I spent much of my childhood catching bees and other insects. After being stung by a bee, I learned the hard way about having a bee sting allergy. I pivoted my sixth-grade science project from entomology to meteorology. The rest is history. There are a couple of lessons in that story for students and aspiring scientists as the landscape shifts.
Students at the collegiate and high school levels are paying attention to reports of federal scientists being dismissed, programs being cut and other research funding pressures. They are asking professors, mentors, and alumni contacts important questions about future job prospects, availability of funding for graduate school, or whether to consider different career trajectories.
Let’s revisit my bee story. That sting was a sudden stressor that caused a pivot in my scientific career. For much of my early childhood, I wanted to be an entomologist. However, that sixth-grade science project, “Can a 6th-grader Predict The Weather,” won a science fair and inspired a new passion. The honey bee inspired a Plan B. I went on to receive a doctorate degree in physical meteorology, work as a research meteorologist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, become President of the American Meteorological Society, host a pioneering show on The Weather Channel, and be elected to the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. To this day, I am a certified weather geek who followed a passion even if the immediate pathway was not always clear.
My story is no different than others that forayed into meteorology or atmospheric sciences. Membership surveys have shown that many members of the AMS developed a passion for weather in elementary or middle school. Most students who major in atmospheric sciences walk onto campus knowing that will be their field of study. It is rarely discovered.
Plan B And Passion
This leads me to my first piece of advice. Do not ever give up on you passion but have a Plan B. This may be the time to consider micro-credentialing or broadening the tools in the toolbox. Most universities or colleges offer double majors, co-majors, certificates, joint undergraduate – graduate programs and internships that can complement primary areas of study. We strongly advise our atmospheric sciences students to double major in geography to get exposure to GIS and social sciences perspectives. My daughter is pursuing a sociology degree with a sustainable certificate while being simultaneously enrolled in 3+2 program that allows her to work on a Master’s degree in non-profit leadership and management.
Data science, artificial intelligence, applied statistics, GIS, and computational sciences complement many physical or biological sciences career paths facing contraction or job market fluctuations. An aspiring scientist right now should consider co-mingling passion with pragmatism. My colleague Paul Walsh is a leading thought leader in the private sector within the meteorology community. When I lamented about students having to sacrifice passion and interests for pragmatism, he reminded of something Robert Frost once said, “Unite your avocation with your vocation.”
Candidly, I was inspired more by the wonder of hurricanes or mammatus clouds than python code or machine learning as kid. However, I worked with genetic algorithms and numerical prediction models in my graduate work at Florida State University. Many students or professionals have skillsets well-suited for “careers of the moment” that may be more resilient to socio-political volatility. As an example, the Europeans were already ahead of the U.S. in weather modeling skill. This year they rolled out an efficient, accurate operational AI forecast model.
The Academy, Private Sector, and Government Assure Resilience and Competitiveness
In moments like this, students often pivot to graduate school, but some have expressed concerns about funding. Many institutions have rescinded or reduced new graduate admission offers. Our global competitiveness and future prospects will depend on a STEM-ready workforce and a new generation of experts. Universities will find a way to educate scholars, but it may require novel funding models involving the private sector or foundations.
The private sector may also offer opportunities for aspiring scientists as they acquire slack from losses in the federal sector. However, they may not have the capacity to absorb the sudden glut of displaced federal workers and new college graduates hitting the market. Additionally, the private sector is not currently scaled for the full scientific, technical and multidisciplinary capacity required to advance new technologies in agriculture, get us to Mars, provide national security, or fend off the next lurking pandemic.
To ensure success, advancement and competitiveness, government, industry, and academia will need to complement each other and collaborate in unison. During my tenure at NASA, I watched industry, civil servant, and academic scholars work seamlessly to provide vital technologies and scientific knowledge related wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, and drouth. Each sector brings unique capacity, expertise, and efficiency to the table. Their viability also depends on specialized scientists, programmers, technologists, and engineers.
Some of the world’s greatest medical, engineering, and scientific societies discoveries did not come from plans, spreadsheets or pragmatism. They came from scholars, scientists, and inventors with a passion for what they do. I hope we never get to a point where we are extinguishing the passion of our brightest young mines or forcing them to go elsewhere.
We need them here now and in the years to come.
