David Letcher is a born and bred New Jerseyan who grew up in Morris County. His B.S. is from Rutgers University in Agricultural Research, a major that required heavy course concentrations in biology, chemistry and physics as well as many assorted courses in agricultural science. His Master of Science Degree, from the University of Nebraska, was in Agricultural Meteorology, a branch of meteorology which studies the effect of weather and climate on crop growth and development. Unlike general meteorology, micro-meteorology and micro-climatology focus on small-scale, local weather and climate.
His master’s thesis concentrated on studying how various wind shelters can alter the micro-scale weather and provide lower environmental stress levels for agricultural crops in the hot, dry summer conditions in the midwestern U. S.
David then entered a Ph.D. program in the meteorology program at Cornell University. With significant growth in environmental concerns nationwide, universities began offering degrees related to environmental matters. His thesis was related to ground-level ozone pollution levels in a rural environment.
After completing his graduate degrees, David began his teaching career at Trenton State College, now The College of New Jersey. He taught meteorology, climatology and environmental science in his first decade at TCNJ. Then, after spending a dozen years in the college administration as the Coordinator of Academic Computing, he returned to teaching, but in the academic areas of information systems, data management and business statistics, fields that played a large role during his time as the coordinator.
After a 50-year career in higher education, he is now retired, spending time with family, traveling and performing a variety of volunteer projects, one of which is summarizing the weather data acquired at the Watershed’s Weather Station, part of the Rutgers NJ Weather Network. Currently, David is involved in a new citizen-science activity. He is a volunteer observer of Snow and Snow Water Equivalent, run by a graduate student in Ph.D student at the University of Maryland.