Fall 2000
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Results from the UCAR survey of the community
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Colwell, Leinen visit NCAR
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NSF director Rita Colwell (left) and assistant director for
geoscience Margaret Leinen (right) were on hand for UCAR/NCAR's
40th anniversary celebration in June. The two toured
NCAR's Research Aviation Facility, where they met Al Schanot and
RAF director Jeffrey Stith (back row) and scientist Theresa Campos
(front center). Colwell and Leinen also held a town meeting for
staff, and Colwell gave a public presentation on NSF's polar
research. (Photo by Carlye Calvin.)
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From October 1999 through October 2000, UCAR and NCAR celebrated their
40th anniversary. UCAR management, the Board of Trustees, and the UCAR
and NCAR directors used this milestone as an opportunity to reflect upon
past achievements and to help set the agenda for the institution well
into the 21st century.
To that end, this past May we conducted a survey of our constituent
communities, with emphasis on the universities. We developed a Web-based
survey with four parts:
- Part I asked about the background of respondents and how they had
interacted in general with UCAR in the past.
- Part II asked respondents to indicate all specific UCAR programs or
activities with which they had had some significant association over the
past ten years.
- Part III included questions about challenges, issues, and future
activities; these were based on the UCAR Forum at the October 1999 UCAR
Members' Representatives meeting.
- Part IV asked questions about specific divisions or programs within
NCAR and the UCAR Office of Programs (UOP) and about UCAR activities
such as advocacy on behalf of the community. It was tailored to the
specific experiences of the respondent, i.e., questions were included
only for programs or activities that the respondent had indicated in
Part II.
The response of the community was strong, with 599 people
responding—29.2% of the 2,048 people asked. Most of the respondents
were from universities, and most indicated atmospheric
science/meteorology as their primary discipline. However, a significant
number of respondents were from other disciplines such as oceanography,
astronomy/solar physics, physics, computer science, and
geology/geophysics. Many people provided thoughtful comments; these
totaled approximately 3,000, covering 250 pages of single-spaced
text!
A summary of the quantitative responses is presented
on the Web.
To assure confidentiality,the statistical results are reported without
the comments. In general, people wrote of their frustrations with
graduate student recruitment, the importance of interdisciplinary
efforts, and the attendant difficulties in obtaining funding for such
efforts. They wrote about the need for student understanding of
observations, data sources, and analysis; frustrations with low pay in
our field compared to others; and the need for experimental science and
basic research as well as directed research.
While I realize that every person who looks at these results may arrive
at somewhat different conclusions about what they mean, I would like to
offer my personal interpretation of some of the results. First, and most
important, the high response rate of nearly 30% and the very large
number of comments indicate that the community has strong interest in
UCAR activities and programs and in the issues raised in the survey. In
addition, the results strongly demonstrate the interest of the community
in a broad UCAR program of science, facilities, education, and
outreach.
Past, present, and future interactions with UCAR
When asked to identify their relationship with UCAR over the past ten
years, respondents indicated strong participation in all categories. The
largest number of responses were from (1) users of data sets or data
streams, (2) visitors to UCAR, (3) collaborators, (4) users of UCAR
software, and (5) users of a community model. The strong showing of
visitors, collaborators, and users of UCAR software and community
models, which came out ahead of users of UCAR's computational and
observational facilities (though these were strong as well), confirms
the importance of having a broad scientific program at the national
center and UOP as well as first-class community facilities. This
community interest in a broad UCAR was confirmed in Part III. When asked
what additional or increased areas of service UCAR should consider,
respondents showed widespread interest in all of the categories
presented. Leading areas were (1) data sets and data streams, (2)
educational and/or training materials, (3) community workshops on topics
of interest, (4) provision of real-time data to universities,
and—tied for fifth and sixth place—instrumentation and
community models.
The community also indicated a strong interest in participating in UCAR
activities (Part III, Question 7.3). The types of participation cited
most were (1) collaboration with UCAR scientists, educators, or other
staff; (2) use of community models; participation in (3) UCAR governance
activities and (4) educational activities; and (5) use of computational
facilities.
Setting of research priorities
In Part III, respondents were asked to rate, on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5
being highest, how they thought research priorities should be determined
and how they thought the priorities actually were being determined. In
the "should be" category, respondents ranked societal need and the
intuition and interests of individual scientists equally high (3.8) and
higher than needs and priorities of the funding agencies (2.7). However,
the perception of the respondents was that the actual priorities were
determined more by the needs and priorities of the agencies (4.1) than
by societal needs (2.8) or scientists' interests (3.3).
Interdisciplinary research
Not surprisingly (although the margin might surprise some), most
respondents said that the present level and quality of interdisciplinary
research should be increased (376 yes vs. 35 no and 114 undecided).
However, the community felt by a relatively narrow margin that the
academic community, including UCAR, was not organized adequately to
support interdisciplinary research. There was a stronger perception that
the agencies were not organized well to support interdisciplinary
research.
Quality and quantity of graduate students
As indicated by other surveys and fora (see, for example, my
"President's Corner" in the
Spring 2000 issue
of the UCAR Quarterly there is a widespread concern that the
atmospheric sciences do not attract and keep the best and brightest
students. This issue received more comments than any other in the survey
and will be a subject of intense interest and attention by the UCAR
community in upcoming years.
Balance of types of research
For over a decade, the atmospheric science community has expressed
concern about the balance of research among observational, theoretical,
and modeling science. The concern that there is not enough effort in the
universities in observational science was brought up again at the UCAR
Forum last year. The survey indicates that this concern is fairly
widespread, with 282 saying that it is a significant problem, 181 saying
that it is a minor problem, and only 28 judging it to be no problem.
However, when asked more generally about the distribution of effort in
field research, modeling, theory, and laboratory work, 147 agreed that
the balance was appropriate, 124 disagreed, and 233 were uncertain.
Relationship among the academic, government, and private
sectors
The rapid growth of the private sector in meteorology and related fields
over the past decade has created new challenges and opportunities. These
include issues related to commercialization of government-sponsored
intellectual property, data rights, and new opportunities for research
support. Approximately 33% of the respondents said that they personally
were collaborating with the private sector, indicating that there is a
significant intersection of the academic and private sector communities.
However, the survey suggests that the quality of these interactions
could be improved. While respondents rated the quality of academic-
government interactions high (3.7 on a scale of 1 to 5), they rated the
quality of interactions between the private sector and the academic and
government sectors considerably lower (2.5 and 2.6, respectively).
UCAR/NCAR divisions and programs
Finally, the community provided much input into the individual divisions
and programs of NCAR and UOP in Part IV of the survey. This input has
been given to the senior management of the divisions and programs for
their use in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their programs
and for planning for the future.
We express our sincere thanks to the people who took the survey. It took
longer than we estimated, and we appreciate the time and thought
invested by the respondents. The survey results will be useful in the
development of a new NCAR strategic plan and a strategic plan for
education and outreach as they unfold over this next year.
In this issue... •
Other issues of UCAR Quarterly
UCAR •
NCAR •
UOP
Edited by Carol Rasmussen,
carolr@ucar.edu
Prepared for the Web by Jacque Marshall
Last revised: Wed Dec 13 17:24:16 MST 2000