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Hollings Scholarship Alum & Special Advisor to National Weather Service Director
Christina Crowe, a Hollings Alum from the first class in 2005, currently serves as Special Advisor to the National Weather Service (NWS) Director.
Hollings Alum Christina Crowe, Special Advisor to the National Weather Service Director. (Image credit: Christina Crowe)
She got her start in meteorology at the University of Missouri–Columbia, where she investigated the correlation between convective snow and large snowfall accumulations. She conducted her Hollings summer internship at the NWS office in St. Louis, Missouri. The experience of working on her internship project, in addition to personally experiencing several severe weather events, helped solidify her passion for operational meteorology. She earned her B.S. in Soil, Environmental and Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Missouri in 2007.
Christina then went to graduate school at the University of Alabama in Huntsville as an American Meteorological Society (AMS) Graduate Fellow to investigate the Hurricane Rita (2005) tornado outbreak and dual-polarimetric radar analysis of severe storms. While in graduate school, she worked as an intern at the NWS office in Huntsville, developing outreach materials and learning the ropes of operations, until she completed her master’s degree in 2009. After graduation, Christina worked at the NWS offices in Springfield, MO, and Huntsville, AL. She led their social media programs and used her programming skills for web design, development of the Graphical Forecaster Editor program, and support of the transition to AWIPS II as a beta-test site. During her time in Huntsville, she quickly gained experience responding to high impact weather events ranging from significant snow storms to tornado outbreaks. Christina recently completed a 2-year rotation in Washington, DC, as the Executive Officer for the NWS Director and then as Program Coordination Officer (PCO) for the NOAA Administrator. As PCO, she served as NWS liaison to NOAA line offices and NOAA leadership.
My Hollings experience really helped me appreciate the connections between all of NOAA's line offices. This experience led me to apply to work in the Program Coordination Office at NOAA, where I was able to help build those connections.
In addition to her operational experience in operational meteorology, Christina has published several peer-reviewed papers on convective snowstorms and dual-polarimetric analysis of tornadic storms. She has also been recognized as a research fellow for the Center for Advanced Public Safety (CAPS) at the University of Alabama, focusing on integrating social science (specifically, education) with meteorology.
Christina has been involved with the AMS since being president of the Student Chapter as an undergraduate at the University of Missouri, and has greatly enjoyed giving back to the Annual Meeting Student Conferences in recent years. She has been an active member of the National Weather Association (NWA) since college, serving on the Weather Analysis & Forecasting Committee as both a member & chair, overseeing the inaugural Student’s Master Class. She was also instrumental in starting the NWA’s “Supporting Women in Atmospheric Sciences” lunch which led to the creation of NWA’s first diversity committee.
