Collaborative Research: AGS-FIRP Track 1--The 2025 Nebraska-RaXPol Education and Outreach (NREO-2025) Project

This award is for the deployment of the University of Oklahoma’s Rapid X-band Polarimetric Radar (RaXPol) for an educational and outreach project hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and Nebraska Wesleyan University (NWU). Students will participate in the planning and deployment of the radar for small scientific projects. These types of hands-on activities are acknowledged to produce superior educational outcomes and enhanced interest in the sciences. Additionally, the radar will be exhibited to K-12 students at multiple schools in Nebraska. The 2025 Nebraska RaXPol Education and Outreach (NREO-2025) project has three principal objectives: provide undergraduate and graduate students in UNL’s Radar Meteorology course an opportunity to use a research radar to collect data for micro research projects; improve scientific literacy by giving students in NWU’s Introduction to Meteorology general-education meteorology course opportunities to learn about the scientific method and see examples of its application; exhibit a valuable NSF-supported facility to local K-12 students. Students will identify a scientific question that can be answered with data collected by the radar, develop an experimental design, present their projects, and then execute the projects within an 800km radius of Lincoln, NE, with a focus on deep convective storms. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.