Month: February 2021

Announcements:

Welcome back! We will be continuing with virtual meetings and social events, several which are upcoming:

-OU Big Event: Details will follow as they become available.

-Virtual Social Event with Cornell University

-April General Elections: Any active member is welcome and encouraged to run for positions! Those running for President or Vice President must be a board member for the 20-21 school year.

Guest Speaker:

John Haynes is the Program Manager for Health and Air Quality at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). As part of the Applied Sciences Program within NASA, Haynes uses the data from Satellites in order to provide local health departments with resources to fight re-emerging diseases across the globe. Recently he has worked with the South Dakota Department of Health to provide the public with information regarding West Nile Virus using climate satellites. In addition to using climate information to provide data regarding diseases, Haynes has been measuring changes in Air Quality due to COVID-19. He also explains that while his career initially represented what many expect meteorology to represent, there are many opportunities for meteorologists to be successful in interdisciplinary fields like the Health and Air Quality at NASA. In addition, students are encouraged to check out the Applied Sciences Program with the following links:

https://develop.larc.nasa.gov/about.php

https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/NASA_Handout_Resources_NOV2020.pdf

The previous semester was a success given the fact that we are still dealing with a global pandemic. We had a total of 85 members of which 52% were active when not counting the yearly service requirement. Our numbers dwindled as the semester progressed from 49 members at the Joint OWL/SCAN Meeting in August to 26 members by the time the November General meeting rolled around.

Some updates from the AMS Conference. We again won Chapter of the Year for the second year in a row, and our chapter poster placed second in the chapter poster competition. To our knowledge, this is the highest that OU SCAN has placed in the poster competition.

Some notable things on the tentative spring schedule include the Career Fair on March 10th, a social event in late March, Officer Elections for the 2021-2022 Academic year on April 6th, and an online social/end of semester event in late April.

Due to the continued impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the traditional Groundhog Day party will not be held this year. We hope that we can continue this tradition in 2022.

Our February General Meeting will feature John Haynes who will speak about “a day in the life of a program manager for health and air quality at NASA” on Tuesday, February 2nd at 6:00 pm. More details regarding the future general meetings will be made available after the other officer meetings for that respective month.

We are throwing around the idea of having a Resume Help Session. We will discuss the idea more as a board and keep everyone updated with details once we have them.

We are looking at different ideas for social events. One main idea is to have a joint social event with Cornell. We are currently hashing out the details and will let everyone know when more details are available.

The finances of the Chapter are currently doing fine. We have not had to spend money on much if anything because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dues were changed to $5 for the year (for those who paid in the Fall), but if someone hasn’t paid them they will remain $5 for the Spring 2021 semester.

Big Event will happen this year. It is on April 10th, from 9 am – 2 pm. We are currently discussing with OWL regarding a joint team with them for Big Event. We are also in contact with the Big Event staff regarding how this will work, and if the event will be socially distant outside or if they are offering virtual options.

New things that we are continuing to look at. We hope to implement a monthly newsletter via Engage; however, more work will need to be done to get Engage up and running for this to occur. We want to institute Student Spotlights to highlight the amazing things that our members are doing. We also hope to add a google calendar to the website so everyone can see our events when they go to the website. We plan on starting to reach out to alumni to do a throwback Thursday post. We are currently still hashing out the details of this.