which today regularly places graduates with the National Weather Service, private consulting firms, military branches, educational programs and other venues. Beyond the classroom, Wax was active in a number of state, regional and national professional organizations, including the Mississippi Geographic Alliance and Association of American Geographers. He chaired the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Southern Region Research Committee for Climatology in Agricultural Production and served as president of the American Association of State Climatologists. A Mississippi Delta Community College and Delta State University graduate, Wax completed master’s and doctoral degrees in physical geography at Louisiana State University. He joined what is now the MSU Department of Geosciences as an assistant professor in 1978 and served as department head from 1989 through 2001. During his career, Wax was honored by campus peers with an outstanding faculty award from the University Honors Council and a research award from the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. He was awarded the Robert E. Wolverton Legacy Award by CAS in 2016. Faculty recipients of the Dr. Charles L. Wax Endowed Climatology Faculty Fellowship will utilize resources throughout campus, including potential opportunities with the MSU High Performance Computing Collaboratory to promote future weather and climate research. A committee comprised of the geosciences department head, CAS dean and MSU provost will select the recipients, with the first to be named later this year. At the time Thomas began his educational career at MSU, the land-grant university did not offer a degree program in broadcast meteorology. Therefore, Thomas completed a bachelor’s degree in broadcast meteorology from Metropolitan State University in Denver, Colorado, and he pursued postgraduate studies at Texas A&M University while serving as the local television weatherman for nearly a decade in Central Texas. He has served as a marketing meteorologist and national spokesperson for Midland Radio Corporation in Kansas City, Missouri, and as president of the National Weather Association. He is an active member of the American Meteorological Society, where he holds the designation of Certified Broadcast Meteorologist. Thomas is married to Ann Macaulay Thomas and has two daughters, Betty and Tori. Betty was a presidential scholar at MSU and earned her bachelor’s degree in agribusiness in 2018 and a master’s degree in agricultural economics in 2020. Tori is a Kansas State University graduate. The Dr. Charles L. Wax Endowed Climatology Faculty Fellowship is an open fund with the MSU Foundation. To contribute to the fund, contact Sara Frederic, CAS director of development, at 662-325-3240 or email sfrederic@foundation.msstate.edu. Donations may be mailed to: MSU Foundation, Inc., Attention: Sara Frederic, P.O. Box 6149, Mississippi State, MS 39762.
Mr. Bruce Thomas
Dr. Charles L. Wax
COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES | VISION 2021
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