Virginia Tech announced this month it plans to establish a new bachelor’s degree program in meteorology.
When I was in choosing colleges, I was living in North Carolina and was blessed to have two in-state programs to choose from, NC State and UNC-Asheville.
But in Virginia, young folks who want to be meteorologists have had to go out of state to obtain their degree.
Blacksburg is an ideal location because it is home to the National Weather Service office. This office is the only one in the country in a university town where the university does not offer a meteorology degree.
Steve Keighton, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told WSLS, “It’s a great opportunity for us and the students, and they can learn what the career is all about from the experiences gathered from an internship … the Weather Service wants folks to come out and learn.”
The push for the program came from leaders in the Virginia Tech geography department, which already provides all but two of the mandatory courses for a meteorology degree.
Bill Carstensen, head of the geography department at Virginia Tech, told WSLS, “We’re adding those last one or two this year, and so we’re hoping in January when the degree is official, we can switch the geography majors over the meteorology.”
The State Council of Higher Education still needs to approve the program, which Tech hopes will begin in the spring 2012 semester.
Haniewich is chief meteorologist for WSLS 10. His column is published every Wednesday.
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