Student Involvement in Collaborative Scientific Research: A Case Study from Atmospheric Gravity Wave Radiosonde Field Campaigns

Undergraduate students often play a critical role in scientific research. Likely due to a perceived or real lack of experience or education their contributions are commonly reserved for a small component of a given project. While not every endeavor will be suited for undergraduate student researchers, here it is suggested that advancement of knowledge is stymied through exclusion of these capable students from the scientific research process. The 2017 total solar eclipse over the United States was one of the most viewed events in American history and contributed to increased public attentiveness to space science. Student researchers from the Montana Space Grant Consortium (MTSGC) were involved in publishing findings from an atmospheric research campaign during the 2017 eclipse. This prompted another eclipse-related campaign in 2019 dedicated to involving undergraduates in every stage of the scientific research process, from proposal to publication. The 2019 South American campaign produced the first confirmed detection of eclipse-induced stratospheric gravity waves. MTSGC maintained this scientific momentum and is leading collaborative research and training efforts for similar investigations of the 2020 eclipse. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project is a multi-site field campaign intended to enhance the methods from 2019 at a larger scale and to replicate results during the 2020 South American total solar eclipse. Students and faculty from four universities across the U.S. make up the 2020 team, with nearly all collaboration being virtual. Eclipses over the U.S. in 2023 and 2024 offer further opportunities to scale-up these research and education efforts; a nationwide campaign involving dozens of ballooning teams has been proposed to NASA. This paper posits that: 1) scientific objectives are not only maintained but enriched through the participation of undergraduate students with a diversity of academic backgrounds; 2) greater advances of knowledge are realized through an increase in inclusivity and through a collaborative learning environment built on respect regardless of institution, past experience, ethnicity, or identity; and 3) the lessons learned and best practices developed in this context could be applied to any other discipline, type of research, or collaborative project.