Alaina Ross, 31, who describes herself as an “old-ass undergrad” sits in Room 607 of Thornton Hall, surrounded by remnants of what was once a bustling meteorology program. Old textbooks line the shelves and unused weather monitoring equipment gathers dust.

“I feel like I’m inside a whale carcass, looking out, being like, ‘Oh, okay. I guess it’s not a whale anymore,’” Ross said, describing the remnants of the Meteorology Lab that was in the now-defunct Earth & Climate Sciences department.

San Francisco State University is being forced to reduce course offerings due to budget cuts. The university is focused on reducing the impacts to students, ensuring the classes that students need to complete their degrees are being offered but not necessarily the classes that students want. Students like Ross are finding it difficult to learn what they want for their future plans.

The path that led Ross to SFSU was anything but direct. After struggling in high school and attempting art school, she spent nine years climbing the corporate ladder, eventually becoming an executive assistant making six figures. But throughout her corporate career, one passion remained constant.

“I have been — I mean — obsessed with weather since about the moment I learned to read,” Ross said. “There’s something about the non-stop changing of the atmosphere every day, every week, every month, on these different scales that just consumes my brain in a way that I can’t let it go.”

Her longtime friend Ember Griffth has witnessed this lifelong weather obsession firsthand, dating back to their childhood in Humboldt County.

“Ever since I met her, she’s been obsessed with weather and tornadoes and hurricanes,” Griffth said. “Her favorite movie of all time forever has been ‘Twister.’ The first time I came over to her house to hang out, she said ‘You wanna watch “Twister” with me?’ I was like ‘Yeah, sure. I’ve never seen this movie before. What’s it about?’ — ‘It’s about tornadoes!’ We watched this movie and I could tell she had seen it so many times before and it just filled her with this energy.”

After Ross graduated high school, she came to San Francisco to attend the Academy of Art University. When she was close to graduating, the classes she needed weren’t being offered and she decided to drop out because she couldn’t afford to pay over $50,000 per year to attend.

Then, she found work as an executive assistant. Over the course of a decade, Ross worked her way up the corporate ladder until she was working with CEOs of major corporations. 

“I was working as the executive assistant to the number three executive at Zendesk, which is like a pretty massive company,” Ross said.  “Then I got a little burnt, I was able to work in a shift into a data analyst role for like a year and a half. And during that time, all I wanted to do was read about the weather, read about the state of California, read about the environment. Every time I traveled, the thing that I loved the most about the travel was a different environment.”

In 2023, she was one of thousands of workers laid off by tech companies.

“I was sitting in in my living room, kind of reeling, a month or two in, like ‘What the fuck am I doing?’” Ross said. “Like what am I gonna do with my life? I’m tired, I’m burnt out. I live in an apartment where I can see really, really high up and out along the hills — there’s like a thunderstorm moving through, and I was just like, ‘Oh my God, I love this so much.’ and I stayed up all night just watching that thunderstorm. And a friend of mine was like, ‘Dude at this point, why aren’t you studying this?’ And I was like, ‘You know, if there was ever a time immediately after getting laid off and not really having a plan to go forward like this — actually, it might be the right crazy time to do it.’ So, I pulled the trigger and I’m so fucking happy.”

Ross went on to choose SFSU for its unique environment, where she’s now trying to earn a Bachelor of Science in Earth Sciences, with an emphasis in ocean, weather and climate — the closest thing to a meteorology degree available.

According to the university’s bulletin for the major, students have to pick five out of eight courses for that emphasis. The course schedule shows that only two of those eight courses were offered this semester and those same courses will be offered in Spring 2025. Ross is worried that the other courses she wants won’t be offered in the next fall and spring semesters. 

According to Ross, she’s not the only student trying to complete the emphasis but she’s the only one who wants to focus on the weather aspect.

“I think a lot of people have let the emphasis part of it go and are just focusing on getting enough of the requirements for an earth science degree,” Ross said.

According to Ross, the School of the Environment received funding for one more course and students were asked to vote on which one to offer earlier this semester.

“Classes that I want are like atmospheric dynamics, planetary climate change, fluid dynamics, like those ones I would want and like it does not impact anybody else’s degree,” Ross said. “That’s only my degree and so I feel like I’m stuck in this sort of like corner.”

Malori Redman, a lecturer and SFSU alum who’s been mentoring Ross, sees exceptional dedication in her despite the obstacles.

“She wants to learn everything that she can absorb — she’s like a sponge,” Redman said. “She looks at things — outside resources outside of classes. She goes kind of way above and beyond.”

When Redman was a student here, she was able to enroll in many meteorology courses that are no longer offered. There were also many faculty members that she could talk to just to pick their brains. Ross is trying to follow a similar path in the field of meteorology but the options aren’t available anymore at SFSU.

“We can’t offer the coursework that we could when we had four meteorologists, none of whom have been replaced,” said Dr. Andrew Oliphant, director of the School of the Environment. “We’ve revised degrees because we frankly can’t offer a meteorology degree anymore — not with the full sequence say you would need to go into the National Weather Service or something like that.”

When Ross first arrived at the university, she met with Dr. Oliphant, who was candid about her options.

“San Jose State is a better place for her and that’s what I told her when she first came in for advising,” Dr. Oliphant said. “It’s a sad reality. But I’m not going to lie to students to try and keep them in our programs.”

For Ross, the decision to stay at SFSU is rooted in both practical and personal considerations.

“San Jose State sits in a rain shadow so you don’t really get much in the way of any weather unless you have an extraordinary system,” Ross said. “But here we have this really cool marine layer that comes in. We have a fog layer that interacts with the environment we have. We’re so close to the coast that what we’re experiencing is part of the reason that I’m putting a weather station back on campus.”

When she came on campus in Spring 2024, she realized that there must have been a weather station somewhere after she saw pieces of equipment in the Meteorology Lab. Ever since, she’s been working to replace it, relying on Dr. Oliphant and Dr. Alexander Stine for technical expertise.

Transportation also plays a role in her decision to stay, since she lives in Alameda.

“If I were to go to San Jose State, it would be at least an hour and a half plus. And it’s difficult to take public transit there and it’s really limiting,” Ross said. “My schedule would be dictated by my commute and my commute would be extraordinarily long.”

The transition back to student life has transformed more than just her career trajectory.

“She’s also getting to have fun again and she’s getting to pursue her passion and really dig deep into the science,” Griffth said. “I can’t tell you how many conversations I listen to about what’s going on in weather. It’s just such a delight to be able to hear her.”

For Ross, even the most challenging academic requirements feel different when applied to her passion.

“I can see where the things that I’m learning have applicability to the thing that I love,” Ross said. “Even just like calculus, I can see where derivatives, for example, are absolutely critical to being able to forecast because you have to be able to know the state of the environment at a given point.”

She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in atmospheric science so she can work on meteorology or climatology professionally. As she sits in the old lab, Ross has accepted that her path may be more difficult than originally planned and the compromise weighs heavily.

“I’m still getting I think an education that will serve me but it’s not necessarily what it could have been,” Ross said. “I still plan to finish my degree here. I will probably concurrently enroll in either Berkeley or San Jose at some point. I don’t know how that’s gonna work logistically, but at some point, that’s probably gonna have to happen.”

Dr. Oliphant said that she will be able to finish her Earth Science degree at SFSU, but whether it has all of the courses that would be the most beneficial to her path is a different story.

Still, for those who know her, Ross’s determination and enthusiasm seem undiminished.

“Her face lights up compared to when she was in her corporate job,” Griffth said. “Just to hear the spark in her voice, have her keep lighting up… it gives me hope for myself that I can do what I always wanted to do.”

While Ross is still trying to cobble together what she needs for her emphasis, she’s hopeful and looking forward to completing her weather station.

“Even though there’s challenges, I’m still so fucking stoked to be here,” Ross said.

This story was originally published on GoldenGateXpress on December 16, 2024.