space weather effects – Harsh reality • Modeling the space environment – Virtual reality • Afternoon Lab Exercises: use visualizations of model runs to understand the mornings lessons. • Schedule: Day 1: Introduction Days 2 & 3: The Sun Days 4 & 5: The Solar Wind Days 6 & 7: The Magnetosphere Days 8 & 9: Ionosphere and thermosphere Day 10: Capstone Project

  6. The Outcomes • Eleventh Summer School this July. • Many “young professionals” apply and form 25-30% of the “students” • Air Force, SWPC, industry, airlines, etc. • 52 applications for 32 seats this year. • Over 300 alumnae • Very positive ratings

More Related