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Dr. William J. Syrett, B.S. and M.S. in Meteorology,
both from Penn State, is currently an instructor in meteorology
an the Penn State Weather Observatory manager. His teaching duties
include participation in three summer workshops during the past
4 years, two at Penn State, University Park and the other at the
University of Pittsburgh, Bradford. Since 1999 he has worked with
Dr. Assad Panah, P.I. in Bradford, as the meteorology instructor
during NASA Earth Science Enterprise Summer Workshops.
Duties included construction of a Web-based training session on
basic meteorology, supplemented with classroom demonstrations and
exercises that the participating K-12 teachers could take back to
their classrooms. Since 2001, he has been the co-director of two
week-long resident Weather Camps at Penn State (with Mr. Paul Knight
and Dr. Gregory Jenkins), one designed to expose students entering
grades 8-10 to the science and careers of meteorology, and the other
for middle- and high-school teachers who are required to include
meteorology in their curricula. Two graduate credits are awarded
upon completion of the Weather Camp for Teachers, and financial
assistance is available for participants from traditionally underrepresented
groups. The Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium provides some of
the funding for the Teacher Camp. Syrett also serves as the basic
meteorology instructor for both Penn State workshops. Syrett's resident
instruction courses at Penn State include Weather Communications
I and II, Industrial Meteorology
section, Weather Map Analysis, an elective course for seniors, and
Meteorology and Society, a general education course for non-meteorology
majors. Weather Observatory duties include climatological data collection
and quality control along with frequent
contact with the media, university officials and the general public
concerning weather forecasts and decision-making based upon those
forecasts. He also serves as an on-camera meteorologist on the Pennsylvania
Public Television weather magazine show,
Weather World. Since joining the Penn State faculty he has participated
in numerous field projects including ARESE, MAST94, ASTEX, AASE
II, the TCM Experiment, FIRE and ERICA, primarily as a field weather
forecaster and radiosonde data manager. He is a member of The American
Meteorological Society, Sigma Xi, and Chi Epsilon Pi.
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