The ARM User Executive Committee (UEC) is eager to engage with you. This is a message from UEC Chair Jennifer “Jen” Delamere.
The Power Is Yours: Help Shape the Future UEC
For American children of the 1970s and 1980s, we often spent our Saturday mornings in front of a VHF-UHF television, eyes glued to Saturday morning cartoons on a tiny screen. Inextricably linked to “Looney Tunes” and “The Smurfs” were three-minute videos from “Schoolhouse Rock!” that taught us about the function of a conjunction, the magic of the number three, and the preamble of the U.S. Constitution. When the cartoons were over, my siblings and I argued about who had to get up to turn the TV channel (correct, no remote controls in my house), while singing the catchy tune “I’m Just a Bill.”
So why in this blog am I telling you about “Schoolhouse Rock!”? From “Schoolhouse Rock!” I realized the importance of participating in civic activities, including casting votes. In this blog, I ask you to vote in the biennial UEC elections. The job of the UEC is to represent ARM users. The UEC provides feedback to ARM leadership about the user experience with ARM.gov, the ARM Data Center and its Data Discovery portal, the agenda of the Joint ARM User Facility/Atmospheric System Research (ASR) Principal Investigators (PI) Meeting, and a myriad of other topics.
The UEC currently comprises 14 members from seven science domains and four cross-cutting themes (see the UEC Charter for additional information). Six UEC members will roll off at the end of 2024, to be replaced by a slate of new members elected by you, the ARM user community. This year, we had 22 community members, including 13 early career scientists, accept a nomination for the UEC ballot. When Mike Jensen takes over the UEC chair position in 2025, he will have an awesome crew on the UEC. So please vote for the next group of UEC representatives between Friday, October 25, and Friday, November 8, 2024. Here is the link to the ballot. Results will be announced in January 2025.
The UEC Modeling Subgroup Needs Your Input
Since you all will have just taken your time to vote for the 2025–2026 UEC members, maybe you have another five minutes to take a UEC survey to help us answer the question, “How can ARM improve the integration and usefulness of ARM measurements for modeling?” Though we are particularly interested in answering this question as it relates to aerosols, clouds, and aerosol-cloud interactions in global models, you are welcome to provide input in other areas.
Survey results will be analyzed by the UEC’s modeling subgroup and shared with ARM leadership, which will then determine how to move forward with the information. Results will also be shared with you in a future blog post.
Kudos to the committee leadership of Susannah Burrows, Erika Roesler, and Yunyan Zhang for their efforts with this survey, which you can learn more about in the modeling subgroup’s July blog post. It’s a thoughtful example of how the UEC functions within our community.
Save the Date: 2025 Joint ARM User Facility/ASR PI Meeting
The next Joint ARM User Facility/ASR PI Meeting will be Monday, March 3, to Thursday, March 6, 2025, in the Washington, D.C., area. UEC members will be at this meeting and look forward to hearing from you! If you are unable to attend, you can contact the UEC anytime about your user experience.
In January, I will hand off the chair duties to Mike and wrap up my four-year UEC term, but you will hear from me one more time before I officially sign off. See you at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting in December!