To: Atmospheric Sciences faculty, students, and staff. From: Greg Hakim. Subject: 2011 UCAR Members Meeting. On 4-5 October I attended the UCAR Annual Members Meeting as a representative of the University of Washington. In accordance with my responsibilities as a Members Representative, I am sending this email to report to you on the activities of this meeting. As I have done in previous reports, I'll preface my summary with a little background for those of you not familiar with UCAR; you may skip to the next paragraph if you're familiar with UCAR. UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) 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. The meeting was run by the chair of the Board of Trustees, our own Dennis Hartmann. The topic of the Members' Forum this year was "Workshop Issues," and involved a keynote speaker, a YouTube video, and a panel discussion. The keynote speaker was Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University. President Crow has redirected his university toward a model that serves applied science and decision making. His catchphrase was the equation "A + B = C," where A is basic science, B is translation of that science into things (e.g. tools) people can use, and C is decision making based on the tools. He accomplished this transformation by deleting a number of units, including the entire engineering school (removing faculty tenure), and recruiting volunteers among the faculty to populate "institutes" around a range of problems facing humanity right now. The key idea is to organize the faculty around these ideas. He feels that we have reached the end of reductionism science, and that existing knowledge should be applied to the foremost problems facing humanity. Moreover, he feels our funding models reward the reductionist model and need an overhaul. It's worth noting that his "A + B = C" model was criticized by some members as overly simplistic, but the experiment in reorganizing a university around problems will be interesting to watch. The video was of author Anya Kamentz on new modes for college education, involving social media and open-access educational materials. Although many members expressed interest in her ideas about the transformation of higher education, it was pointed out that full realization of the new model requires students to be highly self-directed and disciplined. It's not clear, for example, that students can force themselves to work through challenging physics problem sets on their own, without searching for answers on the web. "Accreditation" for the DIY model is envisioned by Kamentz to be crowd sourced, using social media to vet student portfolios; perhaps it's worth noting that Kamentz has a traditional degree from Yale, not DIY U. The Treasurer's report revealed that NCAR's overall funding decreased from $430.7M in 2010 to $421.6M in 2011. NSF funding of $201.7M (46.8%) was down from $214.1M (56%) in 2010. Given the commitment to fully fund the Wyoming supercomputing center, staff reductions were necessary to meet the budget shortfall. NCAR underwent a review in the past year by the external Scientific Programs Evaluations Committee. The committee's charge was to evaluate progress on scientific goals and objectives as set out in recent strategic plans and with the UCAR Cooperative agreement in mind. NCAR science reviewed very well, and it was noted that the institution has made good progress in diversity and in promoting the careers of junior scientists. Given budget difficulties, the committee encourage senior scientist retirement in cases where that would "benefit the institution." NCAR Director Roger Wakimoto reviewed NCAR's activities in the past year. The budget challenges of 2011 led to unspecified "staff actions" (people were fired, including senior scientists). Two priority items that were protected from budget cuts were the Wyoming Supercomputing Center and the Advanced Study Program (ASP), which actually received a budget increase. Managment changes include Vanda Grubisic as the new EOL lab director, and Jim Hurrell as the new NESL director. Marika Holland is the new Climate Earth System Model (CESM) Chief Scientist. FY12 budget plans model flat funding relative to FY11. A new dropsonde launcher for the Global Hawk has been installed and tested. The 2011 ASP Summer Research Colloquium concerned the statistical assessment of extreme weather phenomena under climate change. In addition to the science review this past year, NCAR management will undergo review in the coming year. University Community of Programs (UCP) Director Jack Fellows reported on the activities of UCP in the past year. COMET's "MyMetEd" now has 600 hours of educational material with new modules on tropical meteorology, numerical weather prediction, and others. Unidata is now distributing WSI lightning data, and support is provided for the GEMPAK->AWIPS-II transition. COSMIC (GPS satellite measurements) has operational funding through 2015 when COSMIC-2 is expected to launch 12 satellites (although US funding for the joint US-Taiwan venture is highly uncertain). Some upcoming postdoc application deadlines (all sometime in January 2012): ASP, PACE (applied climate), Jack Eddy (Heliophysics), and the NOAA Climate and Global Change fellowship. Michael Morgan, director of the AGS section of NSF, gave the NSF update, which also featured brief presentations from several program managers. Graduate research fellowship applications are due 16 November 2011. There is a new AGS postdoc position, with an application deadline of 2 Feb 2012. CAREER award applications (research & education) are due 25 July 2012. There are two new programs at NSF, SEES and EarthCube. SEES (Science, Engineering, Education, and Sustainability) uses the NRC definition of sustainability to support interdisciplinary research and education. The goal is to develop a workforce trained in interdisciplinary research. EARTHCube is geared toward knowledge management for geosciences, building on the internet paradigm of interoperability and collaboration. Prototype development will take place May-Dec 2013, with fully integrated geosciences infrastructure during 2014-2020. Funding is anticipated for ideas on potential prototype systems. Stephen Nelson is now NCAR program manager, and Dave Verardo is the new Atmospheric Sciences section head (paleoclimate will soon be reassigned). New AMISR radars have been installed at Poker Flats, AK, and Resolute Bay, Canada. Finally, for really creative ideas that span more than one discipline, and therefor may be difficult to review, the INSPIRE program provides funding directly from program managers. PIs needs to convince two distinct program directors of the idea, who will then work with the PI to form a proposal. Next up was the Advocacy, Legislation, and Appropriations update from Lewis-Burke and Associates. A congressional "super committee" is charged with making $1.2T in budget cuts; otherwise there will be across-the-board cuts in 2013. The main message that was delivered is that there will be cuts to long-term entitlements and tax reform; discretionary pots will likely be spared ("science is not the target"). Science funding projections for FY12 include a flat budget for NSF and NASA science, but a great deal of uncertainty for NOAA; there is little support for Climate Services and JPSS, but good support for OAR. Topics with broad support in Congress include hurricanes and "national windstorm impact reduction." Finally, Rick Anthes gave his "farewell address;" he is stepping down as UCAR President on 9 January 2012 after 23 years of service. (He plans for a phased retirement over three years). The Anthes building has been modified to be energy efficient, with geothermal heat pumps and photovoltaics (expect 43% reduction in energy consumption). UCAR staff under Anthes' direction grew from 1000-1550. The top five achievements during his tenure are: the HIAPER (Gulfstream G-5) aircraft, CESM, SOARS, COSMIC, and the Wyoming supercomputing facility (will provide a 30-fold increase in computational capacity). Anthes concluded with a list of requirements for successful programs, including: a great idea/vision, a plan to realize the vision, at least one full-time champion, a committed sponsor, sufficient resources, strong leadership, and excellent program management. That's all for this year. You may find several of the meeting presentations at http://www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/oct11/ along with other information about the meeting; other presentations will appear in a few days on a follow-up web page that will be linked from this page. As always, I welcome your comments, and issues that you would like me to address in the future.