Challenges and Opportunities for New Partnerships
among the Public, Private, and Academic Weather and Climate Sectors

Over the past several years, the UCAR Members' Meeting forums have examined how UCAR can best serve the atmospheric and related sciences community. We believe these forums were quite successful and have guided UCAR and NCAR strategic planning efforts. The focus of this year's forum is to explore how we can encourage stronger partnerships between the public, private, and academic weather and climate sectors.

The Forum will focus on the following:

• Identify the reasons for existing barriers to public-private-academic interactions, both real and perceived, and offer suggestions for overcoming them.

• Identify emerging opportunities for which the academic, public, and private sectors can work together effectively and suggest appropriate frameworks for pursuing them.

• Identify ways in which universities can best prepare students, at all levels of study, to be employable in a job market that increasingly involves private enterprise, customer service, and financial expertise.

We believe these partnerships are critically important to our nation's science, the economy, and the public good. We hope to summarize the results of the UCAR forum and other similar events (e.g., a User Forum at the 2003 AMS meeting) in a BAMS article, as well as use what we learn from these events in UCAR and AMS planning and advocacy efforts. We expect that this will be a multi-year dialogue.

Plenary Session ~ 3:20 - 4:00 pm Tuesday, 8 October

Lumsden will explain the establishment of a company that provides a national weather forecast service, and markets meteorological services to the private sector. He will describe what the company does now, touching on changes to the organization’s culture, and partnerships for training and product development. His talk will also address some unfounded fears and real challenges. Time is reserved for questions.

Panel and Moderated Discussion ~ 4:00 - 6:00pm, Tuesday, 8 October

The Plenary speaker will be followed by a panel of private, public, and academic speakers that will briefly (5-10 minutes) describe their own experiences regarding the three issues mentioned above. John Lumsden will moderate the discussion. This is meant to be a dialogue between the audience and panelists.

Other members of the private and public sectors have been invited to participate in this discussion as part of the audience.

Plenary Session ~ 8:15 - 9:15 am Wednesday, 9 October

The previous day's discussion will be summarized, and time will be allotted for follow-up discussion and identifying next steps. John Lumsden will lead the discussion.