By Charlie Woodrum, AMS Board on Membership;
Preparedness and Resilience Lead, NOAA’s National Weather Service
As an incoming Freshman at Florida State University, I recall being so excited and thinking to myself, “Finally, I get to study and learn more about the weather!” After years and years of asking my teachers in middle and high school, “How is what we’re learning going to help me as a meteorologist?”, I now enthusiastically could dive into my true passion. My first meteorology class was in my sophomore year, and while I loved the content, it was admittedly a bit of a shock to my system as to how much math was in my general meteorology class. I admittedly had a bit of a misconception that I didn’t need to study that much because the weather was fun and I would just pick it up naturally by going to class. After the realization that it was going to take a lot more work to excel as a meteorologist, it wasn’t until late in the fall semester of my second year at FSU that I learned from Paul Ruscher about the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, opportunities to become an AMS member, and how I could even get my registration and potentially even travel paid for by applying for assistantships and to be a student volunteer at the Annual Meeting.
I attended my first AMS Annual Meeting in January of 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia, as a student volunteer, and immediately I became immersed in the community, meeting students from other universities all across the country, professors at other schools, and professional meteorologists from all parts of the weather enterprise. I was hooked! The following year I attended the Annual Meeting in San Antonio and met my lifelong mentor and friend, Tanja Fransen, during a student breakout session. I told her about my desire to work for the National Weather Service (NWS) as a warning coordination meteorologist (WCM), and she gave me the advice to help my university become StormReady. I took this advice and ran with it. Ultimately, it helped me land a student internship with the NWS and was the beginning of what has been an incredible 18-year ride with the NWS, which included working for nearly 7 years in dream jobs as a regional WCM in Honolulu, Hawaii, and as a WCM at WFO Shreveport, Louisiana. In my current position with the NWS, I manage the StormReady and Weather-Ready Nation programs, working with WCMs daily, and I know this wouldn’t have been possible without the connections I made as a member of AMS.
As a student, I watched others struggle to find jobs coming out of college, many of whom hadn’t grown their professional network yet. At that moment, I had the realization of how thankful I was for the AMS in helping me grow my network and be effective nationally throughout the weather enterprise as a meteorologist. While I feel like the nudge from my professor and my extroverted personality helped, I honestly wished I would’ve known about AMS even earlier, from the day I started college. If you’re new to a meteorology program and haven’t joined AMS yet, my best advice is to give it a shot! Hopefully reading this article is the nudge you needed. You might just meet your lifelong mentor, a future colleague, a future supervisor, or even a future director, CEO, or chief meteorologist.
You can become a member of the AMS as a student by registering at https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/membership/undergraduate-students/.
