During the election last fall, ARM’s User Executive Committee (UEC) got an infusion of new blood—and it shows. Ever since, the UEC has been focusing on four goals under the leadership of Larry Berg, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the new chair (former vice-chair, replaced in that capacity by Sebastien Biraud, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory).
Spreading the Gospel
The first goal is improved communications. In the interests of being more inclusive of ARM users beyond the Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program, which still provides ARM’s largest single constituent group, the UEC is actively reaching out to engage others.
The committee is especially targeting members of other U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) groups and other government bodies such as the National Weather Service.
“This is an opportunity to spread the gospel. We want to ensure these people are aware of ARM data and encourage them to use it. We are all about the data,” Berg says.
An example is ACME, the Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy project. This multi-organization effort has been focused on model building, but as the release date for its new model version nears, it is increasing focus on model parameter evaluation—an excellent time to approach its members to use ARM’s high-integrity data.
The UEC is also relying on its two new international members, Christine Chiu (University of Reading, United Kingdom) and Jim Haywood (University of Exeter, United Kingdom), to approach potential new users in Europe.
Catching them Young
The UEC’s second goal is to spread the word about ARM data among early career scientists. Appropriately, Erika Roesler of Sandia National Laboratories, the UEC’s first early career representative, heads this initiative.
Roesler volunteered to lead this effort at the joint ARM/ASR PI Meeting held in March, but she also plans to go after new principal investigators, scientists, and postdoctoral students in the national lab system who may not be familiar with the ARM Facility because of the directions their research and funding has steered them.
Roesler says her goal is to build human connections that will keep users coming back for more data.
Defining Perfect
Goal three stems from user interactions, including the first UEC’s work as well as ARM’s radar group.
This effort is a crowd-pleaser, responding to repeated requests—identifying “golden periods,” be they days, weeks, or months, of near-perfect observational data. Considered a Holy Grail, users are begging the Facility to find and flag these super-clean data sets so they can be thoroughly exploited.
Some of this time-consuming work can be automated, Berg says, so ARM’s data management experts are on the case.
Of, By, and For the Users
Fourth, and perhaps most basically, the UEC is doing everything possible to encourage users to talk more with the committee.
Dialogue is critical for the UEC to perform its function as the conduit of user concerns to ARM Facility management. Just like a democracy, it’s crucial for ARM constituents to communicate with their representatives so that the governing body can be truly responsive to community needs.
Berg notes that while the UEC has made major efforts at conferences and meetings, it needs to follow up more on breakout sessions and other opportunities to get close to users. The committee is also brainstorming impediments that may still be thwarting more free-flowing communication.
Timely Feedback
To sum up, the new UEC has hit the ground running. “It’s a good group that functions well,” Berg says, “so watch this space for results.”
The ARM UEC provides objective, timely feedback to the leadership of the ARM Facility with respect to the user experience. The committee serves as the official voice of the user community in its interactions with ARM management.
The UEC reports to the ARM Facility Technical Director and is made up of at least ten members representing ARM’s various science domains. Members serve four-year terms with a staggered election cycle.
Current UEC members include:
The ARM Climate Research Facility is a DOE Office of Science user facility. The ARM Facility is operated by nine DOE national laboratories.