Career paths
Alaska Weather Voices – Episode 1: Origins
This podcast miniseries focuses on the life and career of Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP)’s climate specialist, Rick Thoman. This podcast, hosted by Liz Carter, is made by ACCAP in partnership with Alaska Voices. In this episode Rick Thoman describes how he came to love weather, climate and Alaska. Starting in childhood, the episode follows Rick from elementary school projects on Alaska and tracking the weather in Pennsylvania to his first Alaska trip in 1986 that launched his weather and climate career.
“I’ve been interested in weather and climate from my earliest memories. As a child, probably late elementary school, junior high school age, every morning I would get up and I would look at the temperature on the thermometer that was outside my bedroom window. And I would write it down and I would plot it on a piece of graph paper.” – Rick Thoman
Read MoreLightning, wildfires, and Martian ice
“We asked them if they could tailor their models from the Martian landscape to Earth permafrost landscapes and from there we developed some early calculations of impacts of climate change on permafrost.” – Cathy Wilson
Read MoreLand stewardship in a changing world
“Venetie at one time in the 40s and 50s was a major gardening center and they would trade potatoes and carrots, things like that, they would go down and trade for salmon on the Yukon and supply vegetables and such for the steam boats.” – Lance Whitwell
Read MoreMentors as both friends and role models
“If all my legacy is that I have produced one scientist, that’s enough for me.” – Elena Sparrow
Read MorePartnerships
“As a leader you’re not there to tell people what to do. You’re there to support them succeeding at what they already can do best or helping them learn to do something better.”
Read MoreSurveying Alaska after World War II
“The person that owned that had no requirement to say hey there’s a big ice lens under here, don’t build your house there.”
Read MoreTwo career paths from El Yunque to Alaska
“When you get out to the real world the skills that you need are going to be really varied. I think that’s helpful for a new generation of scientists, be aware that there’s not one way to do it.”
Read MoreExpanding scientific literacy beyond the research realm
“If the public who isn’t a scientist knows what we do and why, then we’ve done good in education.”
Read MoreAbout “Alaska Voices”
Alaska Voices project leads Jessie Robertson and Bob Bolton explain what led them to record dozens of conversations about Alaska and Arctic issues.
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