To: Atmospheric Sciences faculty, students, and staff.
   From: Greg Hakim.
Subject: 2003 UCAR Members Meeting.

On 7--8 October I attended the UCAR Annual Members Meeting as a
representative of UW. In accordance with my responsibilities as a
Members Representative, I am sending this (long) email to report to you
the activities of this meeting.

First, I will supply a little background for those not familiar with
UCAR. UCAR is a non-profit corporation that has, among other things, a
term contract with the NSF to oversee NCAR. UCAR has a board of
directors, called Trustees, that manage the business of UCAR by
interacting with the executives of the corporation. These Trustees are
elected by representatives of the stakeholders, who are the member
institutions that pay dues for these privileges. The annual meeting
provides the opportunity for members to elect Trustees and receive
briefings on the activities of UCAR and NCAR during the past year.

During 2002, UCAR and NCAR underwent a site review by the NSF. The
outcome was favorable, and the UCAR contract has been renewed for
2003--2008. It was also noted that the review recommended a need for
"performance metrics" to provide some quantification of NCAR
productivity, and to review the organizational structure of NCAR. Below
I'll summarize information about NCAR presented primarily by Dr. Rick
Anthes (UCAR President) and Dr. Tim Killeen (NCAR Director).

NCAR Facilities 

NCAR occupied the new Center Green campus during the past year, with
HAO now permanently moved in. CGD staff have moved back to the Mesa Lab
with the completion of the $7.5M ML refurbishment.

A new chemistry building has been approved and will be built at the 
Foothills Lab. Groundbreaking for the new lab, to be called "FL0", is
scheduled to occur in Spring 2004. UCAR is floating bonds to fund
the construction project.

The city of Boulder has approved a new footpath along a railway beneath
Foothills Parkway to facilitate walking between Foothills Lab and
Center Green.  Having trudged along the railroad tracks many times
myself, this will be a much-welcomed improvement.

NCAR Activities

There were a number of noteworthy "leadership" activities this
year. Each summer, NCAR organizes an annual undergraduate leadership
workshop aimed at fostering student interaction with NCAR scientists, 
and at promoting graduate study in the atmospheric sciences.

A new UCAR leadership academy has been organized to develop future
leaders from within UCAR. The targeted individuals are mid-career UCAR
personnel.

The explosion of new NCAR hires over the past few years (~20 new
ladder-track scientists) helped motivate the creation of the Early
Career Scientist Assembly (ECSA), which provides a support network and
forum for career development. I attended the assembly's first Junior
Faculty Forum on Future Scientific Directions in June, which was
organized to facilitate interaction between junior scientists at NCAR
and junior faculty at UCAR member institutions. I think that the
meeting was a great success, and we plan to publish a summary of our
scientific discussions in a future issue of BAMS.

NCAR Re-structuring

Following the recommendation of the review panel, NCAR is currently
assessing its organizational structure, and entertaining changes. The
current draft "re-alignment" organizes the Center into four Institutes:
Advance Study Program (expanded from present), Mathematics in the
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary Studies, and Natural and Human
Systems. Existing divisions will remain in place, but will be
associated with, in most cases, several of the institutes. Changes in
leadership command are unclear at present.

Community Facilities

The HIAPER aircraft is on track for deployment in ~2006. It 
will have a ceiling of 50K feet, 13.5 h max flight time, and 3.5 h 
of "loiter time" at 50K feet. Total cost: $82M. The first cuts to 
the airframe will occur in November.

There are new ATD fault-tolerant surface sensor arrays that are cheap
and can be deployed off the network and power grids.

Funding update

With obvious pressures on the federal budget, the overall outlook for
scientific funding is not terribly positive; the only upbeat news
concerned NSF. We were strongly encouraged to lobby our representatives
to support atmospheric science funding.

NSF 2004: ~4% agency increase. It was noted that the congressional 
goal to double the NSF budget is just that; it is not a commitment.

NOAA 2004: complicated. One positive aspect is a new plan for a
"collaborators fund": a $20M fund for an external, peer-reviewed
granting process.

NASA 2004: basically a flat budget.

USWRP: fate unclear. 2004 request of $5M, a House mark-up of only
$3.5M, and eliminated entirely from the Senate budget (replaced with a
new hurricane-research program).

Finally, a keynote address was given by Prof. James Duderstadt
(U. Michigan) entitled "The Future of the American Research
University." Overall he focussed on familiar themes and emphasized that
flexibility and consolidation will become increasingly important.

The Vannevar Bush post-WWII paradigm fostered a flow of federal science
funding to individual PIs rather than institutes, which encouraged
specialization. The post-cold war, aging baby-boomer reality is a shift
from "guns to pills"; i.e. from physical to biomedical research, the
latter of which now composes 62% of all federal research
funding. Current shifts include integration, team-based investigation
of complex problems, information-intensive problems, and more applied
research.

The explosive development of new technology is expected to accelerate,
and prove disruptive to the traditional slow evolution of research
universities. Additional stresses come from reduced public funding, and
commoditization of educational resources and intellectual
property. Darwinian competition in this landscape is leading to a
concentration of resources. His expectation is that this environment
will lead to increasing privatization of research universities, and a
period of consolidation through merger and acquisition.

If you would like more information about the meeting, and detailed 
reports, please visit 

http://www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/oct03/index.html

Sincerely,
Greg Hakim