 All right, our last presenter. Last but certainly not least, yes, you are. You're standing right there. It's Ben Feldman, the Nessie Graduate Assistant, joining us from the University of Oklahoma. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for staying here for the last presentation of the day. My name is Ben Feldman. I am going to be starting my PhD this fall at the University of Oklahoma. And today, I'm here to tell you about the end of a chapter and what life is like after the internship program. And to kind of start off, I wanted to kind of put together a timeline of the really impactful events that brought me here today to be in this position. So to begin in 1999, I was born. But I really feel that this is important, because my family has been so close to me from a young age. They were the ones that inspired me to do the weather. And I mean, it really was the basis for where I am today. But my meteorological journey really started in 2012, following a very impactful event that occurred in my area. So the night of June 29, 2012, a very large derecho, which actually started as a super self-understorm in eastern Iowa, tracked all the way across the eastern United States. And within my immediate area box in the orange domain, we received widespread 80 to 90 mile per hour wind gusts close to that of the Category 1 hurricane. And that storm itself resulted in 13 deaths initially. But actually in the week that followed that event, 34 people within my area perished due to not having power for over a week followed by a heat wave. And so this event really signified to me that not only does weather have direct impacts that ensue following an event, but that there are these cascading impacts that are really felt and experienced days and weeks after these events. Following this, in 2018, after my freshman year at Millersville University, I actually had the chance to complete a disaster relief project in San Juan, Puerto Rico, nine months following Hurricane Maria. And in doing this project, there were several things that I was able to learn about the local community. And so you see that middle figure here. I'm actually out in a mangrove forest. And we were getting rid of these invasive species of plants that had grown after the hurricane, which actually helped to mitigate some of the storm surge that comes inland. We were able to tour one of the local universities in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I had a picture here with just some wild horses we were able to experience. But through these experiences of being able to talk to the locals, hearing their experiences of the hurricanes, it really incited this passion for me to be able to not only learn and understand the weather, but to be able to help others with it as well. My passion and interest within research really came about in 2020 when I completed an internship project through the Hauling Scholarship. Now, this was in the middle of COVID. So unfortunately, while I did get a site visit out to Key West, I was home for the summer. But it really sparked this idea that I wanted to continue research and to pursue it long term. And so following my graduation from Millersville University with my cohort here, I began my journey as a master's student at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 2021. Now, it was a really big daunting experience for me, going from a very small undergrad university to a very large R1 institution like the University of Oklahoma. And so I was looking at ways to be able to kind of enhance my research skills and to be able to complete an opportunity. And last summer, I did apply for the NCAR Earth System Science Internship, also known as the NESI program. And I have pictured here my cohort from our first day of our internship to our last when we gave our poster presentations. And then also just a picture of us doing Boulder Pride with True Colors Employee Resource Group. And this experience was an incredible summer. It was the basis for my master's thesis. It allowed me to make incredible connections and to really build myself up as a scientist in the field. But obviously, there's always the end to these timelines. And so it really raises the next couple of questions. Now that the internship is over, what are the most important takeaways that you get from these experiences? And what really comes next following this process of the program? And so I thought that I would start this presentation by highlighting why these internship opportunities are so important and why they are really helping to build you up as scientists. So the first thing is that this internship opportunity allows you all to build and develop on critical industry knowledge, such as professional development research skills and other things. I know you all have seen this figure from a PDWS series a couple of weeks ago, but this is actually from the latest 2023 report, which actually looked at employer. So you'll see here, there are two different color bars. The color bar that is in darker blue indicates the percentage of employees who list the importance of a certain skill in the job field. Whereas that lighter blue line represents the proficiency of new graduates who exhibit these skills. And so what you'll see here is that certain qualities such as leadership, professionalism, critical thinking, even communication, while these are highly sought after skills, they are not well represented in the field as new graduates. And so you all having these experiences of being involved in these professional development workshop series, being able to build on your communication skills, these are going to set you apart when you are preparing yourself to get into the real field. Next, this internship opportunity allows you to really build on your interests and understand what you're passionate about. Hopefully for you all, you like the research that you did this summer. And if you didn't, that's okay. It allows you to understand what you're most passionate about and what you really want to pursue moving forward in your career. The third thing is that these internship opportunities are so crucial to future opportunities that you may want to do moving forward. And so I've taken here from the study as well what were the top attributes that people from organizations were looking at when people were applying for these jobs. And you'll see here, it's listed on a one to five scale with four holding very high influence and five being extreme influence. And you'll see here that the top two attributes being listed for these applicants are both completing an internship within the organization and the internship experience in your industry. And I also just wanted to pull another figure which kind of lists the screen number of candidates by GPA from the percentage of respondents. And especially after we're seeing this day of age of COVID we've seen a rapid drop off in the percentage of applicants that are just being screened by GPA. And so it really heightens and shows that these outside experiences that you're building during your college careers are really important in facilitating your professional development and your success in the field moving forward. And then lastly, which is something that I have struggled with as a student over the last couple of years, learning the importance of work-life balance. We are students currently right now, yes, but within the summer we hope that you've taken the opportunity to really work and develop on a nine to five schedule, be able to find your interests that lie outside of these internship programs while being able to enjoy the research as well. Now I could go on for myself about how after the internship all the amazing opportunities that have come out for me but I thought it would be really awesome to kind of share the personal experiences of a few different interns that had participated in past programs. And so for today, we're actually gonna be hearing the stories of a few past interns from last summer here at NCAR. So to begin, we're gonna be listening to Aaron Ami who was a 2022 Nessie intern and a current PhD student at the University of Illinois. At the University of Illinois and I was a Nessie intern last year. Nessie was an incredible opportunity for me and I was able to take so many different things away from the internship. The first being that I was able to continue working on my project that I started last summer with my Nessie mentor. And we've continued to work on that project to this day with hopes of publishing it in the future. Some different skills that I've been able to learn after the internship like student coding techniques with Python, as well as writing techniques for journal publication. Another thing that I'm able to take away from the internship is the relationships that I was able to create with people of working at NCAR as well as interns within the program. I think it was really important that I was able to expand my network at such a young age in my career. And I'm sure down along the line, it'll help with applying for jobs as well as collaborating with future research projects. Awesome. Next, we're gonna share the story of Will Niswanger who was again a 2022 Nessie intern and currently employed through NCAR in the EOL lab, Earth and Observing Laboratory. Hello everyone. My name is William Niswanger. And last year I was a Nessie intern. I just wanna let you guys know the opportunities do not stop with your internship. I'm a technician in the Earth Observing Laboratory and I'm out here for the M2 hats field camping. Behind me is a tower array of 50 sonic animometers and gas analyzers. And we are studying the multi-point monon over-pop in life and things. I only knew that I wanted to be here because of my Nessie internship. So if you see any opportunities that you want, ask your mentors, ask everyone for guidance and we will get you here. NCAR is a great organization to be a part of as you know. And I hope to see you guys further down along on your careers. All right, take care everyone. Awesome. Our third speaker we're gonna have is Frances Gladys who is actually the 2022 code intern with the CyParks program last summer. Services, so I get to continue to community build this aisle. I did last year and I'm super grateful for the time that I had as a code intern because this is how I was able to take community and define it and make it my home in Colorado. I am now being the same in Virginia. I'm actually in Arlington this weekend. So I'm still exploring, I'm still checking out placements and I'm still traveling into this role as the director of the Center for Mental Psychological Student Services. So with all that being said, I hope everyone's having a great presentation and a great poster symposium. Miss you all so much and yes, continue to be in community with each other because times like these are super special. Love you, bye. And then last but not least, we have Meng Yang Zhao who was a 2022 Nessie intern as well. I'm a PhD student at University of Connecticut. I was a Nessie intern during the summer of 2022 where I worked in the 6G lab on ocean of plenty enhancement in the realm of CO2 removal. Through the Nessie program, I got to work closely with NCAR scientists which enrich my knowledge and largely enhance my computational skills. So I'm really grateful for the guidance and support during the internship, especially on career development. It actually led to another GVP program that I just finished this summer. So it's a truly rewarding experience and lots of fun. Awesome. So I hope from hearing those stories, you're able to see how even just a year after the internship, there are so many opportunities that exist for students, whether it's here within NCAR or outside the organization, this is only at the beginning. And so with that, I want to just list a few ways that I kind of would preface in order to stay successful post internship that really helped me as well after the process. The first is to stay connected. Oh my goodness. In the day of social media, there are so many ways to stay connected. Whether it's LinkedIn, meeting at a conference, we all have become really familiar with Google Meet or Zoom this year and it's really easy to stay in touch that way as well when you aren't close to someone physically. The next, which seems kind of weird, but it's to do a brain dump of everything that you've learned this summer. And when I did this, I actually found that there were so many of these little skills that I had kind of thought about and didn't really realize are super important within our field, such as communicating with scientists, being able to effectively communicate your research in a way where people can understand it. There are a lot of these technical and soft skills that'll be transferable wherever you work. And so these things that you developed during the summer are here to last and stay. Next, once you have done a brain dump and added these new skills onto your resume, update it and be able to show it to other social media accounts, whether it's LinkedIn or other ways, you wanna make sure that your connections are staying up to date with the things that you were able to accomplish this summer and where your passions and skills lie and kind of your next steps. And then last, stay up to date with future internships and fellowships that may rise. We just heard from May Young who talked about the fact that GVP is an option, especially amongst grad students after an internship to stay connected with your mentors and to continue research that you've done. So just be on the lookout for other programs and opportunities that are out there and available for you all. And then I'm going to finish my presentation with my acknowledgments to start. Jerry, thank you for being such a great mentor for me the last two summers. I honestly don't know what my life would have been like without Messi and it has really changed my career in so many fundamental ways and I am very thankful to you. Julius, my right hand man, if there was anything that I was doing this summer, I was doing it with Jules and I just wanted to say thank you for tolerating me and for making a great team with me. It's been a really fun summer and I'm gonna miss you. To all of the internship leads, Aliyah, Virginia, Khadidia, Marisa, it has been such an honor to grow under your guidance. I have learned so much from the standpoint of helping, ooh, no, no, no, of being able to be on the outside of a program and you all have built so much confidence in me and my skills and I just wanted to say thank you for that. And then last but not least, all the interns, you all would not have made the summer possible and it has been such an enriching experience to really learn and grow from you all too. I have changed the way that I think about things and I know moving forward, those things are going to stay with me forever and so I just wanted to say thank you to all of you. With that, I would take any questions. Sorry, my allergies were kicking. I don't have any questions for Ben. Great presentation, Ben. I see that your next step is a PhD program and I'm wondering your leadership skills show and do you see yourself directing a internship program in the future? That is a great question. You know, from my experiences this past summer and from my experience this past fall, so really what sparked the interest for me was being a TA in the fall for an introduction to meteorology class for sophomores and what I loved about that class was seeing the passion that students had in the field for being able to learn and grow, to develop skills and for that type of class, it being an intro class, really being able to see them develop those first kind of aha moments within science. This past summer, I very much felt the same way. It's a bit different from being on the teaching side versus the research, but I think that from both of those facets and kind of being able to combine them together, it's definitely something that would interest me moving forward. I like the idea of being able to work with students and help build them up, because that's what we need moving forward in our field is we need to be properly training our next generation of scientists to be solving these problems that are occurring. We know we're in a changing climate currently and so the more that we're able to help our future generations, the better off they're gonna be moving forward. Any other questions? Just attack myself. No more? Well, that's a beautiful presentation. Thank you so much, Ben. Yeah, oh. Oh, and behind me, sorry. Yeah. So what surprised you most about coming back? Ah, what surprised me? Honestly, I think the amount of work that goes into an internship program was what caught me off guard. And I think to start, I was working with Jerry through the recruitment process, through the selection committee, all throughout it. And I think what it's really showed me is that the work that we do during the summer is only the smallest portion of what goes on during all the other months of the year. So I think that was one of the biggest things is that you need to be organized and you need to be doing everything well out in advance because there's so many tasks. I don't know if there is anything else. I think the biggest other thing that I've noticed about this opportunity from the summer is that it went by so much faster for me than last summer. I don't know, I know they say time flies by when you're having fun and it has been an incredible summer, but it's been really interesting that I felt like this experience from more of like an admin role has gone by a lot faster. Yeah, time flies by when you're having fun, also when you're old. Yeah. Hey. And I'm old and having fun. Don't call me out like that. No. Perfect. Thank you so much for that. Thank you. Wonderful.