According to Carey Yaros, “Ron and my core values, our mission in life, are education and children. We believe we have to invest in our society.” Together the Yaros husband and wife team have built a successful business, Yaros Communications, Inc., that fully supports their values.
The concept of their company has an interesting beginning. Ron worked 15 years as a science reporter and broadcast meteorologist in Madison, Wisconsin and St. Louis, Missouri. Always interested in education as well as community outreach, Ron would visit schools on a regular basis – nearly 250 in his eight years in Madison and then St. Louis – and discovered first-hand the need for additional science courses. “Most of the schools didn’t have large budgets and lacked teaching tools that were interactive and exciting for the kids,” Carey reflects. Ron also realized that local TV news can support classroom education.
The company began after Ron earned a Masters in Education, specializing in curriculum design, and Carey, who had previously earned her degree in Education, combined their knowledge and working experiences to design science and later health curricula. Ron’s experience as the producer of a series on the EPA’s first report outlining the danger of global warming was the impetus for the company’s first trademarked product in 1988: Weatherschool, followed by StudentBody. Twenty years after Ron’s TV series on the first global climate predictions, he viewed the premiere of former Vice President Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. “I knew then,” Ron says, “That the predictions made years before would finally be getting national attention.”
Carey worked in marketing and sales while Ron produced lessons for classrooms and broadcasters with help from teachers, meteorologists and a small business grant from the National Science Foundation. The company’s sales continued to grow when they moved from St. Louis to Madison while Ron completed a Ph.D. in digital communication. Their plan was to license only one television station per market with either their customized science or health education products that coordinate classroom lessons with the local TV health or weather reporter.
Their product was increasingly successful because it filled a gap: since 1988 YCI has distributed free lessons and interactive software to approximately two million classrooms in grades K-8th, supported by reports from 140 licensed commercial TV stations, from Chicago to Atlanta and Washington, DC to Boston! Through the years they found that stations gravitated to Weatherschool because they were getting micro, local information and students liked it because they were interacting with other students as well as an expert. According to teachers, the program motivates students to become better learners.
The couple moved to Potomac in 2008 and Ron joined the faculty of the University of Maryland. As a tenured professor his accomplishments there are breathtaking: he is the Merrill College of Journalism’s Director of Ph.D. Studies, an Affiliate Associate Professor in UMD’s College of Information Studies, a Tow-Knight Disruptive Educator for Journalism Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and an Apple Distinguished Professor. He has published three book chapters and more than 50 research articles and conference presentations.
At the University of Maryland, Ron Yaros led a team to create the ScienceBEAT project designed to help teach climate change to students at three high schools in Prince George’s County. The team was composed of six UMD professors from the education, public health and atmospheric science departments. The project guided the students not only with gathering critical information about climate change, but also how to create content for general digital audiences that may not have experience with – or education in – science. According to a UMD press release, the project, which was funded by a two-year, $105,000 seed grant from the Maryland Council on the Environment, aimed to help students discover there are new ways to produce digital content that can simultaneously reach different types of digital users.To pursue these goals, high school students in earth science classrooms used interactive modules to explore data, predictions, and effects of climate change. At the same time, junior "reporters" in English and journalism classes interviewed their peers in the science class then produced text and multimedia "reports" to explain facts about climate change. Students in the science classes learned the skills of explaining science and kids in the journalism classes learned how to interview others and report complex information.
Ron’s research and teaching of mobile journalism and digital audience engagement contributed to YCI’s development of a new learning tool that took on renewed relevance during the pandemic: an interactive mobile app. As an official Apple and Android app developer, YCI customizes its apps for every TV affiliate wanting to coordinate their newscasts with local classrooms. The app has been test-marketed and YCI is now licensing the app to their previous affiliates as well as new stations. The apps have the potential to reach many more people, including any news viewer, homeschools, boy and girl scouts, etc.
This new product came about in part because, with COVID-19 surging across the country, kids were still not interacting socially and in the classroom. As Carey reflected, “COVID has been hard on everybody but there have been some good things coming out of it.” The app, which is free for teachers, parents and students, includes lesson plans, videos, quizzes and worksheets that teach kids the differences between today’s real-time weather and long-term climate change. Carey and Ron look at the app as an additional way of educating the next generation, which will face additional effects of global warming. They are optimistic, saying “Our new app will connect hundreds of news stations with their communities, one city at a time,” Carey explains.
In his spare time, Ron combines his long-time hobby as a drummer with his expertise in media and technology. He has designed and installed more than six high-end home theaters, including one featured in USA Today for winning second place in a national competition.
Carey herself has numerous interests. While serving as President of YCI she was an animal rescue volunteer and has trained therapy dogs then accompanied them to hospitals such as Walter Reed to bring joy to patients. A history buff, she has been active in the Daughters of the American Revolution and can trace her ancestors back to pre-revolutionary times in Deer Creek, Maryland. The couple now reside in Potomac’s “Merry-Go-Round” equestrian community. It’s a perfect environment for Carey, who decided to train for a dressage competition and purchased a pony two weeks before the pandemic hit. Her beloved horse, a Norwegian Fjord, already won first place in its first year of competition.
Ron and Carey are very proud of the two children they have raised: daughter Caroline, who is now working on the “front lines” of a hospital in Annapolis, and son Nicholas, who is studying for a degree in law enforcement.
