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Educational and Outreach Efforts

• Building sustained partnerships with schools that educate a large percentage of minority students

o    Building collaborative research relations with diverse communities.

• Involving a graduate student from Howard University to participate in the NASA GRIP Hurricane Research Field Program and leading the student into her Ph.D. research
• Inviting students from Hispanic serving institutions and tribal colleges to expose them to careers in the atmospheric and related sciences (click here to view Hispanic Serving Institutions project summary)(final report is pending)
  
• Enhancing NCAR's partnership with Howard University in atmospheric chemistry research (click here to view Building Long Term University Partnerships project summary) (final report is pending) 
• Providing hands-on laboratory and modeling experiences in atmospheric chemistry for college students from underrepresented groups in the US and developing countries (click here to view Global Network for Atmospheric Chemistry project summary ) (final report is pending) 
• Exposing and engaging upper elementary to high school-level students from the predominately under-served Denver Metro regions to careers in the atmospheric sciences, and mathematical models, super computers, visualizations (MESA to mesa final report), NCAR Command Language data analysis (click here to view CISL Outreach and Training program summary) 
• Providing summer internships in Parallel Computational Science (Increasing the diversity of CISL's Summer Internship program)

o    Reaching out to the community, especially Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) and accredited postsecondary minority institutions

• Inviting students from a subset of carefully chosen accredited postsecondary minority institutions to NSF’s lower atmospheric observational facilities (Careers in Science Project - final report pending)
• Partnering with Historically Black Colleges and Universities: 
  • An Advanced Study Program (ASP) Fellow, Dr. Song-Lak Kang taught a semester class at Howard University. (see Team Teaching at Howard University project summary; final report is pending) (See also the related Staff Notes article)
  • Teaching at Hampton University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) (See project summary; final report is pending)
• Cooperating with Dine (Navajo) College of Environmental Science to deploy a CO2 analyzer at the Navajo reservation in Northeastern Arizona and determine the regional CO2 surface fluxes in the area (See project final report).

o    Building relationship with the CU BOLD (Broadening Opportunity through Leadership & Diversity project) (click here to view project summary) (final report is pending)

o   Facilitating partnerships: The Memorandum of Understanding between UCAR, Howard, Jackson State, North Carolina A&T, Hampton, and Wyoming helped facilitate a partnership with the NSF Opportunities for Enhancing Diversity in the Geosciences proposal. NCAR would support a workshop, host postdoctoral fellows, and provide ASP postdocs to visit one historically black college or university (HBCU)

o    Partnering with other institutions: The Directors of the Advanced Study Program and the Atmospheric Chemistry Division at NCAR and the Director of NC A&T, the NOAA ISET (Interdisciplinary Scientific Environmental Technology - a cooperative center with ESRL) collaborated together.  NCAR sent five seminar speakers to NC A&T in January 2010.

o    Hosting a 2011 summer internship program for high school students to pursue the atmospheric and related science (2011 High School Internship and Research Opportunities project; click here to view a summary of the project (final report is pending)

Promoting Diversity within NCAR

• Providing resources for the NCAR ESL staff to improve their English communication skills (See ESL Communication Skills project; ESL web site)
• Providing staff training to address unconscious gender bias, and provide strategies to overcome the bias.(See Virginia Valian workshop project)
• Connecting women across all facets of the earth sciences (see Annual ESWN In-Person Networking Event project)
• Establishing a UCAR Diversity Award: The NCAR Diversity Committee campaigned to provide a UCAR Diversity Award.(See Outstanding Accomplishments Awards)
• Including NCAR employees' diversity activities the employee’s performance appraisal: The NCAR Diversity Committee campaigned to include this metric in the annual employee evaluation process.
• Increasing diversity recruiting through advertising (see Diversity Recruiting Through Advertising project summary). (Final report is pending)
• Enhancing relocation guideline to allow a 3^rd option of partial funding for relocation(adding to full or no relocation) to provide options to require best candidates, increase diversity pool.  The NCAR Diversity Committee campaigned to provide a 3rd option of partial relocation funding.
• Enhancing the UCAR Hiring process to provide motivation for outreach to diverse populations, including diversity web sites as resource for hiring supervisors.
• Inviting input: the American Physical Society Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (APS CSWP) was invited to assess the women at NCAR.
• Assessing the Climate for Women at NCAR/UCAR/UOP
• UCAR has established a child care option: Family childcare
• Hosting a Hispanic listening conference (See Denver Listening Conference Summary; see Staff Notes article)