On September 30, 2013, my term as Chair of the GeoPRISMS Steering and Oversight Committee comes to an end. These last three years have been an extremely exciting and rewarding time, with the launch of GeoPRISMS accompanied by the extraordinary growth of a most active and creative GeoPRISMS community. During this time, the Rice GeoPRISMS Office oversaw seven major GeoPRISMS workshops, and numerous smaller events, including the well-attended AGU mini-workshops. All of these gatherings enabled substantial community planning and decision making, and the development of new collaborations, and I extend a broad thank you to everyone who attended and contributed to those workshops. As a result, the GeoPRISMS Implementation Plan is nearly complete, establishing the guidelines for ongoing and future GeoPRISMS research.
None of this would have been possible without the amazing efforts of the staff of the Rice GeoPRISMS Office, including Alana Holmes, Charles Bopp, and Alison Henning, and more recently, Anaîs Férot, August Costa, and Suzanne Haveman. It has been a delight working with all of them, and I am greatly appreciative of everything they have done to keep the office running, and to ease the way for these critical community activities. Also, the success of the GeoPRISMS Program and its early accomplishments would not have been possible without the strong support of the GeoPRISMS community, the input and help of the steering and oversight committee and so many meeting organizers and implementation plan writers, and also the informed advice of the staff of the National Science Foundation. I thank you all for contributing to the achievements of these last three years.
Finally, I would like to thank Peter van Keken, who will take over as Chair of the GeoPRISMS Steering and Oversight Committee on October 1, 2013, and will manage the new GeoPRISMS Office at the University of Michigan. The office transition will take place gradually, with the Rice office continuing to coordinate many GeoPRISMS activities, as the Michigan office gets up and running. Further smoothing the transition, Anaîs Férot, the current science coordinator, will be moving with the office to Michigan, and August Costa and Susi Haveman will continue on at Rice through the fall and AGU. We expect to have transferred all office responsibilities away from Rice by the end of the calendar year. Important updates regarding the transition will be distributed here and on the home page of the geoprisms.nineplanetsllc.com website. During this transition, I encourage you to use the generic e-mail and listserv contacts, to ensure that your message is directed to the correct recipient, e.g.,
General communications: info@geoprisms.nineplanetsllc.com
Other communications: meetings@geoprisms.nineplanetsllc.com; reimburse@geoprisms.nineplanetsllc.com
Listserv announcements: geoprisms-list@geoprisms.nineplanetsllc.com
Website: http://geoprisms.nineplanetsllc.com
And I wish Peter and the new office the best of luck in coming years. The program is in great shape and in excellent hands!
Sincerely,
Juli Morgan, Outgoing GeoPRISMS Chair
Rice University