Community Survey. There were nearly 600 respondents (almost 30%) to the survey sent to the community. Details of this will be further discussed at the Member’s meeting.

UCAR at 40. This document highlights the achievements of UCAR over the past 40 years and includes excellent essays by seven members of the community. This document is available on the web; it can be accessed at http://www.ucar.edu/communications/ucar40/

Joint UCAR-AMS "Awareness" Document. This document, produced jointly with the AMS, will be distributed to the next administration and Congress. Its purpose is to educate the new administration on a national approach to natural hazards.

NRC Ranking Study. Jack Fellows is monitoring this activity. Currently, funds need to be raised for the study and the methodology of the study designed. Input from professional societies is being sought. The tentative plan is to collect the data in 2003 and publish in 2005. Concerns were expressed about how to quantify the increasingly cross-disciplinary nature of atmospheric sciences. Brown urged the Board to transmit these concerns to colleagues connected with the NRC.

Thanks. Chairman Brown thanked outgoing Board members Conway Leovy, Maggie Tolbert, Lyn Hutton and Len Fisk for their effort, time and contribution to the Board. Their service officially ends at the February 2001 Board meeting.

FY 2001 budget request. Jacobs reported that the NSF budget shows an increase of 17.3%, with $45M proposed for the Terascale Computing System, and $100M increase proposed for the Information Technology Research--$90M of which will be distributed across the directorates.

ITR (Information Technology Research). Jacobs discussed the ITR program awards and reviewed the five research areas: system design and implementation; people and social groups interacting with computers and infrastructure; information management; applications in science and engineering; and, scalable information infrastructure for pervasive computing and access. He also discussed the anticipated size of the grants, the pre-proposal deadlines, and the schedule for the full proposals.

NRC Grand Challenges report. In this recently released report, the NRC, at the behest of NSF, highlighted the following areas as important areas of scientific challenge: biogeochemical cycles; biological diversity and ecosystem functioning; climate variability; hydrologic forecasting; infectious disease and the environment; institutions and resource use; land-use dynamics; and reinventing the use of materials.

The Nominating Committee met on June 20 to select candidates for the Board of Trustees and the Member committees.

The American Physical Society (APS) site visit occurred on July 13-14. The purpose of the visit was to assess and improve the workplace climate for woman scientists at UCAR. The final report was received on October 6. UCAR management will consider the APS’s recommendations and send a response to the APS panel.

UCAR’s year-long 40^th Anniversary activities will culminate at the October meetings with a banquet, a celebration of HAO’s 60^th anniversary, and the UCAR Forum sessions.

The publication UCAR at 40 is a sequel to UCAR at 25, and is organized around the goal areas of UCAR 2001: science; facilities; education/outreach; technology transfer; and the future.

Finance and Administration activities include: a move to a new Pearl Street facility to make room for scientific activities at FL1; the beginning of a study to possibly build another facility at Foothills; the progression of the Phase I Mesa Lab refurbishment project; the approval by NSF of the FY2001 Indirect rate; and the automation of the annual charitable campaign.

Roberta Johnson, the new UCAR Director of Education and Outreach, is heading up the strategic planning for UCAR education and outreach activites. A draft mission statement and goals have been developed which will be further discussed at one of the UCAR Forum breakout sessions. Anthes briefly reviewed the current programs in education and outreach: Project LEARN (Laboratory Experience in Atmospheric Research at NCAR), CLIMATE (Collaboration Linking Mentors in Atmospheric Science for Teacher Enhancement), COMET (Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education and Training), DLESE (Digital Library for Earth System Education), SOARS (Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science), and informal education which includes visits to the Mesa Lab Visitor Center, Web-Based outreach activities such as Web Weather for Kids and Windows to the Universe, and special events like Super Science Saturdays, Earth Day, and Career Days.

The SOARS program is recognized nationally as a success story (82% retention rate) and a model for an education/outreach/mentoring program. DOE has approved $637K for the next four years and a proposal to NSF for $1.7M has been reviewed favorably. Tom Windham has been appointed by Rita Colwell to the NSF Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering. Anthes also reported that SOARS Protégé Lori Levy has discovered an asteroid which will carry her name.

Anthes reviewed the results of the community survey and the relationships and interactions with UCAR/NCAR/UOP. He noted the overwhelming support for continuing the breadth of research, education and facilities activities. A large number of the respondents stated the need for more instrumentation development, and education on the sources and use of observational data in universities. Most of the respondents supported efforts to increase diversity in the atmospheric sciences.

Priorities for NCAR. Killeen said that his priorities include developing "the human capital; expanding the intellectual envelope and building new capacities; and expanding partnerships and creating new collaborations".

Personnel announcements: Bob Harriss accepted a one-year term as NCAR Associate Director for Strategic planning; Danny McKenna accepted the ACD Director position; Annick Pouquet accepted the directorship of the Geophysical Turbulence Program; and Walt Dabberdt recently announced his retirement from NCAR to take a position with Vaisaila in Boulder.

Killeen noted his interest in renewing the value placed on NCAR’s staff as demonstrated through the Diversity Task Force Report, new Mentoring Guidelines.

NCAR Budget Process: NSF requested two program plans from NCAR, one at a flat level of funding, and one at a 10% increase above FY2000. Killeen reported that program and budget reviews of each division’s projects are planned for this fall. The budget process will cover FY2000 accomplishments and FY2001 plans, new initiatives, and interdisciplinary activities.

COMET –COMET won the Outstanding Achievement Award at the National Hurricane Conference for their Community Hurricane Preparedness module. Their MedEd website has over 900K hits and 46K user sessions per month. Nine new modules are planned.

COSMIC – At present, negotiations continue with National Space Program Office in Taiwan. UCAR is still hopeful that COSMIC will go forward with minimal risk to UCAR.

DLESE – supports the Earth System Science (ESS) community digital library building effort by helping educators and learners create, find, evaluate, and use educational resources. $3.8M was awarded from NSF/GEO and NSF’s Human Ecology Research Service. DLESE is community owned, governed, and designed. There are strong collaborations with Unidata, COMET, and other national digital library projects.

Unidata – Over 60 people attended the Unidata/COMET summer workshop on "Shaping the Future: Unidata Users as Leaders". There is great interest in Unidata’s Java software development.

IITA – enhances UCAR’s capability to use data information and software services. IITA’s primary activity is managing and encouraging acceptance of Distributed Oceanographic Data System (DODS) technologies in the research (including NCAR and NOAA) and university communities.

GST – SuomiNet is a proposed network of GPS receivers to be located at universities and other locations to provide realtime atmospheric precipitable water vapor measurements and other geodetic and meteorological information. 100 GPS receivers have been purchased and delivery to universities will begin the fall of 2000.

JOSS – Support for two field programs is planned for 2001: VEPIC2001, which will study ocean-atmosphere processes and boundary layer properties and ACE-Asia, which is an aerosol study in eastern Asia and the northwest Pacific. JOSS is supporting up to 50 U.S. university investigators.

VSP – supports visiting scientist and post doctorate programs. Currently, VSP has over 100 visitor appointments. In the NOAA Postdoctoral Program in Climate and Global Change, 50% of the appointees are women.

Database legislation. Burnham said that although the bill died in the House this year, it is expected to brought up again next year.

H-1B visa bill: Burnham reported that "this was a big win" for the community. Non-profits, government labs, and academia are now exempt from the previous cap on visas.

National Weather Service (NWS). The House approved a bill that included language restricting the NWS from providing services that the private sector could do. The Senate version of the bill did not include this provision, although it most likely will be brought back next year. There is a call for the National Research Council to do a study on private and public partnerships, especially in regard to the NWS.

Doubling of the science budget. Burke said that the universities and UCAR have contributed significantly this year to the support of science and the support for doubling the funding for science.

Publish the survey results and analysis in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Create a recruiting site on the web for the atmospheric and related sciences

Create a presentation about our discipline that everyone can use.

The distribution of respondents indicated that most were in mid to senior level positions.

The relationship with UCAR over the past 10 years indicates that many people come here to interact with other scientists. Unidata and COMET had the higher interaction rates.

The majority of respondents felt that research priorities should be determined by the needs of society, but that they are actually determined by the priorities of the agencies.

The community is strongly interested in UCAR maintaining a broad program of science, facilities, education and outreach.

An overwhelming number felt that interdisciplinary interactions should be increased.

Many felt that there has been too great of a shift to numerical modeling and not enough emphasis on theory and observational efforts.