10:00AM Mountain Standard Time
Members present: Kelley Barsanti, Brad Klotz, Peter Lawrence, Ryan Sobash, Eric Apel, Allison Baker, Anna Malanushenko, Ben Johnson
Also present: Glen Romine from the Directorate’s Office
Discussion with Glen Romine
High Profile Visits
We had the division director of NSF Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, Anne Johansen, and deputy director John Hannan come to visit. A focus of the visit was to help John to learn us as an organization since he came from outside the NSF world. The intent was to help him to learn NSF NCAR orient him in his new job. They were only here for a day and half so we had to cram as much into that time as possible. Simultaneously, we had Vice Admiral Nancy Hann from NOAA. She was Director of the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps and she’s now deputy director for NOAA. When the Trump administration takes over, she’ll be the highest official running NOAA until Congressional Appointees are confirmed. We’ve had a lot of contact with her connecting our aviation programs with NOAA’s.
The Trump administration will have an effect on our organization. Previous Trump administration wasn’t bad for organizations like NSF. But there’s a lot of frothiness around DEI. If you don’t get the AIP FYI notices, there’s a lot of good content there. For example, Ted Cruz is upset with funding DEI initiatives in NSF. It’s to our best interest to understand these kinds of activities. We have no plans to change anything but we’re going to be more cautious so we’re not enticing people who are looking for things to go after. But in the short term there’s not too much to worry about. We’re fiscally in a good place in the organization so we don’t anticipate knee jerk reactions. We’re watching, paying attention so we can be proactive but we’re not going to be overly reactive.
Strategic Plan
There’s still a few days for folks to submit their input on it. So far, only about three dozen staff have submitted responses. The deadline to submit responses is coming up, next Monday. We’re hoping to get more input. We sent the plan out to NSF AGS for feedback. Their feedback was generally positive. This gives us a good sense that we’re on the right track. Looking for feedback so we can refine and improve.
Interactions between the Directorate and NSA-EC
Looking forward to this group submitting your funding request and looking to set up a meeting between the NSA-EC and NSF NCAR EC sometime in March.
Question and Answer with Glen
Is there any update from the directorate on the Our Future, Our Space (OFOS) project?
I don’t know the latest on it. The general idea is still the same. The UCAR COO Alicia Swofford is leading that effort.
Glen departs the meeting.
Discussion about funding and event planning
Trying to find a time during which as many lab representatives as possible can meet with the NSF NCAR EC.
The NSA-EC put in a funding request to hold social events at the lab level. That pool of money is restricted so they wouldn’t be able to fund our request for social events. The survey is meant to refocus the funding request.
Funds for social events on the scale we requested weren’t available. But there are other pools of money that we can draw from. For example, there is funding for travel. The ECSA has a pool of money that they disburse for travel.
The ECSA has a quiet period during the holidays. During the 2023/2024 holiday season, the NSA-EC didn’t hold meetings in December 2023 and January 2024. Should we do the same this holiday season? There is general consensus that we should hold the December meeting and submit a year end letter to the Directorate.
Action Items
- Survey the NSA-EC representatives to see if meeting on a different week of the month would allow for greater participation.
- Draft a year end letter, gather comments on it from the representatives, and send it to the Directorate.