I spent Monday in meetings with leadership of the National Math and Science initiative (NMSI) - a very successful NGO that is committed to improving the quality of math and science education at grade school levels. A very successful and productive day - that we hope will lead to some more tangible and significant partnerships between CU and NMSI.
Considerable thanks are due to LDEO Advisory board member Frank Gumper for setting this up.
ExCom covered a varied list of topics this morning. We welcomed Alberto Malinverno as a new member - representing the Project Scientist track. We further discussed the Postdoc Mentoring plan. We received a report from an ad hoc group formed by the Campus Life Committee that had studied energy usage on Campus (their report was circulated to everyone
a couple of weeks ago). Stan Jacobs and Sallie Odland gave an overview and after some discussion it was decided to recommend the formation of a Standing Committee under the auspices of the Campus Life Committee, to provide ideas, support and guidance to Pat O'Reilly, directed at the dual goals of reducing our ever increasing energy costs and reducing our carbon footprint.
We took a significant step forward with our plans for completion of the Comer ultra clean lab this afternoon - the specialist subcontractor who will carry out the construction and installation signed the final contract. And importantly, assured us that compared with similar labs that he has constructed at Yale, Stanford, Woods Hole, Northwestern (etc etc) ours is the biggest!
Congratulations to Danielle Sumy in SGT for winning an AGU Outstanding Student Paper award (just announced in Eos) at the Fall 2009 AGU meeting. Well done, Danielle!
I will be spending at least the first two days of next week downtown suffering further consequences of the NSF Business System review of our Marine Ops Office - I shall spend the weekend doing deep breathing exercises in preparation for that.
Enjoy a wonderful weekend,
- Mike