WCSU President’s Lecture Series Will Feature Meteorologist Dr Mel

DANBURY — Beloved meteorologist Dr Mel Goldstein will be the featured speaker for the Western Connecticut State University President’s Lecture series at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, March 29. His talk, “Growing up Dr Mel,” will be free and the public is invited.

Dr Mel — as he has become known to generations of friend and fans — has been studying weather all his life. He started a meteorology club when he was in the eighth grade, and decades later the club is still in existence. He went on to receive a Bachelor of Science in meteorology from Penn State University, and then MS and PhD degrees in meteorology from New York University.

He developed a severe storm prediction index that is utilized by numerous electric utilities across the country, and he has been a consultant to a number of large firms, including IBM, Union Carbide, General Electric, Detroit Edison, Philadelphia Electric, Northeast Utilities, and United Illuminating.

Dr Mel, who always intended to teach, joined the WCSU faculty in 1970. He founded the first university Weather Center in New England at WestConn, and pushed for creation of Connecticut’s first Bachelor of Arts in Meteorology program.

Dr Mel’s media career started on a single local radio station and by 1976, his broadcasts were on dozens of radio stations across the country. At that time, he began doing television weather. In the 1980s, his forecasts were seen nationwide on the Satellite News Channel, an all-news cable effort of ABC and Westinghouse.

He became chief meteorologist at WTNH-TV, Connecticut’s ABC affiliate, in 1986 where he is now seen doing the noon forecasts. Dr Mel wrote a weekly column for The Hartford Courant in Northeast Magazine for 20 years and also authored The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Weather.

Dr Mel has received a number of awards, honorary doctorate degrees from Albertus Magnus College and Mitchell College, the President’s Award from Quinnipiac University and for eight consecutive years, Dr Mel has been voted Connecticut’s Best Television Weatherperson in a reader’s poll of Connecticut Magazine.

He has begun a foundation for research into multiple myeloma, an inoperable form of bone marrow cancer, at the Yale School of Medicine.

Dr Mel has been battling multiple myeloma for a few years, and his proceeds from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Weather have been donated to that fund.

When he is not predicting the weather and telling people about it, Dr Mel can be found playing jazz on his piano at his home overlooking Long Island Sound. He lives in Guilford with his wife Arlene. They were married as undergraduates at Penn State in 1965. They have two daughters, Laura and Melodie. 

“The weather belongs to all of us. It is very democratic,” says Dr Mel. “All we need to do is look upward and learn.”

The lecture will be in Room 125 of the WCSU Science Building, on Osborne Street near Dr James Roach Avenue.

For more information about this lecture, call the WCSU Office of University Relations at 203-837-8486 or the WCSU Office of the President, 203-837-8754.