Lamont Weekly Report – May 14, 2004

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
P.O. Box 1000, 61 Route 9W Palisades, New York 10964

<> REPORT SUMMARY <>

– Letter from the Director –
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<> LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR

Dale Chayes hosted a two-day long NSF cyberinfrastructure workshop, discussing how to improve the interoperability of data systems in the geosciences on Monday and Tuesday, at the start of a week dominated by major meetings and evening events.

The Associate Directors and I spent almost two full days behind closed doors going through the performance evaluations for all the science staff and agreeing on all the merit raises - an agonizing task trying to figure out a way of adequately rewarding the superb performance of so many of our researchers, while at the same time maintaining the growth of the total salary bill for the Observatory at an acceptable level.

Monday night was the CERC awards dinner downtown - a superbly organized and very plush event - only outdone by the Columbia Benefactors event in Low Library on Tuesday night. Wednesday brought the return of my youngest daughter from college for the summer and Thursday was the first of two days of workshops focused upon shaping the Lamont strategic plan. Also on that day we ran a very successful press conference on climate change - the 'hook' being the soon-to-be-released climate disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" - that brought a good set of press representatives to the campus for over two hours. For those interested, the list was: ABC News, American Radio, Business Week, Dutch Press, Newsday, Outside Magazine, Readers Digest, Star Ledger, TVE Spain and Village Voice. Peter deMenocal is our new TV star being featured on "Good Morning America" this morning - also check the ABC news tonight (Friday) - there might be a piece on there too (Iraq permitting). Wally made some piercing comments on camera about George W. Bush's policies on atmospheric CO2 which would be nice to see broadcast!

Friday afternoon was our fourth annual mentoring award event. This year the ceremony was preceded by a one hour long panel discussing proposal writing - an experiment to see if an effective way can be found to transfer knowledge and experience on this vital topic from senior members of our staff to our students, postdocs and junior researchers.
It was well attended, and I look forward to getting some feedback as to whether folks think it was worthwhile. Many thanks to Ed Wright and his committee for playing the leadership role in organizing all this.

The winner of the Mentoring Award this year was Kevin Griffin - the strength of his nominating letters made it clear just how valued and effective Kevin's guidance to his junior colleagues has been. Many congratulations, Kevin.

Off to DC again first thing Monday morning to spend the day on the Hill trying to insure that the Ocean Drilling Program gets funded at the level requested by the President.

Have a great weekend,

– Mike
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