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My college experience has been anything but typical. I skipped a few grades in elementary school, graduated from high school when I was 14, then moved to Colorado and started at UNC when I was 15. I’ll graduate next year at age 18. My younger brother will also be starting college early. Our parents have really helped us excel in school. My mom even took a year off from her job when I first started college to move from Phoenix to Greeley with me.

There are a limited number of meteorology programs in the U.S., so I had to look outside of Arizona. Colorado appealed to me because I’d never seen snow as a child and the meteorology program at UNC is unique. I’ve really gotten to know my professors and had the chance to do research with them. I also like the fact that UNC is a medium-sized school. It’s not so small that it doesn’t offer all the opportunities that you want, but it’s also not so big that it’s intimidating.

My goal is to get my PhD in Meteorology and do weather research for a living, developing the tools that are used to forecast the weather. Professor Paul Nutter and I are working on a paper together that we’re hoping to publish in Monthly Weather Review. For an undergraduate to have that kind of opportunity and have such a close, working relationship with the faculty, that’s what makes UNC so great.

Last summer I was selected to be a NOAA (National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration) Hollings Scholar.  They choose about 100 students from around the country and each student gets to do an internship at a NOAA site. So I’ll be working this summer in Boulder, developing computer programs to predict thunderstorms. Working at a research lab will give me amazing experience to prepare me for graduate school and my career.

I’m a member of the American Meteorological Society Student Chapter and we do a lot of activities that go beyond the curriculum. We go to area schools and educate kids about weather safety, which is a lot of fun. Other fun things I do include skiing and computer programming (I know that sounds like work, but it’s actually something I really like to do!). I’ve also been a math tutor at UNC. Helping people is something I really enjoy and tutoring is a great way to get to know people and feel like you’re making a difference.

Major:  Meteorology and Mathematics