She also serves as the director of the Nebraska State Climate Office and state climatologist for Nebraska. Her research interests are in the areas of climate variability and change and climate impacts. This involves understanding the causes and drivers of variability (on various time and space scales) and how this variability influences historical trends. She got her BS in meteorology from North Carolina State University, her MS from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in agricultural meteorology, and her PhD from the University of Minnesota in soil science and climatology.