Monica Stephens Cooley is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Spelman College. Her research area is geophysical fluid dynamics and climate modeling. Her interest in this field was sparked during her undergraduate years at Spelman College, where she did an honors thesis in meteorology under the direction of Dr. Denise Stephenson-Hawk, a former Spelman graduate who was on leave from NASA to teach at Spelman. With the encouragement of Dr. Hawk, Dr. Sylvia Bozeman, and Dr. Etta Falconer, she went on to pursue graduate study in applied mathematics at Brown University. After graduating from Brown, she completed two postdoctoral fellowships in physical oceanography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Florida State University and then returned to Spelman College in August 2001, where she teaches and directs undergraduate research projects.