A new semester is upon us and so is a new recipient of the Atmospheric Sciences Distinguished Alumnus Award: Professor Lourdes Aviles, Plymouth State University. She will be our special Seminar speaker on October 17, 2023. We wanted to know what our alum has been up to since she graduated from these hallowed halls.  She was kind enough to fill us in.

What is your current position?

I am currently the Associate Provost at Plymouth State University. I just started this position in June 2023, after nineteen years as a meteorology professor and more recently, as chair of the program and director of the academic unit (a sort of school or small college) that houses Meteorology, Climate Studies, Physics, Computer Science, Robotics, Mathematics, and Mathematical Data Science. I am also a trustee and Vice Chair of the board for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, and a trustee of the Mount Washington Observatory.

How did your experience at UIUC help you find your first position after graduation? What skills or knowledge did you learn throughout the program that you found most useful in your career?

I came to Plymouth State right after finishing my Ph.D. After years of experience as a teaching assistant and doing other high-level support for the undergraduate courses taught by professors in the department, I had decided that I wanted to be a professor and that I did not want to worry about supporting my salary with grant funding, so I sought jobs where I could do research but for which my main roles would be teaching courses. I felt ready to do that, thanks to the education I gained and the experiences I had at the UIUC Department of Atmospheric Sciences. 

I came to UIUC with B.S. and M.S. degrees in Physics and I had to learn all my meteorology and basic atmospheric science at the same time as I was taking my first graduate atmospheric physics, dynamic meteorology, and synoptic meteorology, and I loved it all! UIUC is therefore where I became a meteorologist. It is also where I learned how to be a good teacher. Not only did we have a special topics course on teaching atmospheric sciences that myself and many of my classmates jumped into when the opportunity arose (many of us did end up becoming faculty members at different universities after our time at UIUC), and like all of my teaching assistant colleagues, I accompanied the professors to their classes—where I ran daily weather presentations, and sometimes taught the class for them—but also, I had some amazing role models for how to teach with integrity, with clarity, and excitement, and I gained experience promoting active learning in the classroom. I remember everyone with whom I took classes, and everyone with whom I worked as a TA very fondly. 

Over the nearly two decades as a professor of meteorology I had the opportunity to teach a large number of courses, including introductory courses for majors, general education courses for non majors, and specialized courses for upper level and graduate students. The courses I took at UIUC often in fact served as a go-to guide when I was preparing to teach my own versions of things like dynamic meteorology, atmospheric physics, climate dynamics/general circulation, and tropical weather and climate for the first time.  

I was also fortunate to have an extremely supportive advisor, who gave me the freedom to pursue topics of my interest, even if they did not fall within her main research areas. I didn’t know it back then, but I was already showing signs of not following a straightforward path through my career. I also had a group of brilliant and generous doctoral committee members that provided me with their wisdom as I worked on my research, some of them becoming lifelong friends.

What are you most proud of from your UIUC experience?

I came to UIUC with no money, English as my second language, very limited research experience, and being new to atmospheric sciences. I was fortunate to encounter supportive and kind people that helped me get settled in all aspects of the word. I also worked very hard and was very successful in my classes, and even though it took me a while to find my footing in my dissertation research, I had a lot of fun with the topic I chose, and it was extremely well received by my committee. I remember my dissertation defense more like a party where everyone was so excited about the research and provided such positive feedback. I found lifelong friends among my professors and my classmates, I found the person with whom I was going to spend the rest of my life, and I had both of my children while finishing my degree. I found my identity as an atmospheric scientist and professor, and I was given opportunities that allowed me to follow in that direction. I am extremely proud of my personal and professional growth during the time I spent at UIUC.

What activities and hobbies do you have outside of school?

I love to take pictures of nature and places, and to play with photography composition. I love singing and I belong to a local community choral society with nearly 100 singers that range in age from 19 years old to 90. It was in fact at UIUC that I joined a choir for the first time. I also very much enjoy musical theater and all forms of art. 

I love learning new things and finding connections between phenomena and events and putting them all together into a sort of story or stories. Even though my new position is as an administrator, I will continue doing this as I work on a textbook about the science and history of atmospheric optics.  It makes sense to me to do this in my “spare time,” in the process helping me maintain my identity as an atmospheric physicist, a writer, and a teacher.

What do you know now that you wish you knew during your time at ATMS/UIUC?

There is not really anything I wish I knew that would make a difference in how I did anything back then, but maybe it would have been nice to tell myself to keep working hard, and that everything was going to work out well. Maybe it would have been good to hear that my path would be out of the ordinary or what I understood was the normal path for a Ph.D. student and professor in atmospheric sciences, and that was OK. Maybe it would have been good to hear that I would meet many outstanding people throughout my career and that I would love teaching, doing research, and serving my students, my university, and my field. I would have also been surprised to hear that twenty-something years later I would have the great honor to be chosen as a distinguished alum.

 What advice do you have for students as they look for future careers?

Here is my advice. There is not just one way to be a successful atmospheric scientist. It is ok to do things differently than your professors, then your classmates, or then the idealized version of a career you envision. Find something you are passionate about and make it part of your work, even if it is not your main work. It is okay to evolve as a scientist, professor, researcher; it is also okay to shift gears when life puts a different path in front of you. Keep learning new things that you find fascinating. Be of service to your field (reviews, committees, mentorship, etc.), do it with a positive attitude and don’t expect anything, but you will gain much from it: friendships, connections, exposure to new ideas, new knowledge, new wisdom. Sometimes you will have to do tasks that you do not enjoy so much, and that is okay. Sometimes you will have to put the needs of others before yours, and that is okay. There will also be times when you will be the one getting the attention; it does go back and forth. Put your heart into everything you do.