Degree: B.S in Atmospheric Sciences
How did the Stamps Scholarship help shape your undergraduate experience?
The Stamps Scholarship allowed me to open so many more doors in regards to my education than I otherwise could have. My Stamps enrichment funds were used mostly to travel to professional conferences. I was able to network with incredible professors and researchers as early as my sophomore year, encouraging me to explore research and academia as career paths (careers I otherwise would not have considered). As recently as this past winter, due to my attendance at these conferences, I was able to meet with many prospective graduate schools and advisors that eventually ended up offering me positions within their research groups. Without this opportunity to travel around the nation, learning more about my discipline and meeting the people that work in my field, I would not be on my current career trajectory, nor would I have many of the opportunities I now have for my immediate future.
Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your freshman self?
I would tell my freshman self very simply that “it will all work out.” We all want to be incredible and successful and brilliant right now, but it’s hard to be a top-notch radar meteorologist or cloud physicist if you’re still trying to get through physics E&M and calc 2! The people that we’re aspiring to be have been immersed in this field for much longer than we have, and sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of that and wonder why, right at this moment, we can’t be as great as they are. I find its most productive to just work hard at the work you have now, and focus on your future work and challenges as they come. The more you’re able to focus now on your current challenges, the better equipped you’ll be to tackle the future ones.
Who has had the greatest impact on you throughout your college career and how so?
Besides the Stamps family and the (absolutely mind-boggling) gift of a college education, the most impactful person I’ve encountered here is my research advisor, Dr. Bob Rauber. Late in my sophomore year he offered me the opportunity to work within his research group, which is one of the leading radar meteorology and cloud physics research groups in the field. For two years I’ve been able to analyze field campaign data from 2009-10, looking at elevated convection in winter storms, and will very soon be publishing that work as first author in a top peer-reviewed journal for atmospheric sciences. He showed me that I could be more than ordinary, and trusted in my abilities enough that he allowed me to run with an immense project and soon publish it. Without his faith in me, guidance as a researcher and student, and just overall kindness, I would have never found my niche or ended up heading down my current path.
Please share your most memorable Stamps Scholar experience.
The most memorable experiences for me have to be the biannual conventions. You know, its incredibly hard to grasp that someone out there saw your potential and is funding you to get a higher education. I love the conventions because they allow me to just internalize a little bit more the amazing opportunity I was given by the Stamps family. Like so many in the program, I can say unequivocally that their decision to make me a Stamps Scholar absolutely changed my life. There is honestly no way I would have been able to achieve what I have in college without their complete support. They genuinely want to know their Scholars and have personal relationships with them. I vividly remember chatting with Roe about the Final Four at the Michigan conference like we were old friends–he genuinely wanted to be standing there talking to me in that moment. Roe and Penny are some of the most incredible people that I have ever met, and I hope to someday be able to fully grasp the magnitude of the gift they have given me and the rest of the Stamps Scholars.
Plans after graduation?
After graduation, I will be headed down to the University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology for graduate school, working under Dr. Alexander Ryzhkov, one of the premier radar meteorologists in the world. He specializes in dual-polarization radar, so I will be examining in-situ measurements of ice microphysics and correlating those measurements to dual-polarization radar data.