The Department of Atmospheric Science at the State University of New York at Albany would like to improve the quality and breadth of its undergraduate teaching and laboratory experience for both majors and non-majors through the purchase of a next-generation Man-Computer-Interactive Data Access System (McIDAS). With such a system users can effectively process and analyze digital meteorological satellite images as well as more conventional meteorological global surface and upper air observations for instructional, laboratory and research purposes. McIDAS will fill two critical needs. First it can be used in the classroom to expose nonscience majors to scientific ideas, concepts and methods that can have impact on their daily lives, allowing them to become more informed citizens about global weather, climate and environmental issues. Second is the need to increase opportunities for undergraduate students majoring in atmospheric science to be exposed to fundamental meteorological concepts and quantitative approaches to problems through independent study, undergraduate research projects, synoptic laboratory applications, classroom projects and problem sets, as well as curriculum enrichment, by integrating McIDAS more effectively into day-to-day classroom and laboratory teaching. The next generation McIDAS addresses these critical Departmental needs because of the local computer power and enhanced graphics capability built into the wideword workstation. The quality of the undergraduate teaching and laboratory experience would be improved considerably because for the first time instructors would be able to process, analyze and archive global weather and climate cases of interest for later instructional and research purposes. Additionally faculty members and students wold be able to apply locally generated scientific software packages on McIDAS to real time or archived datastreams as well as link into other local or national computer systems for the processing and analysis of additional data in support of special laboratory and research projects
