I am the Associate Director for the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) at the University of Oklahoma’s National Weather Center and I am an Instructor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability. I am also the Manager of the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program Data Quality Office, located within CIMMS. I have lived and worked in Norman since August 1995 after migrating from the Illinois State Water Survey at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I received the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences Dean’s Award for Outstanding Service in 2011 and 2017.
I am the faculty advisor for OU Green Week and for the Geography and Environmental Sustainability Club. I was named the OU Student Government Association Outstanding Faculty Member in April 2017, and was given a College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences Dean’s Award for Outstanding Teaching in September 2017. I normally teach GEOG 3443, Environment and Society, which takes a critical look at human-environment relations past, present, and future. It is a required course for some majors and a Gen Ed upper division elective for anyone.
Research wise, I am interested in the role of place in tornado risk perception, Native American perceptions of weather and climate, and environmental discourse. Current projects involve the study of tornado risk perception in central Oklahoma, and critiques of the settler colonialism narrative as it continues to play out in Oklahoma and of the powerful oil and gas discourse that dominates all aspects of life in the state. With colleagues Kim Klockow and Rick Smith, we recently had published a chapter “Hazardscapes: Perceptions of tornado risk and the role of place attachment in Central Oklahoma” in the edited volume Explorations in Place Attachment, edited by Jeff Smith and published by Routledge in 2018.
More details about the past are contained in my mini curriculum vitae, which can be found elsewhere on this site.
