UNIVERSITY CORPORATION FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH

MINUTES

Board of Trustees Meeting

19-20 June 2000

Boulder, CO

The duly-convened meeting of the UCAR Board of Trustees was held in the Walter Orr Roberts Board Room, Fleischmann Building, Boulder, Colorado. Present for all or portions of the meeting were:

Otis Brown, University of Miami (Chairman)
Richard Anthes, President, UCAR
Leo Donner, Princeton University
Lennard Fisk, University of Michigan
David Houghton, University of Wisconsin
Lyn Hutton, MacArthur Foundation
Charles Kennel, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (via teleconference)
Paola Malanotte-Rizzoli, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ronald McPherson, American Meteorological Society
Mary Jo Richardson, Texas A&M University
David Skaggs, Aspen Institute
Ronald Smith, Yale University
Dennis Thomson, Pennsylvania State University
Margaret Tolbert, University of Colorado
Gabor Vali, University of Wyoming

Counsel and Corporate Officers:

H. Gregory Austin, UCAR Counsel, Holland and Hart
Lise Carney, UCAR Counsel, Holland and Hart
Walt Dabberdt, Acting Director, NCAR
Jack Fellows, Asst. Secy. and VP for Corp. Affairs & Director of UOP
Susan Friberg, Asst. Secretary, UCAR
Kathryn Schmoll, Vice President, Finance and Administration, UCAR

National Science Foundation:

Carrie Davison, Division of Contracts, Policy and Oversight
Bernard Grant, Financial Operations Specialist, UCAR & Lower Atmospheric Facilities Oversight Section, ATM
Cliff Jacobs, Head, UCAR & Lower Atmospheric Facilities Oversight Sec., ATM
Jarvis Moyers, Division Director, ATM
Gracie Narcho, Division of Grants and Agreements

UCAR, NCAR, UOP:

Meg Austin, Program Manager, Visiting Scientist Programs, UOP
Harriet Barker, VP Emerita, UCAR
Rena Brasher-Alleva, Director, Budget & Planning Office, NCAR
Al Cooper, Director, Advanced Study Program, NCAR
Laura Curtis, Office of Development & Government Affairs, UCAR
Steve Dickson, Dir. of Special Projects & Internal Audit System, Finance & Adm., UCAR
Janet Evans, Budget & Planning Office, NCAR
David Fulker, Program Director, Unidata Program Center, UOP
Peter Gilman, High Altitude Observatory, NCAR
Robert Henson, UCAR Communications
Al Kellie, Director, Scientific Computing Division, NCAR
Dale Kellogg, Executive Assistant to the Director, NCAR
Timothy Killeen, Director Designate, NCAR
Joe Klemp, Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division, NCAR
Peggy LeMone, Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division, NCAR
Mary Marlino, Director, PAGE/DLESE Program Center, UOP
Susan Montgomery-Hodge, Executive Assistant, UCAR President's Office
Jeff Reaves, Assoc. VP, Business Services, Finance & Administration., UCAR
Robert Roesch, Director, Human Resources & Employee Relations, UCAR
Karyn Sawyer, Director, Joint Office for Science Support, UOP
Cindy Schmidt, Director, Office of Development & Gov’t Affairs, UCAR
Tim Spangler, Director, COMET, UOP
Kathy Strand, Manager, UCAR Office of Programs
Betty Valent, Executive Assistant, Finance and Administration, UCAR
Lucy Warner, Manager, UCAR Communications
Susan Warner, Executive Assistant, Corporate Affairs, UCAR
Dan Wilson, Director of Treasury Operations,

Others:

John Dutton, Chairman of UCAR Foundation Board of Directors, the Pennsylvania State University
R. C. Mercure, President, UCAR Foundation

The Board convened in Executive Session in the Walter Orr Roberts Board Room of the Fleischmann Building from 12:00-12:45 pm. (The minutes are kept in the corporate offices.)

1. WELCOME AND AGENDA REVIEW

The Board convened in Regular Session. Chairman of the Board Otis Brown called the meeting to order at 12:45, welcomed the Trustees, NSF officials and guests. He noted the concurrent 40^th Anniversary celebration, visits to UCAR by NSF Director Rita Colwell, Deputy Director Joseph Bordogna and GEO Assistant Director, Margaret Leinen and announced Rita Colwell's talk at 5:30pm this evening at Old Main Chapel at the University of Colorado. Brown reviewed the agenda, noted a few scheduling changes, and asked for adoption. It was moved, seconded, and passed to adopt the agenda as presented.

2. CHAIRMAN'S REPORT

A. Chairman Brown announced the approval of the following Senior Scientists during the Executive Session of the Board: Timothy J. Killeen, NCAR Director Designate; Annick Pouquet, Head, NCAR's Geophysical Turbulence Program (1 Oct 2000); William J. Randel, NCAR/ACD; and Philip J. Rasch, NCAR/CGD. He also announced that Xiaolei Zou from Florida State University has been appointed as an Affiliate Scientist to NCAR He offered congratulation to all!

B. Brown presented the following resolution to elect NCAR Director Designate Tim Killeen as an officer of the corporation:

Whereas Robert J. Serafin has retired as NCAR Director on 30 April 2000;

Whereas the Trustees at their 15 February meeting approved the appointment of Tim Killeen as NCAR Director effective 1 July 2000;

Now therefore it is resolved that Timothy J. Killeen, in his capacity of NCAR Director is elected as an officer of the Corporation effective 1 July 2000, to report to the President of the Corporation and to have such duties as may be assigned to him by the Corporation's President or the UCAR Board of Trustees.

The Board moved, seconded, and passed this resolution appointing Killeen as corporate officer.

C. Chairman Brown noted the following items as follow-up to the Februrary Board Meeting: 1) The graduate student survey to be discussed later in the day; 2) the NRC study ranking atmospheric and related science departments is slowly being developed though funding for that project has not yet been secured; 3) the appointment of Tim Brenner as the first UCAR/AMS Fellow in Washington; he noted that the next application cycle begins shortly with appointment in September 2001.

3. PERSONNEL COMMITTEE REPORT

Trustee Leo Donner, Chairman of the Personnel Committee, reported that in addition to the review of Senior Scientist recommendations, the Personnel Committee discussed workforce diversity and mentoring at UCAR, noting especially the recently commissioned review by the Committee on the Status of Women in Science of the American Physical Society. The Committee will be at UCAR on 13-14 July to examine the climate of women at UCAR/NCAR/UOP. A report will follow late summer, and a report will be made to the Board in October.

Donner also reported that the Committee reviewed the draft negotiated agreements policy (see attached), that essentially codifies current practices. He reported that the Personnel Committee recommends that the full Board of Trustees approve the policy by adopting a motion to send the policy to NSF for their approval. It was then moved, seconded, and passed to send the Negotiated Agreements Policy to NSF for approval.

Donner also reported that the Committee discussed Ph.D flow through at NCAR, including the ratio of senior to junior scientific staff that has become imbalanced over the past few years. The Committee will continue to look at this in future meetings, as well as at the rate of departures of women at the Scientist II and III levels, and at scientific visitor trends.

It was moved, seconded, and passed to accept the report of the Personnel Committee.

4. SECRETARY'S REPORT

Secretary Ronald Smith presented the minutes from the February Board meeting, and asked for approval. It was moved, seconded, and passed to approve the minutes as written.

5. TREASURER'S REPORT

Treasurer Lyn Hutton presented the Consolidated Statement of Funding and Expenditures for the eight months ending 31 May 2000. Hutton reviewed the budgets called attention to the General Fund Revenues and Expenses, observing that the General Fund balance is tracking according to the Audit and Finance Committee's plan. She also noted that the Foundation and WITI activities are not reflected in this report, and that the Audit and Finance Committee asked that it be broken out in the future. It was then moved, seconded, and passed to accept the Treasurer's Report.

6. AUDIT AND FINANCE COMMITTEE REPORT

Hutton reviewed the discussions of the Audit and Finance Committee whose meeting was held earlier in the day, highlighting the sale of WITI Corporation to LifeMinders, Inc.; the status of UCAR investments; and an update on the management response to Deloitte and Touche Audit Commentary Letter regarding security on the Bi-Tech system.

It was moved, seconded, and passed to accept the report of the Audit and Finance Committee.

7. STUDENT RECRUITMENT ISSUE

Trustee Dennis Thomson led the discussion on the student recruitment survey conducted this past spring. He reported that 60% of the universities contacted responded. Gabor Vali noted that the survey indicates an 8.7% decrease in applications for graduate school over the past 5 years, and a 3.2% decrease in entering students. Discussion followed on the significance of the problem to the community, and what can be done to stem the tide of dwindling numbers of graduate school applications.

Thomson recommended that Vali's survey analysis be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), and be discussed in detail at the Heads and Chairs Meeting. He also suggested that student data be gathered over the long-term so that the trends could be monitored carefully.

Trustee Len Fisk said the "real question is, is the current capacity close to the national need?" Discussion followed on this and questions of the appropriate role for the UCAR Trustees in this activity, as well as the appropriate role for UCAR in recruiting students for the atmospheric and related sciences discipline.

Chairman Brown moved and seconded that the report be transmitted to the Heads and Chairs Meeting organizers. After a brief discussion the question was called and the motion passed.

It was also moved, seconded, and passed (with two abstentions) to distribute the data more broadly, such as in BAMS.

It was moved, seconded, and passed (with one opposed) for UCAR, along with the subcommittee, to develop a specific plan for it's role in addressing this issue.

8. OCTOBER MEETING DISCUSSION

Vice President for Corporate Affairs, Jack Fellows, presented the schedule for the upcoming October meetings in Boulder during the week of 9 October. He summarized the agenda items for the Member's meeting and pointed out that the focus will be the session on "Opportunities and Challenges for the Future." He asked the Trustees to approve the plans for the October Members Meeting and Forum Session. It was regularly moved, seconded, and passed to approve the October 2000 Annual Meeting plans as presented.

9. FEDERAL BUDGET UPDATE AND ADVOCACY STRATEGY

Fellows updated the Board on the status of the FY2001 Federal Science Budget, noting that the House appropriations subcommittee marked NSF for a 4.3% increase with a 7% increase for NSF/GEO (the House, unlike the Senate specifies funding for the NSF directorates), and that the House had budgeted $12.5M for HIAPER. He said there was no funding for "new starts" for NOAA, and that by late August or September we will know the Senate numbers and see the "sorting out" of FY2001 budget allocations.

Fellows reported on the Federal Relations activities since the last Board Meeting, including the following briefings to the Congressional staff members on the Hill: March--aviation weather research; June--the state of wildfire research; June: space weather. He reported that it has been an active period with Advocacy Alerts on the FY01 budget allocations sent to the community (with excellent response), and testimony letter drafted for all the agency budgets.

He then presented the Advocacy priorities and specific implementation activities. After discussion by the Board, it was moved, seconded, and passed to endorse UCAR's advocacy strategy.

TUESDAY, 20 JUNE

The Board convened in Executive Session from 8:00-9:00am. (The minutes are kept in the corporate offices.)

Cliff Jacobs, Head of ATM's UCAR & Lower Atmospheric Facilities Oversight Section, presented an overview of the FY2001 budget. He updated the Board on the NSF review of UCAR and NCAR review and on HIAPER. Jacobs summarized the five objectives of the review and pointed out the revisions made according to UCAR's suggestions. Also, the criteria were reduced from six to three, thus streamlining the work of the review panel. He presented the timeline for the review process, and pointed out that the management and science reviews will take place in the same time period, the last quarter of 2001. Jacobs continued by saying that the UCAR proposal submission date will be November 2002, with NSF review and NSB consideration in 2003. It is uncertain if the management proposal will be for a sole source renewal of the cooperative agreement, or if it will be in response to an open competition.

Jacobs began his report on HIAPER by pointing out that Margaret Leinen, NSF's Geosciences Assistant Director, has made several presentations on this aircraft to the National Science Board. Jacobs explained the presentations focus on the capabilities and potential of this aircraft, the possibilities of academic, federal and private sector collaboration, and the type of science that can be done on HIAPER's missions. Jacobs reported that $8.5M is available in the next two years but an additional $53M, one-third of the MRE account, is needed in FY02 for the acquisition and modification of the airframe. Jacobs estimated that this aircraft will be ready to fly by 2005.

11. UCAR STATUS REPORT

UCAR President Richard Anthes briefly highlighted the following items of interest:

• Two community surveys have been conducted over these past few months—one on graduate student recruitment and the other to the broader community on questions about UCAR programs and issues and challenges facing the community.
• A commissioned review by the Committee on the Status of Women in Science of the American Physical Society will take place on July 13-14.
• UCAR's 40^th anniversary along with NSF's 50^th, HAO's 60^th and COMET's 10^th are being celebrated this year. The document, UCAR at 40, a sequel to UCAR at 25, will be available this fall.
• NSF's newly appointed Geosciences Assistant Director M. Leinen visited UCAR on April 18-20.
• Finance & Administration moved to Pearl Street in May, the Mesa Lab refurbishment is progressing, and the Mesa Lab NCAR Science store opened 1 June.
• The SOARS program is in its fifth year, with a new proposal is being submitted to NSF and DOE. This program has been very successful with an 82% retention rate.

12. NCAR STATUS REPORT

NCAR Associate Director Walt Dabberdt reported on the following activities:

• HIAPER: The RFP for HIAPER was released in June and the proposal due date is Sept. 15. With only $8.5M in the budget, the vendors realize full funding is not available at this time. NSF Director Rita Colwell has stated that HIAPER is a strong candidate for MRE funding in 2002.
• Supercomputing: The RFP for the next computing upgrade will be released this Fall and a decision is slated to be made by Spring 2001.
• TOPSE (Tropospheric Ozone Production about the Spring Equinox): This field, modeling and analyzing program had strong university participation and during February through May 2000 seven deployments were made on NCAR's C-130. The preliminary data archive is nearly complete.
• ACD Director: Six finalists were interviewed in April and the search committee is now negotiating with the final candidate. An announcement is expected soon.
• NCAR's 2000 Budget: The final target was a 0.7% increase over FY99 with a pro- rata distribution to the divisions.
• NCAR's Annual Retreat: On June 12 around 150 NCAR scientists met at an all day retreat. On June 13-15, the NCAR Directors and President's Council continued the retreat in Vail.

13. HIGH PERFORMANCE SIMULATION STRATEGIC PLAN

NCAR Director Designate, Tim Killeen, presented NCAR's Strategic Plan for High Performance Scientific Simulation. He presented the background by reviewing the NSF Code Assessment Panel convened in July 1999 to assess performance and scalability of large simulation codes at NCAR; NCAR's response to the panel report; the development of the plan; and the schedule for implementation. Killeen described the "End-to-end Simulation Environment" at NCAR that encompasses the hardware, networking and storage, through research project development, data management, code design, model testing, visualization, documentation, outreach, training, to develop collaborative tools and conduct research in a distributed environment.

He highlighted the following six themes: 1) high-performance computing capability; 2) use of modern software engineering practices; 3)data services and tools; 4) management challenges for multidisciplinary teams; 5) augmenting the role of computer science; and 6) collaboration with geographically dispersed teams. The latter, Killeen said, will be a significant change for NCAR and will include adopting the concept of collaboratory here at NCAR--providing the community a virtual center for the future.

Killeen discussed the implementation plan with the Board, noting that while the financial impacts are not trivial, it is NCAR's highest scientific priority at the moment. He also said that new money will have to be found to carry out the plan; and that it will be necessary to re-tool, and re-think some current activities, as well as to make sure that the organization has reached some sort of consensus on the way to proceed.

14. UCAR FOUNDATION UPDATE

John Dutton (Penn State), Chairman of the UCAR Foundation Board, reported on the current status of the UCAR Foundation and it's subsidiaries. He presented background on the Foundation--mission, operations, budget--noting that it was formed in 1986 to be UCAR's agent for technology commercialization. He updated the Board on the sale of WITI Corporation, a company created by the Foundation to market licensed technologies. He reported on WITI's sale to LifeMinders, Inc for $1.8M, and 260,000 shares of stock to be held for one year; with $640,000 of proceeds to be paid to NCAR/RAP as royalties over the net three years.

Dutton outlined the "key strategic issues" facing the UCAR Foundation in the near future:

1) How can the Foundation stimulate development of intellectual property that will serve society and lead to new revenue streams?

2) What should be the UCAR Foundation strategy for developing UCAR IP into valuable ventures? What partners should we engage?

3) What should be the UCAR Foundation investment strategy?

He said that the Foundation Board Members and the UCAR management will discuss these and other issues at the upcoming retreat scheduled for 6-7 July.

15. UOP STATUS REPORT

Director of UOP, Jack Fellows, reviewed each of the eight programs in UOP, and reported on their current activities. Some highlights follow:

• COMET. COMET has received $280K to fund an outreach program from the Department of Transportation; the COMET MetEd website has received over 900,000 hits.
• PAGE/DLESE. UCAR has become the home for the DELESE Program Center.
• UNIDATA. Fellows reported on Unidata's new Java application to render real-time data into 2 and 3 dimensions, and the potential broader scope of activity: to serve the earth sciences broadly.
• COSMIC. UCAR is working on a contract to start with Taiwan and Orbital Sciences in September, for using 6 spacecraft--a slightly reduced mission, but nonetheless effective.
• JOSS. Fellows announced two large projects being planned at JOSS: EPIC2001, planned for summer of 2001 with 50 university investigators, and ACE ASIA, the eastern Asia counterpart to the Aerosol Characteristics Experiment (ACE) held in Tasmania in the late 90s.
• VSP. Fellows reported 19 new postdoc placements.
• IITA. IITA is responsible for managing the development and deployment of the Distributed Oceanographic Data System (DODS) core, client, and server software. DODS provides a means for accessing and manipulating many different data types across the Internet.

16. BOT LIAISON REPORTS

URC Liaison Smith reported on the URC's meeting at Millersville, PA in April. At this meeting the committee reviewed the URC liaison program, discussed how to promote interest in instrumentation development at universities, and proposed agenda items for the Members' meeting. Also discussed was graduate student recruitment and what role the URC could play in this issue. Smith concluded by saying that the non-core proposals were thoroughly reviewed by the URC subcommittee.

Unidata liaison Dennis Thomson reported on the Unidata Policy Committee meeting that was held in Madison, WI on 22-23 May, noting the potential broadening of Unidata's scope, as it examines its role in, and possible contributions to, the Geosciences as a whole.

17. ADJOURN

The regular meeting of the Board adjourned at 12:00 noon.

The Board convened in Executive Session from 12:00- 12:45 (The minutes are kept in the corporate offices.)

End of Minutes