A Message From the President  August 24, 2007

Dear Faculty, Staff, Students, and Trustees:

This past week concluded a whirlwind of activity that prominently highlighted activities at DRI.              In addition to the regular Board of Regents' meeting last week, several administrators, faculty and staff were involved in both the annual Lake Tahoe Environmental Summit at Sierra Nevada College and the Clean Energy Summit the following day at the Peppermill.  Both events were attended by Senator Reid, who continues to provide interest, support and influence in the Tahoe Basin and in sustainable energy and clean technologies.              The Tahoe Summit, which was highlighted by President Clinton's return trip to the lake a decade after the first Tahoe Summit, was held near the new Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences, which we share with Sierra Nevada College, UC-Davis and UNR. Jim Thomas, our director of the Center for Watersheds and Environmental Sustainability, put it best when he said "For many years, there was some really fine research done at Lake Tahoe, but it was done in a bit of a vacuum. Now we're looking at things from a much more collective perspective, and it's made a difference."            Chris Maples, Executive Vice President for Research, and Alan Gertler, interim Executive Director of DAS, appeared on Nevada Newsmakers the week of the summit to explain the research at Tahoe and what has occurred during the past decade.             On Saturday after the Tahoe Summit, I joined President Milt Glick from UNR and President David Ashley from UNLV in representing the Nevada System of Higher Education at the Nevada Clean Energy Summit, which will alternate annually between Reno and Las Vegas. We each gave an overview of our campuses and, more specifically, I spoke about DRI's activities in renewable energy.

DRI receives national attention Work by our scientists was recognized by the media during the past month. Don Sabol's $300,000 grant to study landmine detection, which includes Eric McDonald and Todd Caldwell, was picked up by the Associated Press, which ran nationally. This is another example of the excellent work that Eric's group continues to do with the US Army. Joe McConnell and Ross Edwards received significant media attention for their study showing that Northern Hemisphere industrial pollution resulted in a seven-fold increase in black carbon in Arctic snow during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Science Express featured their work, which was also carried in publications such as USA Today, National Geographic and the Washington Post.             Also of note is the wonderful coverage the Reno Gazette-Journal gave us in July of our Center for Advance Visualization, Computation and Modeling (CAVCaM) that was partially the result of a Nevada Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology gathering at DRI. It was also the result of the good work of Fred Harris, Bill Sherman, and everyone else associated with CAVCaM. Supervisor's/Manager's Toolkit Training Sessions            All supervisors and managers were sent an email on scheduled training sessions based on modules from the new DRI Supervisor's/Manager's Toolkit. The DRI Supervisor's/Manager's Toolkit manual on employment laws, recruiting, orientation, training and coaching, performance management, and discipline will be delivered to each supervisor and manager.  Training sessions for supervisors and managers on each topic will be offered twice a month over the next five months.  I encourage all supervisors and managers to sign up for one training session each month with the HR Office.  Please email the dates that you will attend the sessions to Pat Hughes.

Until next time,  Dr. Stephen Wells

 

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