Penn State gave EMS student council president courage to pursue passions

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — If Luke Snyder could look back on themself just a few years ago, what they see would be unrecognizable.

It’s not that his time at Penn State turned Snyder into a charismatic, outgoing individual willing to jump at the chance for new opportunities. He always had those qualities. It was in other ways, he said, that the Penn State experience in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) allowed him to come out of his shell.

“I look back at who I was when I first got to college, and I’m just a completely different person,” Snyder said. “Penn State has made me so much more confident in my abilities. It’s where I felt at home. It made me just go after things that I was once afraid to do. I’ve been in so many situations where I felt reservations but was driven to overcome them.”

That drive helped Snyder, a junior majoring in meteorology and atmospheric science and broadcast journalism while minoring in climatology, achieve a slew of achievements. They’re president of EMS student council, a member of the live broadcast team at Campus Weather Service, host of a weekly radio show in Juniata County and director and on-air personality for Penn State’s award-winning show “Weather World,” to name a few.

Before that, Snyder was a scared senior at Moon Area High School — just outside of Pittsburgh –—making the trek with their family to Happy Valley for EMEX, the college’s student-run open house.

His friends were all talking about the thrill of getting out of high school in a quest for independence. But he wasn’t so sure. The EMEX experience — where he met current students, faculty and staff and had a chance to ask real questions and not get cookie-cutter answers — changed all that.

“That was the first moment when I could feel my anxieties melting away,” Snyder said. “I had so much fun.”

That night, they accepted their offer to attend Penn State.

Those experiences made Snyder want to become a leader in the college. When the EMEX chairperson position opened in student council, he jumped at the opportunity, sharing his personal experience during the interviewing process.

“I knew I wanted to be on the EMEX board. That’s what made me fall in love with Penn State. I wanted to do for others what was done for me,” Snyder said. “That was such an incredible experience. It was so monumental in my attitude toward college.”

Now Penn State is taking Snyder to where they want to go next: Becoming a science communicator. Snyder is passionate about climate change and the environment and wants to use his knowledge to help people make informed decisions about issues that are having an ever-increasing impact on their lives.

“Penn State has given me the tools to both understand and communicate climate science,” Snyder said. “In my career, I want to be able to use my credibility and my personality to bridge the gap between scientists and the general public.”