Teaching

My teaching and advising responsibilities at the University of Illinois are the most challenging aspect of my work. I teach both graduate and undergraduate courses. The level of instruction, breadth and depth of material, and type of student enrolled in these courses differ substantially. My goal at the undergraduate level is to motivate students to take an active interest in science, to obtain a basic understanding of the workings of their physical environment, particularly the atmosphere, to appreciate the technological and scientific advances that have led to our ability to predict the future behavior of the atmosphere, and to develop educated opinions concerning the environmental issues facing the world. My courses at the graduate level are highly specialized. My goal in these courses is to insure that my students understand the fundamental physical principles underlying the science, to conduct thorough reviews of research in the field, and to provide skills to intelligently analyze and draw informed conclusions concerning the student's own, as well as other published research. Achieving these goals is an enjoyable challenge. I have taught six courses in the department. Two are undergraduate survey courses (ATMS 100, Introduction to Meteorology and ATMS 120, Severe and Hazardous Weather). Four are graduate courses. The first is an established course (ATMS 421, Precipitation Physics) the second, a course I introduced in Fall 1991 (ATMS 410, Radar Meteorology), the third, a course I introduced in Spring 1993 (ATMS 303, Weather Analysis and Forecasting) and the fourth ATMS 501, Mesoscale Meteorology.

Currently, I am rotating between three graduate courses, ATMS 410, 403, and 501.