Dear Heads and Chairs -

As you know, the AGU, AMS and UCAR are co-sponsoring a Heads and Chairs meeting at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder CO this Oct. 10-11. There is still time to register for both the meeting and the hotel, as the hotel deadline was moved back to Sept. 13 and the registration deadline is Sept. 16. Please see http://www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/oct02/heads_chairs.htm to register. I know you have been waiting patiently for an agenda to appear. It is not quite ready to go to press yet, but I will summarize here in narrative form the schedule as we now know it. As you can see, the meeting has a variety of important speakers and will address many topics of vital interest to your organization.

On Thursday morning, Oct. 10, we will hear from representatives of various funding agencies. There will be a representative from the NSF Geosciences Directorate. Dr. James Mahoney, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmospheres will address important issues in NOAA. Ghassem Asrar or his designate from NASA will talk about geo-related programs.

The next session will feature reports from the host organizations, Fred Spilhaus or his designate will talk about ongoing and new activities in the AGU. Ron McPherson, Exective Director of the AMS will present some of the new initiatives within the AMS, which will be followed by a presentation by Bill Hooke on the AMS Public Policy program. Gene Bierly of the AGU will follow with a summary of all the AGU activities on the Policy side. The session will conclude with Jack Fellows, Director of the UCAR Office of Programs, providing a summary of UCAR activities relevant to all geoscientists such as the digital library efforts via DLESE and NSDL, scientific uses of the GPS satellites, education and outreach efforts, etc.

Next will come a series of brief reports on topics of great interest to most academic programs. We will provide a summary of the increasing visa problem for foreign students, a summary of the important issues related to private sector/university interactions (taken from a UCAR Forum on this issue held earlier in the week), and a report from the NRC on their current thinking on new rankings for various geosciences disciplines, and the criteria that should be used.

We will follow this up with a couple of breakout sessions. One will be on the topic of "Criteria 2" evaluation metrics in NSF proposals. Mike Mayhew will introduce and moderate this topic, and will first present a summary of a recently concluded survey on the topic. One main issue is to what degree are high or low rankings in the Critria 2 metrics going to affect funding decisions. The second session will focus on workforce and diversity issues. Representatives in this area will summarize the current demographics of the diversity issue, and lead a discussion of the best ways our community can increase diversity in the geosciences.

Reports from the breakout sessions will be held in plenary session Friday morning with time for discussion. There may be time for additional reports of interest. On the AMS side, we often conclude with "Resolutions" for actions to be taken by the AMS or UCAR community, but am not sure if we'll do this here. The meeting is scheduled to adjourn by 12:30. There will be a luncheon on Thursday noon and a reception on Thursday evening.

Again, there is still time to register and I hope you or any other departmental representative will decide to join us at this meeting. Thank you again for your patience and I look forward to seeing you next month.

Sincerely,
Fred Carr
Member of AMS Board on Higher Education and Program Co-Chair.