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Jessie Choate

Profile picture for Jessie Choate

Contact Information

Natural History Building Rm. 3076
Senior Instructor & Academic Advisor

Biography

I joined the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Fall 2019. After graduating from the department with my BS and MS I went on to become a member of the Warn-on-Forecast  research group at the National Severe Storms Laboratory and the Cooperative Instituted for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies in Norman, Oklahoma. My research has always focused on severe weather. As a graduate student I studied elevated mesoscale convective systems as part of the PECAN project. At the same time I was working part-time as a broadcast meteorologist at the Champaign television station WCIA. While part of NSSL, I studied the tornado and other severe weather warning times and how to extend the lead time to an hour through data assimilation in ensemble forecasting. I was also able to work directly with NWS forecasters using the ensemble product in real time to help better meet operational needs. In the evenings I completed my MBA at the University of Oklahoma with a focus on energy. 

Now that I am back at UIUC my main focus is undergraduate students! I teach two undergraduate classes a semester and and the undergraduate advisor. I help students from when they are first interested in joining the department and visiting from high school through when they are applying to graduate. A fantastic part of our department is having faculty members solely dedicated to our undergraduates' success. I am here to help make a course plan for each student's time on campus, revise the plan each semester, and even help with resumes and cover letters when employment is on the horizon. 

 

Education

  • MBA with a Graduate Certificate of Energy, University of Oklahoma, 2019
  • M.S. Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016
  • B.S. Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014

Awards and Honors

Faculty Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Mentorship in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences (2019-2020)

List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students

 

Courses Taught

  • Severe and Hazardous Weather 
  • General Physical Meteorology
  • Broadcast Meteorology 
  • Radar Meteorology
  • Introduction to Meteorology 

Additional Campus Affiliations

Campus General Education Committee

Curriculum Committee

Undergraduate Affairs Committee

Outreach/Public Engagement Committee (Chair)

Recent Publications

Clark, A. J., and Coauthors, 2019: A Real-Time Simulated Forecasting Experiment for Advancing the Prediction of Hazardous Convective Weather

Wilson, K.A., P.L. Heinselman, P.S. Skinner, J.J. Choate, and K.E. Klockow-McClain, 2019: Meteorologists’ Interpretations of Storm-Scale Ensemble-Based Forecast Guidance. Wea. Climate Soc., 11, 337–354, https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-18-0084.1

Skinner, P.S., D.M. Wheatley, K.H. Knopfmeier, A.E. Reinhart, J.J. Choate, T.A. Jones, G.J. Creager, D.C. Dowell, C.R. Alexander, T.T. Ladwig, L.J. Wicker, P.L. Heinselman, P. Minnis, and R. Palikonda, 2018: Object-Based Verification of a Prototype Warn-on-Forecast System. Wea. Forecasting, 33, 1225–1250, https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-18-0020.1