Daniel Maslowski, a senior meteorology major and WTOP-10 TV chief meteorologist, won this year's Launch It competition with SWTRS, an idea to save lives and resources related to weather emergencies. He appreciates the faculty mentors and many opportunities he's found in the meteorology program.

Q: Why did you choose SUNY Oswego?

A: So the reasons why I came is because of two different things. One, Oswego is kind of the home away from home for me. The house that my parents purchased was actually a summer home, so I would come here every summer and winter, whenever I had vacation so that I could enjoy time here at Oswego. They have a good meteorology department. Al Roker went here, one of the biggest names, you know, in TV news. So I thought that this was gonna be a really good opportunity for me to come here. I have a house right across the street, and I'm going to a great meteorology department.

Q: Can you talk a bit about your out-of-class involvement?

A: I am working with WTOP. I was elected this summer to be the chief meteorologist for this year for Storm Team 10, which is the meteorologist section of news. So I was very grateful for that.

Q: What can you tell us about majoring in meteorology?

A: The meteorology department here, they really prep you, and a lot of people don't understand with a meteorology major, that there's a lot more than just looking at clouds, looking at models, looking at the weather. It's very intense in calculus and physics and chemistry. We use all of that in our major pretty much every single day.

Q: What do you think about the faculty?

A: The professors here in the meteorology department do a really good job of helping to teach us and explain these really intense and very intricate concepts so that we could apply it in our major. It's just makes it so much easier for us to explain to someone who's not a meteorology major what all of this stuff is. And that's especially important when you're on TV news, because you're talking to people. You're talking to viewers that don't understand a lot of the hard meteorology concepts that we learn about, so we really need to break it down so that it's easy for them to understand. And SUNY Oswego, the professors here do an amazing job of preparing us to do that.