I am a non-traditional student who decided to change careers after 14 years in retail management. I started working for the Walgreen company as a management intern in the summer of 2006 and earned my bachelor’s degree in Marketing from Arizona State University in 2007. I became a Store Manager in 2010 and continued in that role until I stepped down to pursue an education in physics and astronomy in May 2020. The passion for my previous career came from the opportunity to operate a business as if it were my own. As the retail world shifted online, the company’s strategy changed and with that, many of the decisions I loved to make for my store moved to the corporate offices. As the intellectual challenge of my job, along with the passion for what I was doing fizzled, I realized that using my intellectual ability to its fullest and loving what I am doing is incredibly important to me in my career. With 30+ years remaining in the workforce, I decided that investing in my education to pursue a career path as challenging, fascinating, and rewarding as astronomy would be well worth it.I have had two research opportunities that have been critical to developing the skills I will need ingraduate school and beyond. Most recently, I completed the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program at the SETI Institute which allowed me to expand on the skills and interests I developed from my position at Lowell Observatory. The research I have been conducting at Lowell for over a year consists of modelling meteor showers to guide searches for their undiscovered long period comet parents. Through these research experiences, along with coursework during my undergraduate education at NAU, I have developed skills in orbital dynamics, observational astronomy, computer science, image reduction, image analysis, and photometry that are essential to conducting research on small solar system bodies.
