With only a few weeks left until summer, Katie Hutton began to feel anxious. As a mining engineering and German double major, she knew securing an internship would help set her apart when looking for jobs after graduation. Typically, mining engineering students find internships in the fall semester, but because Hutton enrolled in the program during the spring semester, she was scrambling to find an internship.

But then a chance conversation with her faculty adviser, Jeffrey Kohler, the George H. Jr. and Anne B. Deike Endowed Chair in Mining Engineering, opened a door for Hutton.

In the middle of a wide open plain in the panhandle of Oklahoma, Penn State student Brad Guay squints as he peers at clouds several miles in the distance. If the rotation is just right and a cloud walls starts protruding downward, it will mean that the 500-some miles he and 11 other Penn State students drove that morning will not have been in vain. If they witness a tornado, their day was a success.