From the User Executive Committee (UEC) Chair

 
Published: 13 October 2022

The UEC is eager to engage with you. This is a message from the UEC Chair.

Catching Up Virtually—and Also In Person!

Allison C. Aiken, ARM User Executive Committee chair from Los Alamos National Laboratory
Allison C. Aiken, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Hello, everyone! It is hard to believe that I last wrote to you a year ago. Since then, much of our focus has been on the four subgroups we created in early 2021 to continue previous UEC work and start new efforts to broaden community outreach.

I passed the blog-writing baton to our subgroup chairs, and they did a great job introducing their subgroups and recommendations to ARM. If you missed any of the blogs or want to reread them, please click on the links below:

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Update

In his blog, Scott wrote that his subgroup thought it would be productive to have an invited speaker discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion at the next Joint ARM User Facility/Atmospheric System Research (ASR) Principal Investigators Meeting. I am excited to share that the joint meeting from Monday, October 24, to Thursday, October 27, in Rockville, Maryland, will include a plenary speaker on this topic.

Emily Fischer, an associate professor at Colorado State University, will give a virtual talk titled “Leveraging Field-Campaign Networks to Identify Sexual Harassment in Atmospheric Science and Pilot Promising Interventions.” She led a 2021 paper of the same name in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS). Emily will discuss the BAMS article along with other efforts and personal experience to help attendees implement best practices for recognizing, reporting, and addressing sexual harassment in the field.

In-person and online attendees can watch Emily’s talk live at 11:15 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday, October 26. She will be available for questions during her talk as well as via Slack during the meeting. I also ask you to review ARM’s Code of Conduct beforehand.

If you still need to register for the joint meeting, the deadline is Wednesday, October 19. The agenda, breakout session descriptions, and poster information can be found on the meeting website.

Meet the UEC at the Joint Meeting

The upcoming joint meeting means a great deal to me as it will be my first in person as the UEC chair (last year’s meeting was virtual). I am excited to see old friends and meet many of you for the first time! There’s just something special about meeting in person that you don’t get online.

We will have a Meet the UEC lunch at 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, October 25, in the Eisenhower room. This lunch is particularly geared toward attendees who are new or relatively new to ARM. Please bring your questions or feedback about the ARM user experience. We are eager to hear from you!

If you aren’t attending the joint meeting in person this year, please contact us at any time if you have questions or feedback that we can take back to ARM management.

Election Time Is Coming

I also wanted to remind you that a very important task is coming up. The next UEC election will open right before the joint meeting. This will be your opportunity to elect users who will represent you for the next two to four years, so please be sure to vote and make your voice heard.

I will be rolling off the UEC after this election cycle along with seven other members, and I look forward to seeing how the new members help the UEC continue to grow its efforts.

It is time to resume preparing for the joint meeting, so I will sign off now. Take care, and if I don’t see you at the joint meeting, I hope you have a wonderful last few months of 2022!

Allison Aiken