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Letter from the President
Dear AMS Members and Friends,
It is with honor and humility that I send forth this letter as your
President. I want to congratulate Past-president Louis Uccellini and his
program committee for a stimulating, far-reaching, and informative Annual
Meeting in Austin. The Annual Meeting is the pinnacle of a full year of
extremely hard work by our outstanding Executive Director Keith Seitter,
the amazing professional staff in Boston and Washington DC, and hundreds of
volunteers from the Society.
Our Society is healthy and poised to continue its role as a leading
scientific and professional society in the atmospheric and related
sciences. Increasingly, our field is relevant to an array of researchers,
practitioners, policymakers, and the public. Together we, as members of the
academy, industry, broadcast community, and the federal sector, must work
to ensure a scientifically and technologically-rich, inclusive, and
respected Society responsive to current or future challenges and
opportunities.
Herein, I would like to say few words about our Annual Meeting and our
Awards/Fellows nomination process.
Annual Meeting: Our annual meeting is a large, complex effort that would
simply not be possible without volunteer service in organizing and managing
the conference. Our partners who provide sponsorship support, either as
Patrons of the Society, Sustaining Corporate Members, or exhibitors at the
conference or for WeatherFest, are equally vital, and I extend a hearty
THANK YOU to all of you. If you weren't able to attend, the Society makes
many of the scientific presentations available on the AMS web site, http://www.ametsoc.org, within a few weeks. Additionally, the
highly-anticipated and well-received Superstorm Sandy Town Hall meeting is
now available for viewing. At this point, I want to specifically
acknowledge our members and colleagues that could not attend the meeting
because of restrictions on travel. The Society is paying very close
attention to such developments and will be a strong voice on this issue
going forward. I have spoken out on the issue in various formats and
Executive Director Keith Seitter has written a very thoughtful blog on the
AMS Front Page website.
My Program Committee, under the leadership of Philip Ardanuy (Raytheon) and
Eileen Shea (NOAA), has been extremely busy planning the 2014 Annual
Meeting, which will be held in Atlanta, Georgia (2-6 February). The theme
for that meeting is “Extreme Weather-Climate and the Built Environment:
New perspectives, opportunities, and tools.” It promises to be an exciting
and increasingly timely meeting. I look forward to your participation and
any ideas that you may have, at any time.
Awards and Fellows- May 1st Deadline for Nominations Is Approaching: One of the most rewarding faces of the Society is to participate in the
process of honoring peers and colleagues for their contributions to the
science, technology, dissemination, or education of the AMS or broader
public. Each year the AMS presents more than 25 awards to individuals,
teams of people, and institutions for their outstanding contributions to
the atmospheric and related sciences, as defined broadly by the Society. I
encourage you to nominate scientists, practitioners, broadcasters, and
others you believe are deserving of one or more of these prestigious
awards. The awards are open to all sectors of the Society - academia,
government, and industry, and for a listing and description of the awards,
and to see the brochure for the 2013 awards, please go to http://www.ametsoc.org/awards. As a member of the Society, I ask that you
familiarize yourself with these awards and encourage fellow colleagues to
participate in this important process.
Along with the awards, the advancement to Fellow is one of the most
significant ways the AMS honors those members who, over a number of years,
have made outstanding contributions. Our website notes that “New Fellows
are elected each year by the Council at its fall meeting from a slate
submitted by the Fellows Committee of not more than two-tenths of 1 percent
of all AMS Members.” If you would like to recommend a member as a Fellow of
the AMS, please fill out the on-line form and submit it with a one-page
nomination letter. Three one-page letters of support, to include one from
an individual outside the nominee's home institution, must supplement the
nomination. And please remember, the nominee must be an AMS member.
You can find information on the nominating process for both Awards and
Fellows on the AMS website. All nominations must be submitted on line. A
nomination letter, CV, and bibliography, along with three letters of
support, are needed for most award nominations.
In all cases, nominations remain on the committee's active list for three
years; therefore, nominees who are not successful this year will
automatically be considered again in 2014 and 2015. To preserve the
integrity and honor, please take care not to share the nomination with the
nominee.
We're particularly interested in promoting nominations for awards and
advancement to Fellow for members in the private sector, including our
broadcaster colleagues, and in the "related sciences," to include
oceanography, hydrology, climatology, atmospheric chemistry, space weather,
environmental remote sensing (including the engineering and management of
systems for observations), and the social sciences, etc. AMS is a broad
organization. The “M” stands for Meteorological, but as my predecessor,
Louis Uccellini, noted in Austin, IBM doesn’t just make business machines
anymore. AMS is a brand that signifies a wide-ranging scope of expertise
and knowledge centered on the atmospheric and related sciences.
We look forward to receiving your nominations and recommendations by the
May 1st deadline.
I really look forward to serving as your President, and it is a major
priority of mine to be as accessible as possible. The Society maintains an
email address that you can utilize to reach me, and I am also on Twitter
(@DrShepherd2013). You can learn more about some of my thoughts and goals for
the Society in a forthcoming issue of the Bulletin of the AMS. I hope to
meet many of you at the AMS Washington Forum, various specialty
conferences, or other appropriate venues. I will uphold the reputation of
this storied organization and continue to make sure that it is vibrant and
relevant. I am excited to host you in my hometown, Atlanta, in 2014.
With Regards,
J. Marshall Shepherd
President, American Meteorological Society
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