
First, congratulations to our student award winners, which were featured in our “2009 Cookout” blog post. Those honored were Becky Belobraydich for the Liberals Arts and Sciences Dean’s Award in Meteorology; Rachel Dearing and Bethany Norris for the Nancy Wick Award for Outstanding Achievement as Seniors in Meteorology; and Kristina Rohrbach for the Jack Villmow Award for Outstanding Achievement as a Junior in Meteorology. Congratulations Becky, Rachel, Bethany, and Kristina!
At the 62nd Annual Journalism Banquet, Carie Cunningham was awarded the Northern Television Center Weather Reporter of the Year Award. Congrats Carie!
Bethany Norris will pursue a master’s degree in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on a highly competitive teaching assistantship. She will be working under Dr. Larry Di Girolamo quantifying trade-wind cumulus clouds as well as developing climatologies of these clouds for incorporation into global climate models. Bethany also recently completed her honors capstone paper, entitled “Illinois Precipitation Anomalies in 2008,” which examined the unusually high precipitation Illinois received that year at several temporal and spatial scales to determine the frequency and spatial distribution of the precipitation. Congratulations on graduating with University Honors and best of luck at University of Illinois!

This past semester, Becky Belobraydich had the honor of being chosen to receive the University Women's Club Scholarship, which is based upon academic merit and personal achievement. She will be spending the upcoming summer at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma as the assistant for the National Weather Center Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Congratulations and good luck, Becky!



NIU graduate student Chris Gilson will be attending Mississippi State University this coming fall to pursue a Doctorate Degree in Earth and Atmospheric Science. Chris has obtained a research assistantship and will be working under the direction of Dr. Mike Brown on a hazard mitigation project for Mississippi State University. Good luck Chris!
NIU graduate student Jeremy Spencer has secured an extremely competitive teaching assistantship at Kent State University. Jeremy plans to pursue a Ph.D. at Kent State, researching human vulnerability to weather hazards. Best of luck in Ohio, Jeremy!
2008 NIU MET grad, Hiroyuki Ito, was recently awarded a graduate research assistantship at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. This highly competitive award will fund Hiro to work at the International Pacific Research Center whose focus is on climate variation and predictability in the Asia-Pacific region, including regional aspects of global climate change. Please see this blog entry for Hiro’s amazing journey.
Dr. Walker Ashley was featured as a guest speaker at Tom Silling’s enormously popular Fermi Lab Tornado and Severe Weather Seminar. Dr. Ashley’s spoke on his recent research on tornado vulnerability. You can watch the entire seminar, including Dr. Ashley’s talk, at WGN’s website.

Additionally, the NIU Meteorology faculty would like to thank the NIU-NWS Cooperative Observers who diligently took weather observations every morning at 7 am for the past 365 days. Their efforts are not only appreciated by the faculty, but by all of those who utilize these important records in their climate analyses -- from Gilbert Sebenste at NIU to the climate modelers examining global warming at NCAR. First, and foremost, we thank Kevin Nasiatka who performed admirably as the Coop's Weather Director this year. He was assisted by the following students: Trevor Edmonson, Erik Janzon, Kyle McAdams, Ryan Oates, Matias Sich, Rose Sengenberger, Carie Cunningham, Marius Paulikas, Alecia Osborne, and Ian Chang. Again, thank you.
