Lamont Weekly Report, May 18, 2012

Tomorrow, May 19th, 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM, the Lamont - Bright Horizons Child Development Center will be celebrating ten years of service to our community. The center opened in 2000 after an internal study by the Lamont Executive Committee. It was operated by the YMCA for about a year, and has been operated by Bright Horizons since January 2002. Bright Horizons has been lauded as one of Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" and our center has achieved the prestigious accreditation of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).  To learn more about our center, please follow the link:

http://www.brighthorizons.com/lamontdoherty.

The rockslide at the Stateline Lookout generated considerable local interest and a chance to visualize what it takes to generate a magnitude 1 earthquake. Kim Martineau's summary is in the Spotlight section of our website.

The end of the fiscal year always presents deadlines for purchasing, salary assignments and other nits and grits. This year is more complicated because of the transition to Columbia's new accounting system. Your Division Administrators know the deadlines: please stay informed and do your best to adhere to them.

The Langseth is sailing the Line Islands on a coring leg, and it's going well. Pratigya Polissar's blog is at:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/research/blogs/future-el-nino.

Thanks to Heather Savage and Brad Linsley for helming this year's colloquium. Next year's organizers will be named shortly, so start thinking about speakers.

I'm pleased to announce that Moanna St. Clair has been hired as the new Division Administrator for Geochemistry, and Ira Messer will join IRI in a similar position. Combined, Ira and Moanna have nearly 40 years of Columbia experience. Please join me in welcoming them.

Many of you may have gotten the following from your listservs. Still, it bears noting:

NSF is seeking input from scientists to help guide EarthCube, the new NSF initiative to create an integrated data and knowledge management system for the geosciences.  Researchers funded by NSF want to know your views on the needs in data and cyberinfrastructure across the geosciences.  Because data discovery, access, and use are such an
integral part of ocean sciences now, I encourage you to take this survey at your earliest convenience.  To date, the oceanography community is not well represented and EarthCube is one of the NSF programs that could offer new funding opportunities for our community in these tight budget times.  I also urge you to register on the EarthCube website to get
involved in the conversations that are taking place.  It is very important that our community participates in this effort.

Art