Improving climate change literacy and promoting outreach in an undergraduate atmospheric sciences program

Abstract

The Atmospheric Sciences Department at Northern Vermont University-Lyndon has successfully implemented curricular and extracurricular activities designed to improve students' climate change literacy and to promote outreach. To increase knowledge, all ATM students regardless of career pathway are required to take courses that cover the science of human-caused climate change. As a result, an increasing number of students are expressing interest, with several even selecting internships and career paths with connections to climate change. To promote outreach, students are creating informational content for a department-run website and are regularly given opportunities to engage face-to-face with the public at local schools and events. As a result of these efforts, students are expressing a heightened sense of responsibility to convey accurate climate change information to the public, and many have sought opportunities to engage in this work. The model discussed here incorporates methods for improving climate change literacy among upcoming atmospheric scientists and raising awareness about the need for public engagement. This is an important step toward improved communication between experts and nonexperts, but ongoing work involves the integration of best practices as identified in the existing climate change communication literature (i.e., Leiserowitz et al. 2018). Our goal is to promote engagements that are increasingly positive and impactful, thus ultimately improving literacy among the general public and moving us one step closer toward meaningful climate change mitigation.