This is to conduct a Space Weather Summer School (SWSS) which provides participants a broad overview of the sun-earth system, how space weather effects arise, and how models can be used to help understand, investigate, and predict the space weather system. Approximately 30 students will travel to the High Attitude Observatory (HAO) in Boulder, CO, each year to attend a two-week intensive school with experts in all areas of heliosphere and geospace providing lectures as well as interactive laboratory session where the students use model output for exploring the high coupled space weather system. In addition to these sessions, experts from industry and government will discuss how space weather impacts our technological systems. The students will leave the school with a broad understanding of the entire Sun-to-Earth chain that makes up the space weather system in fashion that is not possible at a typical university. The school builds on a proven, successful model developed by a previously funded Science and Technology Center, the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM). It provides a needed community resource for space system education using the highest quality content. The SWSS is based on research-based pedagogical practices such as peer-instruction and other cooperative learning strategies to produce an active-learning environment. It will focus on providing upper level undergraduate students and beginning graduate students with a dynamic and exciting introduction to space weather, concentrating on both its effects and the basic physics underlying the processes. The selection process for students will ensure that a broad range of students from underrepresented groups will be able to attend the school. Also, post-doctoral research faculty at HAO will be given the opportunity to develop lectures and teach in the school. All of the school lectures will use modern teaching practices that the students will be able to bring back to their home institutions when they return. Finally, the students will have learned how to use advanced visualization and analysis packages for processing model output, a valuable tool as they continue their research careers.
