<> LAMONT BALL

The Lamont Ball will be held on Saturday, May 17th.  If you have not purchased a ticket and would like to attend, please contact Kyla Simons, x- 8660.


<> LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR

There was a tremendous event in the Low Library on Monday night to recognize Jonathan Cole's career as Provost of Columbia, many moving speeches from the likes of Simon Schama and Mike Crow  - and great stories about Jonathon's incredible career (e.g. he sat on more than 700 ad Hoc tenure committees!!) He will be taking a break in Paris for a few months, before returning to his faculty position here at CU.  A Chair has been created in his name, a very fitting tribute.

Tuesday was the annual budget meeting downtown, but this year, for the first time, a single integrated Earth Institute budget was presented by Jeff Sachs.  And Columbia's new Senior Executive Vice President, Robert Kasdin, played a major role, we think it went well, time will tell!!

Wednesday was the UCAR site visit, thanks to Arnold Gordon and his colleagues from OCP, that was also completely successful, and we have little doubt that Columbia's application for membership will go forward without difficulty! Significant participation from friends in IRI, GISS and APAM helped tremendously, of course.

This Sunday afternoon at 3:00 pm in Monell Auditorium is Bill Ruddiman's public lecture that is being synchronized with an Alumni Association meeting, we are expecting a big crowd, including a bus load of undergrads from downtown. Jeff Fox, Alumni Association President is coming up from College Station for the event, and the legendary Marie Tharp will be in attendance, so it promises to be a memorable event.

Lots of good news this week, Nano Seeber has been promoted to Doherty Senior Research Scientist, so next time you see him tell him to buy you a drink, and Gisela Winckler has been appointed a Doherty Associate Research Scientist in Geochemistry.

Next Monday and Tuesday the Earth Institute External Advisory Board is in town, they will briefly visit the campus on Tuesday, I am sure that many of you would like to meet them, and I have to apologize, their time here is so short, that we have had to be brutal with the schedule and restrict their meetings to just a few representatives of the diverse activities on our campus.

So it will be a busy weekend for me, preparing presentations!!

A big piece of today was spent working on the strategic planning process for the Earth Institute, developing some Observatory input into the grand plan.  As soon as we have a collection of words worthy of review we will be circulating it for comment, but we still have some way to go with this.

I hope your weekend will be less busy than mine,

- Mike

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