UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The "People of Penn State" podcast is back with a brand new season and lineup of Penn Staters. The Alumni Association chatted with Emmy-nominated meteorologist Cheryl Nelson, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences graduate, about her journey from Penn State to national broadcast news and beyond. Here are a few highlights from her episode.
Q: You almost didn’t come to Penn State, so tell us how you made the decision to come to Penn State and why you changed your mind.
Nelson: I feel like I threw a "Hail Mary" in my senior year of high school. So I grew up in the Richmond, Virginia area, and I knew I wanted to go to a meteorology school. Penn State has a phenomenal meteorology program. However, at the time, I was also considering NC [North Carolina] State. My boyfriend in Richmond was going to college in Richmond. And I thought, “Ok, well, NC State is closer. It’s three hours versus six hours.” I went to both schools, and of course, it rained when I visited Penn State. So that automatically put a damper on things. I made an early acceptance to NC State for the fall semester of my senior year. Then by April of my senior year in high school, I said to my parents, “I don’t know if I’m making the right decision. We need to go back to both schools and visit both once again.” My parents, thankfully, obliged, and they took me back to NC State and then back to Penn State. And the second time I visited Penn State, thankfully, was a beautiful sunny day. I got to tour the campus and really experience it. And I fell in love, and I did a last-minute "Hail Mary." And that’s the best decision I ever made.
Q: Where did you land after graduation?
Nelson: My husband — whom I met at Penn State — we met in Tenor Hall and East Halls. We got married shortly after I graduated in 2002. He was in the army and did ROTC at Penn State, and he got stationed at Fort Drum in upstate New York, so near Watertown. So, I thought, “Okay, I have to focus my search on the snow belts.” And by some stretch of luck, I got a job offer in Syracuse, New York, at a TV station there as a meteorologist.
We lived in Oswego County, which, as a meteorologist, I always wished for snow, and I did snow dances. I got more snow than I could ever want in my entire life while living in Oswego County for those four years and forecasting lake-effect snow.
Q: How did you come up with the concept of Prepare with Cher LLC?
Nelson: I did college admissions for a local university here in the Norfolk, Virginia area. And while I was there, I was competing in pageants. I’ve always done pageants. I was in the Miss Penn State pageant, and I won the title of Mrs. Virginia International, 2014. My platform was natural-disaster preparedness.
And so I thought, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve got a stage now in Virginia to go out and do appearances and raise awareness about weather hazards and natural disasters. I’m going to take this year to do that.”
I ended up leaving that job in college admissions, and I focused on disaster preparedness. As the years went by after that, I said, “This is my passion. I’ve talked about going back full circle. And this really brought me back to weather, television, broadcasting and communicating. And I decided to start Prepare with Cher in 2019.
Q: Tell us about your experience teaching courses and weather preparedness.
Nelson: I taught a class in Nashville, and one of the participants there emailed me a week after the class and said, “Cheryl, you saved my life. I work in emergency management, and we had a tornado warning. I was at home, and I had to get to the emergency operations center to get to work. But I remembered what you said to put your own safety first, so I waited.”
He told me he waited 10 minutes to drive to work. And thankfully, he did, because that tornado touched down in his path that he would have driven to work, and he might have been swept up in his car by that tornado if he had gone at that point.
So when I know that my advice has personally potentially saved a life, that helps. I know I’m serving my community, and I know I’m making a difference. That goes back to the Penn State core values, too. And just everything that Penn State and “We Are” stand for.
Listen to the full episode here.
Check out all episodes of "The People of Penn State" at the podcast website.