AAS Informational Email 2007-01

Sent to AAS members on behalf of Wayne Van Citters, NSF-AST Director

Dear Colleagues,

Last week at the AAS meeting, we held the first of our town hall meetings to discuss with the community the report from the Senior Review committee. We thank those of you who took time from a busy meeting schedule to attend the session, learn about the details of the report, and share your views with us. We have now finalized arrangements for six more regional town meetings and we encourage those of you who could not attend the AAS session to come to one of the meetings listed below.

These town meetings are an important step in our development of an implementation plan in consultation with the community. The Senior Review report presented us with a set of thoughtful recommendations and findings, and a challenge to craft a strategy for realizing a balanced program of astronomical research and its supporting infrastructure. I remind you that, while we take all of these recommendations seriously and intend to implement as many of them as realistically possible, the report is advisory to NSF. We will continue to evaluate the recommendations and the need to implement them in the light of future changes in the AST budget, developing partnerships and availability of other sources of support for facilities, the evolving scientific context of our discipline, and your input.

At these town meetings, we will review the report's recommendations in detail and hope to confer with you about the recommendations and findings and the implications they have for our future. We seek your input on such issues as the pace at which the recommendations are implemented, any consequences of implementing them that the committee and we may not have considered, and suggestions you might have on how we, as a community, may meet the challenges of the report's findings.

If you cannot attend any of the town meetings, we encourage you to share your views with us through written comments to our email address: astsenior-review@nsf.gov. We look forward to hearing from you.

Wayne

Upcoming Town Hall Meetings:

26 January, Friday - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Contact: Doug Richstone, dor@umich.edu

16 February, Friday 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm - AAS/Carnegie Institution, 1530 P Street, NW, Washington, DC
Contact: Kevin Marvel, marvel@aas.org

8 March, Thursday - University of California, Santa Cruz
Contact: Mike Bolte, bolte@ucolick.org

16 March, Friday - Princeton University, Princeton
Contact: Michael Strauss, strauss@astro.princeton.edu

23 March, Friday - Georgia State University, Atlanta
Contact: Hal McAlister, hal@chara.gsu.edu

5 April, Thursday - University of Arizona, Tucson
Contact: Sharon Jones, sjones@as.arizona.edu

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