Professor, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

AGU embraces the global community and welcomes leaders representing various identities, voices, and perspectives. List any identities, voices, and perspectives you would bring, including but not limited to nationality, regional representations, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and anything else you feel comfortable sharing.

It is remarkable how scientific pursuit motivates us in the labor of communicating across our differences while embracing our unique histories and customs. I am a first generation academic (the first in my family to hold a college degree), and it surprised me how science provides opportunity to see the world in its human fullness — beyond mechanisms and processes. While I am otherwise of the identity markers overrepresented in the sciences, I feel that my uninitiated background has given me a fresh appreciation for how we might find insights and wonder outside the norms in which we were raised to be most comfortable. My work with students reflects some success at putting this perspective into practice (each of my Ph.D. advisees to date were from one or more underrepresented groups, and remain in the sciences). I also work in a small city with rural farm and ranchland for hours around - a place that would likely make some ask “there are scientists there?” It has been a pleasure bringing global opportunities to my community and students, and I look forward to bringing these perspectives in service to the ASE and AGU community in turn.

Volunteer experience that relates to this position:

I have served as AGU Atmospheric and Space Electricity (ASE) Secretary for the past two years, and am past Chair of the American Meteorological Society’s Scientific and Technological Activities Commission (STAC) on Electricity. I have served as overall conference planning representative in both of these roles. I have also served on data services and scientific software steering committees for NASA Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center (GHRC) and National Science Foundation Unidata.

This role aims to catalyze community and build AGU as envisioned by the strategic plan. This leadership position is a dual role - helping to advance AGU’s strategic plan as a member of Council and leading your section. How would you support the Board, staff and other sections to achieve AGU’s vision, values, mission, and goals? How will you engage with members of your section to execute AGU’s strategic plan?

While a small section today, Atmospheric and Space Electricity has been a steady presence in AGU since its founding, and AGU’s Annual Meeting is the primary gathering in the Americas for our discipline. Representing the needs of ASE membership at the AGU Board is vital to sustain AGU’s stature as a preeminent venue for disseminating fundamental discoveries in ASE, and in linking those discoveries to societal challenges.

AGU’s extraordinary growth, driven especially by the urgent scientific and societal interest in addressing climate change, now convenes an extraordinary cross-section of experts on the Earth System. The membership faces common themes of tackling extraordinary data volumes, adapting to new technologies that can facilitate open science, and finding common language to address problems at disciplinary interfaces without delay. AGU is strongest when its growing, diversifying membership and leadership remain strongly linked in the web of societal stakeholders in our work, and us in theirs.
I look forward to working with our incoming President and Past President, Secretary, and Early Career section leadership to support and grow the ASE community, building these links within and beyond AGU.

Section affiliations:

Atmospheric and Space Electricity; Atmospheric Sciences; Nonlinear Geophysics