A. Transition documents. Many of the Trustees expressed appreciation for the work done by UCAR and AMS on these documents. Ron McPherson agreed to explore publishing them in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS).

B. Submission to BAMS and acceptance of the article on the community survey and UCAR's 40^th anniversary.

C. The following recent community awards to UCAR, NCAR and UOP scientific staff.

UCAR President Richard Anthes and HAO Senior Scientist Arthur D. Richmond named Fellows of the AGU.

AMS Awards:

Meisinger Award - Jim Hurrell (CGD) received the 2001 Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award, one of the highest honors granted by the AMS. The award is presented each year to a scientist whose research achievement "is at least in part aerological [pertaining to all levels of the atmosphere] in character and concerns the observation, theory, and modeling of atmospheric motion on all scales."

Cleveland Abbe Award - Rit Carbone, a senior scientist in MMM, given to an individual for distinguished service furthering the atmospheric sciences or their application to general, social, economic, or humanitarian welfare.

Jule G. Charney Award - Roger Daley holds the title of UCAR Distinguished Senior Scientist in Visiting Scientist Program for "highly significant research and development in data assimilation, modeling, and numerical weather prediction."

Editor's Award - Rod Frehlich (RAP) for exceptional efforts as a scientific reviewer for the Journal of Applied Meteorology, one of nine AMS journals.

New AMS Fellows - NCAR senior scientists Rick Katz (ESIG), Tom Wigley (CGD), and Jim Wilson (RAP), as well as the directors of two UCAR programs: Dave Fulker (Unidata) and Tim Spangler (Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education and Training).

AGU Awards:

Macelwane Medal - Scott Doney. The medal recognizes significant contributions to the geophysical sciences by a young scientist of outstanding ability.

Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA) AwardHector Socas-Navarro (HAO) was honored for his astrophysics thesis- A new technique for examining the solar chromosphere. The HAO associate scientist was recognized for producing the nation's best thesis in astrophysics during 1998–99.

D. APS Site Visit. Brown noted that the Board has been sent copies of the APS report and UCAR's response. The report has also been discussed in the Personnel Committee Meeting. Leo Donner will report later in this meeting.

E. Brown offered the following resolutions of appreciation to honor the outgoing Trustees for their years of service to UCAR. The resolutions were moved, seconded, and passed unanimously.

3. SECRETARY’S REPORT

Secretary Ronald Smith presented the minutes from the October 2000 Board of Trustees meeting and asked for approval. After some minor corrections were noted, it was moved, seconded, and passed to approve the minutes.

4. TREASURER’S REPORT

Katy Schmoll, Vice President for Finance and Administration, reported on the fiscal health of the corporation to date. She reviewed the consolidated financial statement for FY2000 ending on 30 September, and the financial statements for the first three months of FY2001. She said that investments are doing better than projected given the performance of the market in the past six months.

5. AUDIT AND FINANCE COMMITTEE REPORT

Schmoll reported on the following items covered in the Audit and Finance Committee Meeting held the previous day: the business continuity plan; space issues and a feasibility study for a new building at the Foothills campus; risk assessments.

The Board asked that it be kept appraised of plans for the new building.

6. PERSONNEL COMMITTEE REPORT

Leo Donner, Chair of the Personnel Committee, reported on the Personnel Committee Meeting held the previous day. The committee recommended that the UCAR Compensation proposal be approved. The 3% salary range movement, and the 4.5% salary cap as recommended by UCAR management were discussed by the committee. They recommended that the proposal be approved. The committee also discussed the salary comparisons between academic and NCAR scientists. NCAR salaries are higher, Donner said, but within one standard deviation. Donner noted the usefulness of the UCAR salary survey. Discussion followed on the philosophy of new hires, i.e., hiring at the mid-point of the range or lower. Anthes said that there is flexibility to offer higher salaries to new scientists. NCAR Director Tim Killeen said the goal is to attract and keep world-class scientific talent.

It was moved, seconded, and passed to approve the 2001compensation proposal as recommended by the Personnel Committee.

Donner presented the recommendation for Affiliate Scientist. Josh Wurman (U of OK) is recommended for a three-year appointment. It was moved, seconded, and passed to approve the appointment as recommended by the Personnel Committee.

Donner reported that the committee discussed the American Physical Society report and the UCAR response at length. He said that, because of the disparity in the way the NCAR divisions communicate with, mentor, and generally support staff on the scientific ladder, the Committee is recommending that an ombudsman be appointed. Much discussion followed on the pros and cons of such a position. Donner said that because of the dissimilar ways the divisions manage scientific talent at NCAR, an alternative channel for information should be made available. Chairman Brown said the main point is to make sure the divisions are consistent in their conduct. The Board and UCAR management will keep working on this.

7. BOARD NOMINATING COMMITTEE REPORT

Conway Leovy, in the absence of Chairwoman Julia Paegle, presented the report of the committee. After he reported that liaisons to COMET, COSMIC and SOARS no longer will be appointed, Leovy asked approval of the following slate of officers and committees:

8. NSF REPORT

Cliff Jacobs, Head of UCAR and Lower Atmospheric Facilities Oversight Section-ATM, reported on the following items:

• FY2001 and FY2002 Budgets. Jacobs reported that the final FY01 budget is still unknown and that the FY02 plan will be released later than usual, in April. He said that even with the sizeable increase in the FY01 budget, it is uncertain how much how much of ATM's base funding will benefit because of the number of earmarked activities. With respect to the FY02 plan, Jacobs said that growth is anticipated in all FY01 initiatives, a new mathematical science initiative is likely, and possibly two GEO "candidates" will be included in the MRE request.
  
  
• Information Technology Research (ITR) Program. In discussing ITR's funding, Jacobs said that after covering continuations from the previous year, $163M will be available for FY01 awards. He reviewed the number of proposals in each of the three areas (large, group, and small), pointed out that four criteria were added to the standard two evaluation criteria used by NSF in the review process, and concluded that approximately 10% of the proposals will make it through to the award stage.
  
  
• Geosciences Activities. Jacobs announced three new funding opportunities, two in education and one in biocomplexity and, in the personnel area, reported that Jewel Prendeville's responsibilities are now in the Diversity and Education Programs, that a Geo deputy Associate Director position is being planned, and that applications are in for Ocean Sciences Division Director. He continued by discussing the challenge of implementing the document Geosciences 2000 and of integrating this plan with existing activities, and concluded that a clear picture needs to be painted.
  
  
• NSF Review of UCAR and NCAR. Jacobs explained UCAR's participation, through SPEC, in the NSF review process, and added that it was suggested that SPEC also serve as "integrators" looking at cross-divisional work during the divisional reviews. He briefed the Board on the process and schedule of the management and divisional reviews, and pointed out that November 2002 is the submittal date for the proposal. It is still uncertain if the proposal to manage and operate NCAR will be open to competition or be directed solely to UCAR.

Discussion followed on the re-competition issue, and the fair amount of management time required by these review.

9. UCAR PRESIDENT’S REPORT

UCAR President Richard Anthes presented a draft of a letter to the Director of OMB, Mitchell Daniels, Jr., in support of the FY 2002 federal science budget. He asked for Trustee input over the next day of the meeting and asked for their signatures. [After revisions were made later in the meeting, the Trustees provided their signatures, and the letter was send to Mr. Daniels office]

Anthes then outlined the status of the following current UCAR activities:

A. Two articles submitted to BAMS—the aforementioned 40^th Anniversary article, and the recently submitted article on the graduate student survey.

B. The NCAR Strategic Planning process. Anthes said the complex planning process has sparked exciting new cross divisional, and cross discipline, scientific initiative.

C. The NSF reviews of NCAR. The review has begun with the NCAR divisional review documents due to NSF on 1 May.

D. The APS panel response. The UCAR response to the report was submitted on 27 November. Plans are underway to address the recommendations in the following areas: recruitment of female scientists, mentoring, communication, family friendliness.

E. Activities in Corporate Affairs, especially welcoming new Trustees Kalnay, Soorshian, and Woodworth; and Finance and Administration, especially the developing requirements for a new building.

F. Education and Outreach Strategic Planning process and workshop conducted in January.

G. Office of Government Affairs Office, especially the transition documents distributed to Congressional members; and UCAR Communications, especially the recognition for the UCAR at Forty document.

H. The UCAR Foundation Board Meeting and Retreat.

10. UCAR FY2002 ADVOCACY PRIORITIES

Jack Fellows, Vice President for Corporate Affairs, asked the Trustees to review and approve the proposed FY2002 priorities for UCAR's advocacy of federal science budget and related matters. He outlined the UCAR advocacy activities this past year in support of the nation's research agenda, the Natural Hazards and Weather/Climate documents provided to Congress at the transition to the new administration, visits to the House and Senate Congressional members and staff, and agencies. Fellows presented the FY02 Advocacy Priorities. The activities in FY2002, for the most part, will focus on support of weather and climate related research and education programs, supporting budgets in each of the agencies, and monitoring policy issues such as data exchange, ITAR regulations, and the like.

Trustees Conway Leovy and Dennis Thomson asked UCAR to address energy issues in its future advocacy strategy. Leovy pointed out the value of conveying the impacts of climate change, specifically global warming. He asked UCAR not to shy away from communicating possible impacts of the changing temperatures on energy resources. Trustee David Skaggs asked if UCAR had considered working with the National Security agencies on weather and climate impacts related to national economies. He said it may be a potentially important area for resources and study.

11. NCAR STATUS REPORT AND STRATEGIC PLANNING

NCAR Director Tim Killeen outlined recent activities at NCAR:

Institutional Priorities. Killeen emphasized the following priorities for the institution: "developing the human capitol; expanding the intellectual envelope; building new capabilities;

and expanding partnerships and creating new collaborations." He said he sees NCAR as an integrating force for the atmospheric and related sciences community, serving as the integrating center for IT capabilities, atmospheric and earth system scientific research, and for research and education connections.

He introduced Annick Pouquet, recently appointed as a Senior Scientist and leader of Geophysical Turbulence Program, and Danny McKenna, new Director of the Atmospheric Chemistry Division.

Killeen highlighted many of the university interactions with NCAR, including the number of collaborative publications, and the scientific visitor trends. He commented on the increase in the number of short-term visitors over the past eight years, and a decrease in the number of long-term visitors, saying that this trend will be studied.

He reviewed the status of the ITR proposals—1 large, 10 group, and 9 small proposals submitted to the NSF with 58 university collaborators. He reported on the new NCAR Budget exercise, the strategic planning process, and the following future thrusts:

• NCAR becoming more of a virtual center.
• Increased Interdisciplinary research, without moving away from the core program
• Increased emphasis on research-enriched education at all levels
• World-class IT capabilities to facilitate the research
• Emphasis on "earth-system" science, centered on the atmospheric sciences, including societal interactions
• Emphasis on individual professional growth, accomplishments and recognition for excellence.
• New partnerships--e.g., with industry

Scott Doney and Beth Holland - Biogeosciences and Climate Interactions initiative.
Janice Coen - Wildfire Behavior, Modeling and Atmospheric impacts.
Annick Pouquet - Geophysical Turbulence
Phil Judge - HAO Enhanced Education
Dave Carlson - Observational Technologies
Al Kellie - Computational Initiatives

12. UOP DIRECTOR’S REPORT

Fellows, Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Director of the UCAR Office of Programs, reviewed UOP's mission and focus and reported that UOP will be updating their strategic plan, brochure, and logo by October 2001. He briefed the Board on recent activities of the eight programs of UOP:

• DLESE Program Center. This new program, which was awarded a two-year $4M grant by GEO/EHR six months ago, plans on displaying a working prototype by August. Dave Fulker, Director of Unidata, is taking a year-long sabbatical to work with DLESE and Ben Domenico has been appointed Acting Director of Unidata.
  
  
• COMET. This program's budget was cut $0.6M from FY00 and a staff decrease has resulted. New courses and modules have been developed this year and the development of a primer on mesoscale meteorolgy for the Navy is in progress. COMET and Unidata are proposing a joint international version of their programs.
  
  
• Unidata. It was reported that NEXRAD Level 3 products were free as of January 2001 and that the NWS DIFAX will end this April, but alternative products are being generated and distributed by some universities with the aid of Unidata.
• COSMIC. The science contract between UCAR and Taiwan has been concluded, yet the spacecraft and launch vehicle contracts are still under negotiations. Launch is expected in 2005.
  
  
• GPS Science and Technology. 100 GPS receivers have been purchased by UCAR for SuomiNet, the network of receivers to provide realtime atmospheric precipitable water vapor measurements along with other information. Tests will be completed the end of February.
  
  
• JOSS. The intensive field program phase of Aerosol Characterization Experiments (ACE)-Asia, will begin in March-April 2001. 50 universities and 90 scientists will participate in ACE.
  
  
• VSP. Current recruitments in the visiting scientist programs were reviewed including 8 new appointments in the Climate & Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and 3 in the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction Postdoctoral Scientist Program.
  
  
• IITA. Though the Distributed Oceanographic Data System (DODS) project is no longer managed by IITA, this program is currently coordinating between the DODS project and the UCAR community in the use of the DODS data access protocol.

Discussion followed on the usefulness of Trustee liaisons to UOP programs, especially to DLESE, and Unidata. Smith, liaison to the University Relations Committee (URC), requested that a more detailed presentation on these three programs be given to the URC. Brown added that the archiving of data is a continuing problem and suggested that, as a starting point, the URC look into this problem.

13. GRADUATE STUDENT RECRUITING

Anthes reported the article recently submitted to BAMS which reports on the results of the survey of application for graduate schools in and enrollment numbers of graduate students. He outlined the motivation for the article and UCAR efforts on behalf of the community. He noted the lower numbers of applications to graduate schools in atmospheric and related sciences, the graduate student survey conducted last year to gather enrollment data on UCAR Member departments, and the recruiting website under development by UCAR.

Matt Brown and John Robinson from ProMotif, Inc, a web-design firm contracted to build the recruiting site, presented the current design. Brown noted plans for a focus group discussion with CU undergraduate students to be held in early April. The Trustees provided their input to the design. The next version will be reviewed with a subset of the Board, Eugenia Kalnay, Leo Donner and Gabor Vali.

14. UCAR EDUCATION AND OUTREACH STRATEGIC PLAN

Roberta Johnson, Director of the UCAR Office of Education and Outreach (E&O), presented the draft strategic plan. She noted that the E&O office was created in response to UCAR's community survey where significant interest was shown in UCAR taking a larger role in education and outreach. She reviewed current successful activities in this arena—a) Project LEARN which after 10 years will end this month; b) events and exhibits, such as Super Science Saturday and the Roberts Distinguished Lecture Series; c) Windows to the Universe which she initiated at the University of Michigan, d) Web Weather for Kids which was developed in support of the 40th Anniversary; and e) the SOARS Program which is funded through FY04.

The E&O Strategic Planning Committee, comprised of UCAR/NCAR people, has been charged to develop a mission, prioritize goals, and integrate their plan into the NCAR strategic plan. After presentation and discussion at the October 2000 Members' Meeting, the AMS Heads and Chairs Meeting, and other workshops, a draft plan was developed by the planning committee. Johnson announced that the final plan is to be completed by the end of March 2001. At this time, she asked the Board for additional input into this draft document.

Brown pointed out that the plan is a combination of programs already in existence and of programs that will be created in the future. Smith remarked that the activities need to be prioritized in order to be effective; otherwise the challenge would be overwhelming. Vali noted that the programs are heavily weighted to K-12 audience and asked for more emphasis on postgraduate activities. Donner asked if resource requirements have been assessed and added that activities should be developed that can most effectively use the research expertise of UCAR/NCAR staff.

McPherson commented that a survey of all geosciences educational activities that are now being done by AGU, AMS, NASA, etc., would be helpful in prioritizing programs and in filling the holes that now exist. Anthes said that this planning document needs to focus on the long-term (K-12). Houghton added that providing a database of all projects now going on, both regionally and locally, would be helpful to the community.

Thomson brought up the question of regionally or locally centered programs. He continued by saying that the policy needs to be nationally focused because NCAR is a national center; therefore the prioritization should be done nationally. Thomson requested a more interactive role in forming this strategic plan. Brown concluded the discussion period by asking that the Board give their marked-up versions of the plan to Johnson for her consideration in revising the plan.

15. UNSTRUCTURED DISCUSSION

Discussion centered on the graduate student survey and posting the recently submitted paper on the web. The paper will be sent to the Members for their information.

16. ADJOURN

After reviewing the schedule for the Trustee and committee meetings in June, the regular meeting of the Board adjourned at 11:15 am.

End of Minutes