Stephanie Armstrong, AMS, Boston, MA

Betsy Abrams, The Weather Channel, Atlanta, GA

*Corresponding author address: Kathryn M. Ginger, UCAR/PAGE, P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307; ginger@ucar.edu
download accompanying Power Point presentation

1. INTRODUCTION

Since 1993 The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has conducted an undergraduate, minority industry scholarship program. The scholarships are awarded to high school seniors entering their freshman year of college, pursuing degrees in the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences. During these past seven years, 33 scholarships have been awarded. As a result, there are scholarship winners at the following different levels:

• New winners who will use their scholarships during the fall of 1999 (9 students)

• Previous winners still working on their undergraduate degrees (15 students)

• Previous winners who have completed their degree and may be employed or pursuing a graduate degree (7 students)

• Previous winners who did not complete their undergraduate degrees (2 students)

With this history, the efficacy and effectiveness of the AMS scholarship program will be examined using data collected by the AMS during phone interviews and questionnaires with scholarship recipients. Essentially, is this program encouraging and retaining under-represented groups in the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrological sciences?

2. SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

The AMS/Industry Minority Scholarship program is intended to encourage minority students who have been traditionally underrepresented in the sciences, especially Hispanic, Native American, and Black/African American students. Currently for fall 1999, there are nine scholarships funded by three different sources:

1. Donations from society members who wish to support AMS Programs in Support of Science and Education (3 scholarships)
   
2. Industry: The Weather Channel®, Litton PRC Inc., Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing (4 scholarships)
   
3. Government: National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) (2 scholarships)

The award is $3000 for a nine-month period in the freshman year and an additional $3000 for a nine-month period in the sophomore year, based on performance in the first year.

3. RECENT PROGRAM STATISTICS

This year’s class of 9 scholarship winners is just over one-quarter of the total 33 winners. This illustrates growth in the number of scholarships and the applicant pool. In fact the NESDIS scholarships are new for this school year and the number of applicants for the years 1997-99 was 95. Compare this to two scholarships for the 1993-1994 academic year and total number of 202 applicants for 1993-1999. Thus, there has been a shift in the applicant pool since the beginning of the program. Over the last few years, the applicant pool has almost doubled and nearly all applicants demonstrated with indicated major, choice of schools and essay clear intent to enter into a degree program in the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences (see Table 1).

Table 1: 1997-1999 Indicated Majors

For 1998 and 1999, winners indicated they would be attending some of the following schools: Stanford, University of Oklahoma, Brown, Texas A&M, Florida State University, MIT, Ohio University, University of CA at San Diego, University of Virginia.

As with any program, there is start-up and growth time. The AMS minority industry scholarship program appears to be in the growth phase.

4. SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM HISTORY

The AMS Industry Minority Scholarship Program began in 1993 with the awarding of two scholarships. Through 1995, the program was funded solely with contributions by members to the AMS 75^th Anniversary Campaign. In 1996, the AMS was joined by industry and continued to support three scholarships with contributions by members the AMS Programs in Support of Science and Education. In 1996, The Weather Channel joined in sponsoring a new scholarship. In 1997, PRC joined with another scholarship while in 1998 Computer Science Corporation and Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing joined with two additional awards. The government agency, NESDIS, joined this year with 2 scholarship bringing the total number to 9.

5. APPLICANT AND RECIPIENT HISTORY

To update the status of scholarship participants, the AMS mailed a questionnaire and conducted follow-up emails and phone calls. Only 5 of the 33 recipients responded to the questionnaire and two additional awardees responded later to emails and phone calls. The poor response rate is probably du to the fact that winners are under no obligation to remain in contact with the AMS after their sophomore year when they no longer receive funds.

The questionnaire asked scholarship recipients list the following:

• School/employment status

• Current situation whether studying in or outside the atmospheric and related sciences field

• University and major or employer’s name

• Current research interests and publications

• How has the AMS minority scholarship helped you?

For the open-ended question about how the scholarship has helped you, the following responses were received. A student at Darmouth College majoring in computer science said the scholarship "has greatly helped to close the gap towards the education he is receiving." He plans to use his programming skills toward a career in the atmospheric sciences with regard to modeling. There are three other students who veered off the science path. No explanation for their choices was provided in the collected data. One student has become a financial consultant while the other two have discontinued their studies at this time.

During the scholarship period of the last seven years the break down by major is as follows:

1993-1994: 2 recipients (1 status unknown, 1 financial consultant)

1994-1995: 3 recipients (1 discontinued studies, 2 status unknown)

1995-1996: 3 recipients (3 status unknown)

1996-1997: 4 recipients (fall 1999 seniors)

• 1 marine science major
• 1 earth/environmental science
• 1 meteorology major
• 1 environmental/atmos. science major/li>

1997-1998: 5 (fall 1999 juniors)

• 5 meteorology/atmos. science majors

1998-1999: 7 recipients (fall 1999 sophomores)

• 2 meteorology majors
• 1 environmental science major
• 1 chemistry
• 1 hydrology
• 1 physics
• 1 discontinued studies

1999-2000: 9 recipients (freshman in fall 1999)

• 7 meteorology/atmos. science majors
• 2 environmental science majors

From this list, most students, 24 of 33 (73%) are participating in atmospheric science or science while 3 out of 33 (9%) have either left science or discontinued their studies. The six students (18%) with unknown status may or may not be in science.

Table 2 shows the breakdown of recipients by ethnic group. Black/African Americans are the predominant ethnic group represented.

Table 2: Recipient Ethnicity

When the AMS and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) publish the new Curricula 2000 in the Atmospheric and Oceanic, Hydrologic and Related Sciences, the scholarship winners of the last few years could represent a sizable percentage of the total number of minorities that are listed as current majors.

Table 3 shows the breakdown by gender for recipients.

Table 3: Gender of Recipients

The number of female recipients is equal to or greater than the number of male recipients for every year except 1998. Recipients also represent 17 states and the District of Columbia with Texas, California, New York, Florida, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey and Kansas having multiple scholarship winners.

6. CONCLUSION

While it appears the AMS Industry Minority Scholarship has entered a growth phase based on the number of applicants and their indicated major, it is difficult to judge how this program is meeting the needs of these students. While one student said the program has helped him meet his educational goals, the lack of response from other scholarship winners in updating their information does not indicate either a negative or positive influence on the scholarship program. Hopefully, as the number of scholarship winners becomes more numerous and the fact that the AMS publishes yearly updates of scholarship winners, awardees will be inclined to share their status with the Society.

To see how mainstream the information is on the scholarship program, it is nice to see that when conducting a search with several different web search engines, the AMS awards program is listed and it is listed on several known scholarship web pages. The minority program is also listed on a scholarship based on ethnicity web page. Because the program has existed for seven years it is also receiving good support from high school counselors and educators. Therefore, using the last few years as a rough guide, one can probably expect the AMS to have more applications in the future for this worthy endeavor.