The major goals of this project were to 1) host a 2-week virtual workshop during the summer of 2020 focused on planetary boundary layer studies targeting 16 early career, under-represented graduate students and 2) host a supplemental 3 day in-person workshop during the summer of 2021 at the Howard University Beltsville Campus in Beltsville, MD. Splitting the effort, originally planned for one year, into two parts covering three years was forced by the COVID pandemic.

Virtual Workshop July 13-24, 2020 (https://dnwsite.weebly.com/pbl-workshop-2020.html)

A total of 18 mostly under-represented students participated in the 2-week virtual workshop. Students came from Howard University, Penn State, U. Michigan, UMBC, Univ of Texas El Paso, There were three tracks, from which the students could choose, offered for the 2-week virtual workshop held in 2020. The tracks were PBL modeling, Analysis of historical air quality data, Instrumentation. Before splitting into the tracks, students received a 1-day introduction in the use of the HySplit model led by Dr. Ariel Stein, NOAA ARL. 

After the first day, the groups split into the three tracks. The PBL modeling track was led by Dr. William Stockwell of UTEP and instructed the students in the chemical reactions and their modeling pertaining to air quality. The Analysis of historical air quality data track was led by Dr. Jose Fuentes of Penn State and focused on trajectory analysis of PM2.5 and other measures of air quality. The Instrumentation track was led by Dr. David Whiteman and included presentations on and analysis of data from Multi-filter Rotating Shadowband Radiometer (D. Whiteman, Howard University), Radiosonde/Ozonesonde (A. Flores, R. Sakai, Howard University, PM2.5 (J. Boyle, Maryland Department of the Environment), Ceilometer (R. Delgado, UMBC), Wind Lidar (B. Demoz, UMBC), and Ozone Lidar (J. Sullivan, NASA/GSFC). Every 1-2 days during the 2-week workshop, students were brought all together to share their results with the entire group. This provided an opportunity for all students to learn about the activities in the other tracks of the workshop and gave students practice in oral presentation. Mentors provided feedback to students on their presentations with the goal of training them to make conference quality presentations. 

In-person Workshop Aug 3-5, 2021 (https://dnwsite.weebly.com/pbl-workshop-2021.html)

A total of 13 mostly under-represented students from Howard University, UMBC, San Jose State, Penn State, U. Puerto Rico Mayaguez, City College of New York participated in the in-person workshop held at the HU Beltsville Campus. During the mornings, the workshop offered 2-hour presentations on each of radiosondes, drones, Raman lidar, and air quality measurements with demonstrations being performed at each site. The afternoons were devoted to presentations from representatives of NASA, NOAA, NSF and the private sector. During these presentations speakers focused on the scientific scope of their organization and what professional development and employment opportunities there are in the organization. Ample time was devoted to questions and free discussion. 

Other Key Outcomes from the Workshops

There are several outcomes and achievements to note beyond the direct impact of the workshop experiences noted above:

• The target audience of both of these workshops was under represented students. By exposing these students to the broad range of science and professional development offered during the workshop, the goal was to aid the students in career advancement thus increasing diversity in the atmospheric sciences. 
• Both workshops were focused exclusively on student training and professional development. Training occurred in analysis of atmospheric datasets, instrumentation used in planetary boundary layer research. Professional development occurred in oral presentation skills and in exposure to employment opportunities from NASA, NOAA, NSF and the petroleum industry
• presentation materials were made available to all participants and mentors so that the efforts expended in preparation for this workshop could be re-used in future workshops
• an online article was published in International GeoScience Education Organization Newsletter in Feb, 2021
  • http://www.igeoscied.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/February2021Newsletter.pdf
• Significant experience was gained in how to organize workshops and how to support students/mentors through travel and mileage reimbursements, how to manage Covid restrictions, and how to provide hotel and lunch for the students and mentors. 
• The post-workshop survey after the in-person workshop in 2021 indicated broad satisfaction with the student experience:
  • https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14QWZyqwUo9GaD9Dk390Zragf2A_S3mgxCF-rEtrWTjI/viewanalytics