March 3, 2011 - 5:05pm
Professor Profile: Perry Samson
BY DEVON THORSBY
Each year during the winter semester, Atmospheric Sciences Prof. Perry Samson takes a few select students up to North Campus, places them in a wind tunnel and exposes them to hurricane-force winds.
Samson said the experience is a way to give his extreme weather students a real-life lesson on the subject matter.
“Give them a taste of their own medicine,” Samson said with a laugh.
But despite more than 30 years teaching in a natural sciences field, Samson, a professor and associate chair of the Department of Atmospheric, Ocean and Space Sciences, says that he never intended to study science, let alone teach.
“I really wanted to be a performer,” Samson said. “I started in music school, but realized they actually expect you to have some talent.”
Samson earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in atmospheric sciences from the State University of New York at Albany, and later got his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.
Though Samson said he never planned to teach, he came to the University in 1979 and ended up enjoying the job.
“It’s very stimulating when you get a large group of students who bounce ideas off each other and our job as faculty is to throw out these half-baked ideas and just run with them,” he said.
Teaching the University’s introductory class in extreme weather, a class largely filled with non-science concentrators, Samson said he tries to make science useful and interesting for all students.
“Science is a contact sport,” Samson said. “Science is not the kind of thing you’re necessarily going to learn best by reading a book. You actually have to go out and experience it.”
And in Samson’s line of work, sometimes that contact can get a little too close for comfort. Two years ago while conducting research in the field, Samson said a tornado passed right over the car he was in, picked it up and bounced it off the highway.
Samson has also taken atmospheric science concentrators on storm chases during each spring semester for the past four years as a part of VORTEX2, a team of researchers from around the world working to better understand the structure and formation of tornadoes.
Samson described storm chasing as “more of a passion than a hobby.” His other major research focus is air pollution.
In addition to his research in the field, Samson is also a co-founder of the Weather Underground, a weather service with the largest network of personal weather systems, according to its website.
In May, Samson received the Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year Award by the President’s Council of State Universities in May for his research accomplishments and work to improve teaching strategies in the classroom.
“If you do this job long enough, certainly you’ll eventually get it right,” Samson said.
