Adegoke, Jimmy
Jimmy Adegoke
Dr. Jimmy Adegoke is a science and engineering professor at the University of Missouri. He served as department chair of the Geosciences department from 2008-2010. His research interests include understanding how land surface drives weather and climate using remote sensing and other climate models. One of his projects in the Niger Delta uses GIS and Remote Sensing to understand the political, socioeconomic, and physical pressure in the Niger Delta and its impact on sensitive ecosystems. He has received numerous awards including the UMKC Trustees’ Faculty Scholar Award in 2007.
“There are huge openings in this field, and any minority who wants to make a career in it will be welcomed.” - Jimmy Adegoke, 2006.
Pielke Sr, Roger & Adegoke, Jimmy & Hossain, Faisal & Niyogi, Dev. (2021). Environmental and Social Risks to Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health—A Bottom-Up, Resource-Focused Assessment Framework. Earth, 2, 440-456. 10.3390/earth2030026.
Adegoke, J. O., Steurer, J. F., Green, C., Willoughby, T., (2010). The Kansas City Missouri ground-level ozone (GLO) project: A community-based air pollution field experiment. Journal of Environmental Health, 73(1), 8-13.
Balogun, A., Adegoke, J. O., Sajith, V., Mauder M., Gallo, K., (2009). Surface Energy Balance Measurements Above an Exurban Residential Neighbourhood of Kansas City, Missouri. Boundary Layer Meteorology, 133, 299-321. 10.1007/s10546-009-9421-3.
Carleton, A.M., D.L. Arnold, D.J. Travis, S. Curran, and J.O. Adegoke, (2008). Synoptic circulation and land surface influences on convection in the Midwest U.S. “Corn Belt” during the summers of 1999 and 2000. Part I: Composite synoptic environments. J. Climate, 21(14) 3389-3415
Carleton A.M., D.J. Travis, J.O. Adegoke, D.L. Arnold, and S. Curran, (2008). Synoptic circulation and land surface influences on convection in the Midwest U.S. “Corn Belt” during the summers of 1999 and 2000. Part II: Role of vegetation boundaries. J. Climate, 21,(15) 3617–3641
Jimmy Adegoke credits his successful career in the environmental field to two factors: his family’s emphasis on education and the close guidance of mentors. Growing up and attending undergraduate school in Nigeria, “The idea of building a career in the environmental sciences wasn’t something that I was exposed to,” Dr. Adegoke recalls. “But I think that my career was strongly influenced by growing up in the family that I did. My dad was an educator, and he insisted on his children getting a good education. Anywhere in the world, that will always be the key; when parents make an investment in their kids, it pays off.”
Dr. Adegoke majored in Geography, with minors in Physics and Geology, as an undergraduate at Ahmadu Bello University. Although it was a large university, Dr. Adegoke established a close relationship with a professor who became a tremendous influence. The professor introduced Dr. Adegoke to climate research and convinced him that the field held abundant opportunities. “He told me that climate science would become important in the future and that there weren’t a lot of people doing it,” Dr. Adegoke says. “As it turns out, he was absolutely right.” Since then, Dr. Adegoke has devoted his efforts to studying, researching, and educating others about climate science, specifically, how human and natural alterations to the land surface (e.g., land use changes) interact with and alter climate processes.
Dr. Adegoke taught math and science in a Nigerian high school before attending the University of Ibadan, where he earned his M.S. in Geography, specializing in Climatology. After relocating to the United States in the early 1990s, he conducted research at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Oceans (JISAO) at the University of Washington. He then got his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University, focusing on Satellite Climatology.
Dr. Adegoke completed a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) post-doctoral fellowship at Colorado State University from 2000-2002, where he developed methods to incorporate satellite data into regional climate models. Since then, he has been a faculty member in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC). He is currently a Professor of Geosciences. Dr. Adegoke served as department chair from 2008- 2010 and the Center for Environmental Research Director from 2015- 2017. Since coming to UMKC, Dr. Adegoke has developed additional research interests in climate-societal issues, especially concerning rapidly developing urban areas. He has also worked hard to extend his work outside the confines of the university.
“I’m passionate about making my work relevant to society,” Adegoke says. “The environmental field gives you a very broad platform to do research…and some of that research can have direct benefits to society. You can see the immediate result of your work because you are doing stuff that directly impacts people’s lives. That’s very rewarding for me.” His work includes investigating the societal impacts of changing environments and climates, including coastal impacts and air pollution. His research focuses particularly on the Lake Chad Basin and the Niger Delta Region in Nigeria.
In 2010, he was the Executive Director of Natural Resources and Environment at CSIR, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa. In 2013, at the invitation of the Nigerian government, Dr. Adegoke took the position of Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Agricultural Resilience in Nigeria for the Federal Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development in Nigeria. In this role, he led the development of the National Agricultural Resilience Framework (NARF) to promote climate-smart agriculture. He also was Chair of the Scientific Advisory Council for the West African Science Service Center on Climate and Adapted Land Use from 2015 to 2017.
In 2017, Dr. Adegoke served as the Interim Executive Director of the West African Science Service Center for Climate Change & Adapted Land Use. He has held two stints as a Senior Consultant for the African Development Bank Group, first in 2020 and again currently since 2022. Currently, he is the chair of the International Scientific Advisory Board for the Center of Dryland Agriculture at Bayero University in Nigeria. Dr. Adegoke serves on the Technical Advisory Board of several United Nations (UN) applied science programs, including the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) project on the application of remote sensing for water resources and ecosystem management in Africa.
“I love my job because it gives you opportunities to grow and to explore different questions,” Dr. Adegoke says. “I could have majored in Physics, but I don’t envy people who spend their entire careers holed up in a laboratory conducting experiments. The physical environment is my laboratory, and fieldwork gets my juices flowing.” Dr. Adegoke does fieldwork in varying locations, from urban Kansas City to various places abroad, including in his native Nigeria, where he is currently conducting research examining the fate of mangrove forests. Satellite data of the Niger Delta indicates that over 21,000 hectares of mangrove disappeared from the region between 1986 and 2003. Dr. Adegoke says that rapid urbanization, land clearing for oil and gas exploration, and oil production combined with overland transport are the major factors contributing to the forest’s rapid diminishment. “It’s a big deal because this is one of the most productive and diverse ecosystems in the world,” Dr. Adegoke notes. “Hundreds of communities in the Niger Delta derive their living from the creeks and mangrove forest ecosystem in that area” (2006).
The realization that his work is urgently needed is perhaps the strongest factor influencing Dr. Adegoke’s decision to join – and remain in –the environmental field. “In addition to being able to travel and do field research, it’s a great field to be in because we’re dealing with important questions that society is looking for answers to,” he says. “What is happening to our water, air, and forests? How do all of these factors influence the climate?” (2006).
Finally, Dr. Adegoke is the director of the UMKC GLOBE partnership and Geosciences Education Opportunities: Partnerships to Advance Teaching & Scholarship (GEOPATHS) project, an initiative funded by the National Science Foundation.
At Colorado State and the University of Missouri, Dr. Adegoke benefited from close mentoring, this time at the hands of some of the country’s foremost climate researchers. “I had the privilege of being mentored by top-notch scientists who valued investing in younger folks. They taught me the importance of mentoring, and as a result I now pay particular attention to that,” Dr. Adegoke notes.
Dr. Adegoke views mentoring and educational outreach efforts as incredibly valuable, especially when that outreach targets minority students. He directs the Minority Outreach Science Enrichment Program (MOSEP) and the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) at UMKC and recently secured a major National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to develop a pipeline strategy to increase the number of minority students majoring in the Geosciences. Dr. Adegoke stresses that quality teaching and strong family support are keys to creating minority pathways into the environmental field. “For the next four years, we will be working with the Kansas City Missouri School District to strengthen science teachers’ preparation,” he says. “That’s one thing we’ve identified as being a ‘missing link.’” The program will also directly link high school students with research, mentorship, and scholarship opportunities in geosciences. In addition, Dr. Adegoke works with minority students through the Louis B. Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LS-MoAMP) program, and several of his Ph.D. students have been minorities.
Dr. Adegoke strongly encourages young people of color who are curious about the natural world to seek a career in the environmental sciences. “We absolutely do not have enough minorities in this field,” he says emphatically. “And the field is wide open! The environmental and geoscience communities are actively looking to expand their disciplines and attract minorities. There are huge openings in this field, and any minority who wants to make a career in it will be welcomed. I absolutely encourage anyone looking for a fun, interesting career with good opportunities for advancement to take a look at any of the environmental science disciplines” (2006).
Interview conducted by Multicultural Environmental Leadership Development Initiative staff. 2016. University of Michigan – School of Natural Resources and Environment. Ann Arbor, MI.
Jimmy Adegoke. (n.d.). LinkedIn [LinkedIn profile]. Retrieved July 13, 2023, from https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmy-adegoke-06010a1/. MyCOE) / SERVIR Fellowship Program. (2020, October 17).
Jimmy Adegoke - MyCOE / Servir. MyCOE) / SERVIR Fellowship Program. https://sites.google.com/a/aag.org/mycoe-servirglobal/jimmyadegoke
Taylor, Dorceta (Ed.). 2006. The Paths We Thread: Profiles of the Careers of Minority Environmental Professionals. Minority Environmental Leadership Development Initiative, University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment.