And now... the weather

One of the 'super hubs' for collaboration and partnership at UGA is our public televisioon station, WUGA TV. The Franklin College has a partnership with the station in the interview show that I host - but the College of Public Health, the College of Veterinary Medicine, the Hugh Hodgson School of Music and of course the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication all have growing collaborations with the station. One of the latter is Grady News Source, a half hour news program airing daily that gives our broadcast students great experience. In an interesting expansion of that endeavor, the weather reports are now being provided by students from our Atmospheric Sciences Program:

"The collaboration with WUGA-TV represents a wonderful opportunity for our students," said Thomas Mote, professor and head of the geography department, which is part of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "Nearly every career in meteorology requires polished communication skills. Even students who don't wish to pursue a career in broadcast meteorology will benefit from the opportunity to improve their presentation skills. The collaboration with WUGA-TV provides a public service opportunity with a broad audience across the region."

WUGA-TV, the public television station owned and operated by the university, is available in 1.55 million homes in 55 counties in north Georgia and can be watched locally on Charter cable channel 6 and channel 32 of DishNetwork, AT&T Uverse and DirecTV. The station is on university cable channel 8.1.

The 12 students, who are developing the forecast under the guidance of Jeff Dantre, director of news and content for WUGA-TV, videotape the weather segment each weekday. During the process, a group of two to four students looks at weather models to determine the forecast for the area, creates the slides and images to be shown and records the presentation for airing. 

The TV station is a major asset with an impact that we are just coming to understand. With access to the ninth largest broadcast market in the nation, it can help the university project its influence in ways we've never been able. That is true capability for reaching people - alumni, citizens of Georgia, decision-makers. The station allows UGA to fulfill its service mission like never before, even as it provides our students with important training and experience across a variety of fields. Tune in.

Image: Matt Daniel, right, a senior atmospheric sciences major and president of the UGA chapter of the American Meteorological Society, works with Riley Hale, a senior atmospheric sciences major, to prepare weather forecasts for broadcast on WUGA-TV.  Photo by Paul Efland