Whirlwind Ascent

Ginger Zuidgeest ’02 wakes up at 4 a.m. each weekday with resolve. “Since Valpo, I’ve been on this constant mission,” she says. “One of my best friends calls me ‘The Explainer,’ and it’s true. When you’re a scientist on television, you’re an explainer. You have to take science and make it simple, while also teaching […]

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A Perfect Place for Learning

Long before Valparaiso University existed, weather was already shaping life on campus. “We are on a terminal moraine, which means when the glaciers formed, they worked their way to Valpo and stopped,” says Grace Roman ’17, a geography major. “The melting ice deposited till, debris, and rocks and made a nice big hill,” she explains. […]

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Digging for Answers

Meteorology students in Professor Craig Clark’s Research Topics class have benefited from Valpo’s inimitable weather patterns. In fall 2013 the class spent an entire semester studying a weather phenomenon Northwest Indiana knows well: lake-effect snow. “Lake-effect snow tends to form in several different categories,” says Andrew Vande Guchte ’14, one of Professor Clark’s students. “One of these […]

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A Generous Mentor

Valpo meteorology students benefit from an ongoing relationship with one of the nation’s premier broadcast meteorologists. Valpo’s meteorology students have the benefit of close proximity to Chicago, the third largest television market in the country. Many Valpo students participate in internships at Chicago television stations. For the past 20 years, nearly 100 meteorology students have […]

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Ready for the Storm

After their years of intense study and rigorous training in Valpo’s meteorology department, alumni Elizabeth Thompson ’10 and Gavin Roy ’10 were well prepared when they boarded a research vessel bound for the Indian Ocean. In the summer of 2011, Elizabeth Thompson ’10 and Gavin Roy ’10 accepted an opportunity to join an expedition to the […]

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