DANBURY, CONN. — Meteorology students from Western Connecticut State University have provided mentoring and technical support for the STEM program at Westside Middle School Academy in Danbury to carry out the launch of two weather balloons on Saturday, June 6, 2015, as a lesson in the tools used to track upper-atmospheric temperature and pressure on a daily basis worldwide.

Members of the WCSU Meteorology Club, under the guidance of club adviser and Assistant to the Director of Meteorological Studies Gary Lessor, have teamed up this spring with Westside instructor Jonathan Neuhausel and eighth-grade students in the middle school’s STEM program to plan the project and prepare the weather balloon payloads for launch. The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curriculum is one of two core programs, along with Global Studies, offered by the Danbury Public Schools system at the Westside Middle School Academy, which opened in fall 2014 as an educational center for grades 6 through 8.

Jennifer Dums, a Meteorology Club member and WCSU Weather Center intern who graduated from Western in May with a B.S. in Operational Meteorology, worked with Neuhausel and Westside Academy STEM students to design and build two payloads for each of the weather balloons. Three of the four payloads will carry sensors that will take atmospheric pressure and temperature readings recorded on computer chips designed to be removed for download and data analysis after retrieval. Each of the four payloads also will carry a Go-Pro camera to provide video from different vantage points during the flight and a GPS unit to enable Neuhausel and his students to track the payloads’ flight, descent and landing sites.

Dums and Stephen Puglisi, who also served as a project mentor and will enroll at Western as a freshman this fall with a meteorology studies concentration, plan to join Westside Middle School Academy eighth-graders in the STEM program on the morning of June 6 at the football field of Danbury High School. Two earlier dates for launch were scrubbed due to inclement weather conditions.

Dums observed that present weather forecasts indicate a probable path taking the balloons to a maximum altitude of 70,000 to 80,000 feet and on a flight of as long as three hours’ duration before their anticipated landing somewhere between Danbury and New Haven. Traffic controllers at airports in the immediate region will be advised of the launch time and anticipated direction of flight. The actual peak altitude, flight duration and landing location will depend in part on when the balloons’ helium inflation presses the surface outward against diminishing atmospheric pressure to the point where the balloon surface bursts, initiating deployment of parachute riggings on the payloads for the descent back to earth. All payloads will be packaged in Styrofoam casings in an effort to secure the enclosed devices and buffer them from the shock of the touchdown.

Neuhausel plans to use the GPS signals from the payloads to pursue the balloon flights by car and, with the support of students also tracking the GPS locators by computer at Westside Academy, he will seek to determine the payloads’ ultimate landing sites for recovery. One challenge in the recovery effort will be where the payloads end up, Dums noted: “We have no control over where the payloads land — it could be on a highway, in the trees, in a lake, or in someone’s backyard.”

She described Western’s participation in the project as a productive first step in building a collaborative relationship between the university and the STEM program at Westside Middle School Academy, while also affording the Meteorology Club an opportunity to become more engaged with the Danbury community. “Westside instructors identified this weather balloon project and sought Western’s help to work with the students and provide them with our practical experience in meteorology,” she said.

Dums and fellow mentors from the Western team sought to ensure that every participant from the eighth-grade class at Westside Academy was assigned a task to accomplish in the project. Neuhausel said that Westside students were organized into teams that addressed the basic project areas including payloads, parachute rigging, atmospheric pressure and temperature sensors, and community outreach. Eighth-grade STEM students also undertook the challenge of organizing fundraising efforts to meet a portion of the cost for purchase of the equipment required for the weather balloons and payloads.

Dums mentored for the project as part of her internship service at the Weather Center, and said that she enjoyed the chance to explore new avenues for sharing her technical knowledge and practical experience in meteorology with middle school students. Her present career objective following her May graduation is to seek a meteorology-related position in the private sector, prospectively in aviation, agriculture or broadcasting.

Western Connecticut State University offers outstanding faculty in a range of quality academic programs. Our diverse university community provides students an enriching and supportive environment that takes advantage of the unique cultural offerings of Western Connecticut and New York. Our vision: To be an affordable public university with the characteristics of New England’s best small private universities.