Updates

To view a copy of the email announcement, click here.

If you'd like to receive future email newsletters, sign up for the UNAVCO and/or IRIS community email listservs.

To view a copy of the email newsletter, click here.

If you'd like to receive future email newsletters, sign up for the UNAVCO and/or IRIS community email listservs.

The results of 2023 EarthScope Consortium Board of Directors election are in and the members of the inaugural EarthScope Consortium Board are listed below. Thanks to all the amazing people who stepped up to run this year. We had an excellent slate of talented, community-minded individuals and we appreciate their willingness to serve the EarthScope community.

We’ll be looking for nominations and volunteers for the new set of EarthScope Consortium Advisory Committees soon, so please think about how you could best participate.

The complete 2023 EarthScope Consortium Board of Directors is:

Chair of Board of Directors, for a two-year term (first year as Chair, second

year as Board Member):

— Lara Wagner, Carnegie Institution for Science

Chair Elect of Board of Directors, for a three-year term (first year as Chair-elect,

subsequent years as Chair):

— Gareth Funning, University of California, Riverside

Board members, for three-year terms:

— Kristel Chanard, Institut de physique du globe de Paris

— Zachary Eilon, University of California, Santa Barbara

— Beatrice Magnani, Southern Methodist University

Board members, for two-year terms:

— Tonie van Dam, University of Utah

— Rowena Lohman, Cornell University

— Frederik Simons, Princeton University

Transition Board members, appointed from current IRIS and UNAVCO Boards, for one-year terms:

— Jeffrey Freymueller, Michigan State University (from IRIS Board)

— Brandon Schmandt, University of New Mexico (from IRIS Board)

— Anne Sheehan, University of Colorado (from UNAVCO Board)

— Leigh Stearns, The University of Kansas (from UNAVCO Board)

To view a copy of the email newsletter, click here.

If you'd like to receive future email newsletters, sign up for the UNAVCO and/or IRIS community email listservs.

The first official action of the EarthScope Consortium will be to elect its first Board of Directors following the first-year board selection process in our EarthScope Bylaws.

EarthScope Consortium Member Representatives have a pivotal role in this official process—electing 8 board members. The full board of 12 community members will consist of these elected members, plus two individuals from each of the current IRIS and UNAVCO Boards that were selected this summer by those boards. These four Board transferring members will be: Jeff Freymueller, Leigh Stearns, Anne Sheehan, and Brandon Schmandt, each appointed to a 1-year term.

This is an important opportunity to shape the EarthScope Consortium for the coming years to best serve the mission and vision of our new community-governed organization: The EarthScope Consortium is a university consortium dedicated to transforming global geophysical research and education with a vision of an engaged society, resilient to geohazards, informed by geophysical discovery and global collaboration.

EarthScope Board election ballots will arrive via email on Monday, August 8, and the election will close on September 9.

The IRIS and UNAVCO Boards
Rick Aster
Adrian Borsa
Roland Bürgmann
Jackie Caplan-Auerbach
Brendan Crowell
Jeff Freymueller
Gareth Funning
Ronni Grapenthin
Sarah Kruse
Brandon Schmandt
Anne Sheehan
Leigh Stearns
Anne Trehu
Victor Tsai
Tonie Van Dam
Lara Wagner
Phil Wannamaker
Pippa Whitehouse

To view a copy of the email newsletter, click here.

If you'd like to receive future email newsletters, sign up for the UNAVCO and/or IRIS community email listservs.

As the heart of the future EarthScope Consortium governance, the Joint IRIS and UNAVCO Boards and leadership would like your input on the proposed future structure for EarthScope Consortium governance committees. The structure of the EarthScope Consortium Board and the transition into that Board are already prescribed by the Agreement and Plan of Merger, approved by the membership in November of 2020. However, that document does not specify advisory committees to the Board, which have traditionally served a key role in linking IRIS and UNAVCO to community interests.

In order to recommend an advisory committee structure to the future Board, the IRIS and UNAVCO presidents and chairs convened an EarthScope Consortium Governance Workshop on April 28-29, 2022 at Colorado State University, facilitated by two consultants from La Piana, Inc.

The charge to the group was to design an initial advisory committee structure for the future EarthScope Consortium Board. Please note that, because of this charge, the intention is not for the committee model to be comprehensive or exhaustive. It should be understood as a starting point, and the workshop especially sought to integrate agility and responsiveness so that governance could change and evolve with corporate and community needs.

Participants in the governance workshop were Terry Wilson, Bill Holt, Colleen Dalton, Brandon Schmandt, Eric Lindsey, Becks Bendick, Nicolas Barth, Zach Eilon, Bill Hammond, Lara Wagner, Mike Brudzinski, Bob Woodward, Paul Winberry, Samantha Hansen, Ronni Grapenthin, Brendan Crowell, Tim Melbourne, Suzan van der Lee, Julie Elliott, and Rick Aster.

Over two full days of deliberation, we:

• Reviewed governance principles and nonprofit best practices,

• Determined guiding principles for EarthScope Consortium governance,

• Established an initial upper-level advisory structure recommendation, and

• Drafted charters for the above initial advisory committees.

We established key themes:

• These committees serve the EarthScope Consortium in an advisory role, with the Board retaining decision rights and ultimate accountability,

• Future success requires reciprocal communication and connection between the advisory committees, staff, Board, and community. This informs the advisory structure and preliminary charters,

• Diverse (in the broadest sense) representation of perspectives is a core goal for governance structure and function,

• There are mechanisms for targeted flexibility within the advisory structure to engage additional community members as needed through working groups or subcommittees,

• Each committee must be equipped to achieve its purpose through investment in tools, onboarding and training, and historical context, and

• Advisory committees and their working groups should be regularly evaluated for need and effectiveness.

Finally, this group created a working committee model and synthesis of committee charges. (Both are included here.) The Merger Steering Committee and the Joint Boards have approved them, but we want to make sure that community input is incorporated to refine the committee model, consistent with the goal of providing a community-driven initial model to the future EarthScope Consortium Board.

We consider the Governance Workshop, as well as the subsequent deliberations among the Merger Steering Committee and Joint Boards, tremendously successful in laying the foundations for a successful EarthScope Consortium advisory committee structure. The documents we share here are a product of lively and engaged discussions that had, at their heart, best intentions for connecting the EarthScope Consortium with its members. You will note an emphasis on establishing and sustaining active bi-lateral communication between the Board and advisory committees, and active outreach to our community. Given rapid developments in our science and its growing breadth, the structure moves away from direct representation of all methods and techniques in governance, and instead envisions an agile structure that solicits input from the community, and incorporates a greater degree of limited-term ad-hoc or sub committees of specialists and/or grassroots community interest groups that form around specific observation technologies or methods. Importantly, we also placed significant weight on onboarding and training to equip governance members with the tools and knowledge to operate effectively and thus enable the EarthScope Consortium to achieve its full potential.

Please send your thoughts and ideas through this form or reach out to Bob Woodward (robert.woodward@iris.edu) or Becks Bendick (bendick@unavco.org). We will compile responses in a month (the end of June) and use them to revise the working model for the EarthScope Consortium advisory structure.

All the best,

UNAVCO Board of Directors

IRIS Board of Directors

To view a copy of the email newsletter, click here.

If you'd like to receive future email newsletters, sign up for the UNAVCO and/or IRIS community email listservs.

We recently communicated with you the news that the EarthScope Consortium will locate its primary instrument center at New Mexico Tech, in Socorro, NM. The joint Boards of Directors of IRIS and UNAVCO also approved additional resolutions that, when combined with other recent resolutions and principles, address EarthScope Board elections, staffing, and salary structures. We have been keeping the community informed about these developments via our “Joining Forces Newsletter” every other month (back issues here). However, we wanted to provide a more timely update.

The bylaws that the community approved for EarthScope dictate the broad process whereby the first EarthScope Board of Directors will be elected. The joint Boards have developed a timeline for this process which will be posted to the Joining Forces website soon. The key point is that nominations will be developed over the late spring and summer, with elections in late summer. We hope that the entire community will participate in the nomination process as we prepare to build an outstanding inaugural Board of Directors for our new consortium.

It is the talented staff of IRIS and UNAVCO, whether as direct employees or via subaward, that have made our consortia centers of excellence. To maintain our high standards for support and innovation, EarthScope will endeavor to retain our unique staff expertise. Existing IRIS and UNAVCO staff will be transitioned to EarthScope without having to compete for the jobs they already do so well. Most subaward work will also be transitioned to direct EarthScope labor. EarthScope will work closely and collaboratively with subaward partners to achieve smooth transitions of activities, including extending employment offers to employees who presently work on these subawards.

Finally, we note that EarthScope will be a national organization, with staff working in different locations and applying their talents across the multiple programs and projects that EarthScope will operate. To this end, EarthScope will employ a compensation system that pays employees consistently based on job description, wherever they work, and that salaries will be tied to national compensation surveys based on peer organizations. Position descriptions, qualifications, and pay grade structures will be established based on best practices for not-for-profit and science organizations. This includes providing multiple pathways to qualification for positions so that talented people can find their way to the EarthScope Consortium from a wide variety of life experiences.

As we get closer to the merger transition, we will be making many operational and strategic decisions to position EarthScope as an agile and innovative organization that continues to meet the highest standards of service and responsiveness to the scientific community. We are excited by the opportunity to look at how we’ve accomplished our mission in the past, keep the practices that work best, and address practices that limit our adaptiveness and efficiency. This will be an iterative process over the coming years, and it will critically depend on continued close collaboration with our stakeholders and our community. We therefore welcome your input on the merger and implementation planning through both structured and informal channels. Right now, we encourage you to take a few minutes to fill out this online survey to communicate your thoughts on community governance, facility needs, and the upcoming merger. IRIS and UNAVCO Board member teams will be hosting Zoom events with Member Representatives and interested community members. If you are a Member Representative, you will be hearing directly from a Board Team (one IRIS and one UNAVCO Board member). If you are not a Member Representative and you would like to participate in a call hosted by a Board Team, please email Rhonda Porter (rhonda.porter@iris.edu) for scheduling information. Finally, you are always encouraged to reach out directly to governance members or facility staff with your great ideas.

Sincerely,

Ronni Grapenthin, UNAVCO Board Chair

Rick Aster, IRIS Board Chair

Bob Woodward, IRIS President

Becks Bendick, UNAVCO President

On March 1, 2022 the Joint Boards of UNAVCO and IRIS voted to approve the location of the EarthScope’s primary instrument facility. After a thorough search and review, the instrument facility will be located in Socorro, NM, at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech). The transition will begin in 2023 or before and will proceed carefully and deliberately, minimizing any disruption to the user community.

IRIS and New Mexico Tech have a long and successful working relationship through the IRIS PASSCAL Instrument Center. While honoring that long collaboration, we also explored the feasibility and impacts of other locations for the EarthScope instrument center. Through our search and negotiations it became clear that locating the primary EarthScope instrument facility in Socorro was the superior choice.

By consolidating our facility instrumentation activities into a single primary instrument facility, EarthScope will gain a number of benefits, including enhanced sharing and coordination of technology and expertise across all EarthScope programs and will improve efficiency for PI and experimental support by managing logistics from a single primary depot. As part of this transition we will relocate some of our existing activities and restructure some of our business relationships with our existing subaward institutions, including NMT. We expect to continue to operate smaller satellite facilities proximal to ongoing projects and networks.

One of the EarthScope principles is a commitment to remote and hybrid work options, which will be important as we maintain a capable and flexible workforce, while reducing our physical footprint and costs. We will charge IRIS and UNAVCO management to work with staff to develop work strategies that build on the principle of remote and hybrid work options while allowing us to consolidate physical instrument facilities in Socorro, while minimizing staff relocation.

Our remarkable geophysical facilities have always been committed to providing the geophysical community with the highest quality of instrumentation support. We reaffirm this commitment to quality as we plan and execute the transition to the exciting new combined instrumentation facility. Our goal is that our community will experience no disruptions to service during this transition as we begin to realize the benefits of a combined EarthScope consortium built on the long history and high standards of UNAVCO and IRIS.

All the best,

Ronni Grapenthin, UNAVCO Board Chair

Rick Aster, IRIS Board Chair

Bob Woodward, IRIS President

Becks Bendick, UNAVCO President

To view a copy of the email newsletter, click here.

If you'd like to receive future email newsletters, sign up for the UNAVCO and/or IRIS community email listservs.

The IRIS and UNAVCO Boards of Directors met jointly on Friday, October 29 and discussed a range of proposed plans for staff, operational, and governance transitions through the merger and formation of EarthScope. Based on merger principles and proposals from the merger planning teams and steering committee, the Joint Directors unanimously approved the recommendations below. These recommendations become the explicit policy of IRIS, UNAVCO, and EarthScope, and are not exhaustive with respect to many other details of the merger process; as planning continues we expect that there will be additional proposals put forward to the Joint Boards. Note that implementation and specifics of these recommendations may necessarily be subject to revision reflecting funding availability or restrictions arising from federal and state law.

1) Transition Period of Leadership and People from IRIS & UNAVCO into EarthScope by or before 30 September 2023:

The natural end of transitional provisions is the expiration of current contracts and availability of NSF funding.

The Joint Boards recommend that

• the EarthScope Board integrate the current presidents into the new organization to ensure continuity of facility management through to the hiring of the EarthScope lead manager.

• all IRIS and UNAVCO top-level/senior management (Director Level) positions should be mapped to EarthScope senior manager positions until the new EarthScope lead has completed searches for their leadership team.

• IRIS and UNAVCO staff below Director level will be offered corresponding positions in EarthScope without competition.

2) Joint Operations:

EarthScope must be in a competitive position to write the next NGEO proposal as early as Q2 of 2023; Operations in the respective directorates should be aligned as possible. For example, demonstrated operational cloud data handling and user documentation will be key to a successful proposal and to serve the community appropriately under current facility operations.

The Joint Boards recommend that

• UNAVCO Data Services and IRIS Data Services jointly commit to the goal of implementing the cloud platform for most data operations by the merger in December 2022.

• UNAVCO Data Services and IRIS Data Services jointly accelerate the documentation of our data users and uses as rapidly as is possible, and communication of these enhanced metrics to NSF (as recently communicated by our NSF program managers in the management review).

• UNAVCO Geodetic Infrastructure and IRIS PASSCAL as well as both Polar groups begin or continue cross-training engineers and integrating equipment, as advisable, including using targeted alignment suitable field operations during the 2022 season.

3) Joint Governance

The Joint Boards

• ask corresponding IRIS and UNAVCO committees (instrumentation, data, ECE, etc.) to schedule regular joint meetings through the end of 2022 to prioritize joint efforts and operational alignments before the merger.

• establish a joint Board-Community outreach program in Q1 2022, e.g. having IRIS/UNAVCO pairs of Board members (9 pairs) reach out directly to a subset of the future EarthScope members (estimated to be about 185) with Board-approved talking points, and to solicit grassroots comments and ideas. One way to achieve this would be to meet with small invited sub-groups at a time. This effort might be coordinated by a lead pair of Board members, and be associated with the posting of appropriate information to the Joining Forces website and newsletter.

• hold an early Q2 2022 workshop of governance representatives to converge on a congruent and effective recommended EarthScope governance structure concordant with the general envisioned (matrix management, etc.) structure of EarthScope management and staffing. Core participation might encompass the two presidents, and two members (chair, one other delegate) from each of the Boards, and from all present IRIS and UNAVCO Advisory/Standing committees. (With a survey of the full community in advance to gather points of concern, interest, and governance priorities.)

• front-end EarthScope Board elections, including the establishment of nomination committee(s) to occur in Q2/3 of 2022 to establish the Board in waiting, and integrate/inform as appropriate in merger business.

A town hall meeting was held on Thursday, September 2 to provide an update on progress towards creating EarthScope Consortium, Incorporated and hear your questions and suggestions. You can view the recording here.

To view a copy of the email newsletter, click here.

If you'd like to receive future email newsletters, sign up for the UNAVCO and/or IRIS community email listservs.

As many of you have noted from the Dear Colleague Letter (NSF 21-097) released today, NSF has issued a major change in plans for its Future Geophysical Facilities. In particular, based on the Dear Colleague Letter, we understand that, instead of being the focus of an immediate recompetition, the ongoing scope and programs of SAGE and GAGE will be extended under the current community governance structure until September 30, 2025.

The staff and Boards of IRIS and UNAVCO are inspired by the National Science Foundation’s vision of a transformed facility for geophysics support and its decision to pursue an extended process for the next geophysical facility. The news of the extension of the SAGE and GAGE awards is, significantly, an endorsement of the engagement and hard work on the part of our community facilities, and presents an exciting challenge for our community to continue to innovatively guide and deliver research infrastructure, data services, and broad stakeholder engagement.

During this two-year extension, we will seek to expand and evolve cross-disciplinary and institutional partnerships to deliver new capabilities and serve new communities. As part of this evolution, we will proceed with the planned and community-approved merger of IRIS and UNAVCO into the EarthScope Consortium. In this, we will retain our commitment to the guiding principles that we have developed through our negotiation process. We include these principles below.

We all believe that extending the SAGE and GAGE awards will give IRIS, UNAVCO, and all of our stakeholders and partners valuable additional time to fully realize a comprehensive vision for sustainable, world-class science support through a community governed geophysical facility. The joint UNAVCO and IRIS Steering Committee is already revising the merger timeline in light of this welcome change.

Please join us in acknowledging NSF’s bold decision to substantially revise their planning. We look forward to continuing our work in operating and governing world-class geophysical facilities as we work towards realizing the new EarthScope Consortium!

Respectfully,

The UNAVCO and IRIS Steering Committee:

Rick Aster, Colorado State University, Chair of IRIS Board of Directors

Becks Bendick, UNAVCO President

Jerry Carter, Director of Data Services, IRIS

Donna Charlevoix, Director of Education and Community Engagement, UNAVCO

Ronni Grapenthin, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Chair of UNAVCO Board of Directors

Brandon Schmandt, University of New Mexico, member of the IRIS Board of Directors

Bob Woodward, IRIS President

Tonie van Dam, University of Utah, member of the UNAVCO Board of Directors

IRIS-UNAVCO guiding principles for the EarthScope Consortium, Incorporated

PARITY

The Steering Committee reaffirms equality as the foundation upon which our merger is executed, as stated in the Agreement and Plan of Merger. All aspects of the creation and inception of the EarthScope Consortium will be developed based on parity of IRIS and UNAVCO.

The perspectives, history, and culture of both organizations will inform the structure and vision for EarthScope and equitable representation of both organizations and their stakeholder communities will be incorporated in all Consortium planning and proposal development activities.

LABOR

The Steering Committee prefers that core EarthScope activities be performed by EarthScope employees. Subawards will be restricted to cases with specialized, unique, or high-risk capabilities.

A focus on in-house labor will allow the EarthScope Consortium to realize benefits of flexibility, reduced overhead, matrix management, and efficiencies of an agile, cross-trained workforce, making it rapidly adaptable to the community’s changing needs. Integrated labor will help the EarthScope Consortium to make award dollars go as far as possible in delivering services to the research and academic community. This change is also highly responsive to the charge from the NSF to design the future geophysical facility from first principles.

WORKPLACE

The Steering Committee prefers that the EarthScope Consortium operate with direct staffing models (although subcontracting is not ruled out) that allow flexibility and remote work to the extent possible and optimal. Staffing models will recognize the unique capabilities of current staff to the extent possible.

COVID-19 operations have demonstrated that the EarthScope Consortium mission can be accomplished with flexible staffing, and there are cost and operational efficiencies realized by having a smaller physical footprint and allowing diverse employees to work in ways that are best for them. The future hiring plan of the EarthScope Consortium will be implemented in a way that retains the key capabilities and honors the expertise and commitment of the current staff of the merging organizations.

LOCATIONS

The Steering Committee prefers that the EarthScope Consortium operate with a small number of primary facilities. We envision largely office space plus an instrumentation facility.

The location of consortium facilities will be determined by optimizing key strategic values such as accessibility, partnership leverage, operational and cost effectiveness, and attractiveness for staff. Site selection will be made through a transparent process as facility needs evolve through the proposal and award sequence.

DIVERSIFICATION

The Steering Committee prefers that the EarthScope Consortium pursue its mission through diverse activities and funding, consistent with the guidance of its community governance model. To this end, the organization shall maintain an agile and responsive structure capable of interacting with multiple funding entities and structures.

The broad mission of the EarthScope Consortium can best be realized by pursuing multiple activities through multiple funding sources. It is recognized that the National Science Foundation has been, and likely will continue to be, a significant funder of EarthScope via the future geophysical facility agreement. However, a range of awards, contracts, agreements, and partnerships should be leveraged to advance the mission of the organization and serve multiple stakeholders at the federal, state, local, and private sector level. In particular, such arrangements can be leveraged to advance capabilities or technologies that may fall outside the interests or purview of NSF. Finally, a diverse funding portfolio creates a more resilient organization, strengthening its long-term sustainability and increasing its effectiveness in realizing the organization's mission.

We know you have been eager to hear about the latest developments in moving towards the creation of the EarthScope Consortium (ESCO). The merger Steering Committee (Bob Woodward, Becks Bendick, Rick Aster, Ronni Grapenthin, Jerry Carter, Glen Mattioli, Tonie Van Dam, and Brandon Schmandt) has been actively working on key aspects of realizing our new community EarthScope Consortium to deliver on its mission:

“The EarthScope Consortium is a university consortium dedicated to transforming global geophysical research and education”

and vision:

“An engaged society, resilient to geohazards, informed by geophysical discovery and global collaboration”.

Since the approval of the merger terms by the UNAVCO and IRIS memberships, the Steering Committee has developed timelines and to-do lists, and has been analyzing the similarities and differences between current IRIS and UNAVCO organizations and activities at very detailed levels to effect an efficient and effective merger of our two consortia in accordance with the EarthScope Consortium, Inc. bylaws. This process has helped us all to build a stronger understanding of the challenges and opportunities ahead, and to map out paths to creating a dynamic new organization to further advance geophysics.

As reported in our last message, the Merger Steering Committee has charged and convened four Planning Teams, to scope and recommend on Governance, Finance, Human Resources, and Programmatic Activities (the structure for managing our main science support mission). These Teams contain members of both IRIS and UNAVCO with specific expertise in each area and are jointly led by pairs of individuals from each organization. The Governance Team leaders are Rick Aster and Ronni Grapenthin, the IRIS and UNAVCO Board chairs, respectively. The Finance Team leaders are Stephen Ettinger and Candy Shin. The HR Team leaders are Marlo Swanson and Annette Tangye. The Programmatic Team leaders are Becks Bendick and Bob Woodward. These teams have been working on the necessary details of standing up our new consortium to both lead our proposal efforts this year and to prepare the smooth transition from IRIS/UNAVCO to ESCO by October 1, 2023. Final recommendations from these teams to the Steering Committee are expected within a few weeks.

A critical piece of our work over the last months has been the establishment of principles to guide the more specific design of ESCO and to deeply embed a forward looking culture to deliver on the mission and vision. While these initial, foundational principles will not change, we plan to release an amended list that incorporates additional principles in the near future.

LABOR

The Steering Committee prefers that core EarthScope activities be performed by EarthScope employees. Subawards will be restricted to cases with specialized, unique, or high-risk capabilities.

A focus on in-house labor will allow the EarthScope Consortium to realize benefits of flexibility, reduced overhead, matrix management, and efficiencies of an agile, cross-trained workforce, making it rapidly adaptable to the community’s changing needs. Integrated labor will help the EarthScope Consortium to make award dollars go as far as possible in delivering services to the research and academic community. This change is also highly responsive to the charge from the NSF to design the future geophysical facility from first principles.

WORKFORCE

The Steering Committee prefers that the EarthScope Consortium operate with direct staffing models (although subcontracting is not ruled out) that allow flexibility and remote work to the extent possible and optimal. Staffing models will recognize the unique capabilities of current staff to the extent possible.

COVID-19 operations have demonstrated that the EarthScope Consortium mission can be accomplished with flexible staffing, and there are cost and operational efficiencies realized by having a smaller physical footprint and allowing diverse employees to work in ways that are best for them. The future hiring plan of the EarthScope Consortium will be implemented in a way that retains the key capabilities and honors the expertise and commitment of the current staff of the merging organizations.

LOCATIONS

The Steering Committee prefers that the EarthScope Consortium operate with a small number of primary facilities. We envision largely office space plus an instrumentation facility.

Their location will be determined by optimizing key strategic values such as accessibility, partnership leverage, cost effectiveness, and attractiveness for staff. Site selection will be made through a transparent process as facility needs evolve through the proposal and award sequence.

As you can see, we are taking the unambiguous charge from the NSF very seriously that we design a new organization that can take geophysics support into new, interdisciplinary, innovative, and agile directions. At the same time, we are absolutely committed to retaining and integrating the unique talents and deep domain expertise of our current consortia into ESCO. We hope that you are all as excited as we are to step into this new future.

Please feel free to reach out to either or both of us throughout the upcoming proposal and merger process with your questions or ideas. A public opportunity to hear more and ask questions around the merger process will be the Seismological Society of America Annual Meeting Townhall on April 21, 1:30-2:00 pm PDT.

All the best,

Ronni and Rick

It’s now been a couple of months since the successful membership votes that approved the merger of UNAVCO and IRIS into the EarthScope Consortium. In our capacities as Board Chairs, we wanted to reach out to keep you updated on ongoing developments and progress by our community-governed organizations.

A Steering Committee consisting of UNAVCO and IRIS Board members and staff is designing the process and the overarching vision for organizing the EarthScope Consortium. The Steering Committee members are:

• Rick Aster, Chair IRIS Board

• Becks Bendick, UNAVCO President

• Jerry Carter, IRIS Director of Data Services

• Ronni Grapenthin, Chair UNAVCO Board

• Glen Mattioli, UNAVCO Director of Geodetic Infrastructure

• Brandon Schmandt, IRIS Board

• Tonie Van Dam, UNAVCO Board

• Bob Woodward, IRIS President
  

This group just charged four focused Planning Teams to assess scope and examine operations in the specific areas of Financial and Information Services, Human Resources, Programmatic Scope, and Community Governance. Throughout, the accessible, efficient, and community governed culture and operations of the EarthScope Consortium will be highly consistent with those of our present consortia, as codified in our recently approved bylaws.

We also issued a final call for participation in our Request For Information (RFI) related to future locations of the EarthScope Consortium, a key step in identifying collaborators for the recompetition of NSF’s geophysical facility. Responses are due by 5:00 PM MT February 26, 2021. Please see the original RFI for background information.

While taking steps towards plans for merging operations, and thus competitively positioning our community for NSF facility recompetition (with the RFP expected to be released before the second half of 2021, and proposals expected to be due in early 2022), IRIS and UNAVCO continue to be collaboratively engaged in serving our joint communities under the SAGE and GAGE awards. Recent and ongoing joint efforts, incorporating community partners and guidance, include initiatives in Cloud Data Storage and Data Distribution, Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure, and Education and Public Outreach.

A successful response to the upcoming next generation NSF facility call requires us to think deeply about the services and capabilities that will best serve the geophysics community with scientific exchange, research support, outreach, training, and technical innovation. This means designing a new EarthScope Consortium organization from the ground up to create a single, efficient, and optimal organizational structure that leverages the very best elements of IRIS and UNAVCO while continuing to serve our communities and missions under the SAGE and GAGE awards through 2023. Fortunately, these dual roles are as much an opportunity as they are a challenge as we draw on our deep community and staff expertise to determine ways to be more innovative, responsive, and efficient.

If you have questions or concerns about recompetition and merger planning, please reach out to any member of the Steering Committee and/or your IRIS and UNAVCO committees. We will strive to be transparent and engaged with our community regarding ongoing SAGE/GAGE efforts, the recompetition process, and the transition to EarthScope.

Sincerely,

Rick and Ronni

November 30, 2020

UNAVCO and IRIS held a joint virtual membership meeting on November 30, 2020, followed by independent Annual Membership Meetings

Recordings of the three meetings are available for viewing on the Meeting Presentations page

November 17, 2020

The results are in! UNAVCO and IRIS membership vote to merge!

We are thrilled to announce that the membership of UNAVCO and IRIS have overwhelmingly affirmed our vision for combining the two consortia to form EarthScope Consortium Inc. Collectively we will advance cross-disciplinary geophysics support for the scientific community.

Both IRIS and UNAVCO member representatives voted over 98% in favor of the proposed merger, following unanimous votes by both Boards of Directors earlier this year.

We’ll share more information about our plans for the future in a UNAVCO/IRIS Joint Meeting, with organizational business meetings immediately following on Nov 30, 2020 3:00-5:00 PM EST (2:00 PM CST/1:00 PM MST/12:00 PM PST).

Please register in advance for this meeting by no later than Sunday, November 29th: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEvcOqorjMpHtJMdEQu_J7ns5TQGGq9qiGz. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing the connection information for joining the meeting.

Thanks to all the member representatives who took part in this historic vote. Together we will build a broader and more innovative facility to support broader, more innovative, transformative science.

October 16, 2020

Special Membership Vote - Proposed Merger

Ballots were sent out to all of the IRIS and UNAVCO memberships as of Wednesday morning, October 16th. As a reminder, please check both your regular inbox, and your SPAM mailbox for an email from invitations@mail.electionbuddy.com.

Voting closed on November 15th.

74% of all 122 UNAVCO Members voted and 83% of all 126 IRIS Members voted.

Thank you to all that participated!

October 2, 2020

The results are in! UNAVCO and IRIS are excited to announce that the name of the new organization will be EarthScope Consortium Inc.! This name builds on our successful collaboration in execution and support of the EarthScope facility. We are excited about the progress we’ve made so far in establishing the new organization and look forward to sharing updates with the community on a regular basis.

UNAVCO and IRIS leadership have spent the past 12 months exploring how to support our current core missions and explore new opportunities for cross-disciplinary science. We believe that a new organization will leverage our current strengths to enable exciting innovations in our core research areas and in new interdisciplinary directions. On August 11, 2020, the UNAVCO and IRIS Boards of Directors voted unanimously to accept terms and bylaws for a future broad geophysics consortium. This vote prepares the way for a vote of the consortium members, which we expect will take place late fall 2020.

A Community Town Hall was held by UNAVCO and IRIS Presidents (Drs. Bendick and Detrick) and Board Chairs (Dr. Flesch, UNAVCO and Dr. Aster, IRIS). The leadership team shared that they have made excellent progress towards developing a new organization that will leverage the expertise and knowledge of both UNAVCO and IRIS. Discussions have been positive, collaborative, and forward-looking. They stated that it is clear that while there is a long history and deep culture associated with each organization, we will be able to come together to create a new and innovative organization that will make vital contributions to an engaged society, which is resilient to geohazards and is informed by geophysical discovery and global collaboration.

Members of the Negotiation Committee:

• Rick Aster, IRIS Board chair, rick.aster@colostate.edu

• Becks Bendick, UNAVCO President, bendick@unavco.org

• Bob Detrick, IRIS President, detrick@iris.edu

• Lucy Flesch, UNAVCO Board chair, mflesch@purdue.edu

• Ronni Grapenthin, UNAVCO Board member, rgrapenthin@alaska.edu

• Samantha Hansen, IRIS Board member, shansen@ua.edu

• Glen Mattioli, UNAVCO GI Director, mattioli@unavco.org

• Chuck Meertens, UNAVCO GDS Director, chuckm@unavco.org

• Ed Nissen, UNAVCO Board member, enissen@uvic.ca

• Susan Schwartz, IRIS Board Member, syschwar@ucsc.edu

• Doug Wiens, former IRIS Board chair, doug@wustl.edu

• Bob Woodward, incoming IRIS President, robert.woodward@iris.edu

On April 6th and 7th, the joint UNAVCO/IRIS Negotiation Committee held its 3rd meeting. Originally scheduled to be a full day in Chicago, the meeting was successfully held as two half-day video conferences. As with prior in-person meetings, the discussion reflected the tremendous alignment and collaborative potential of the two consortia. Many discussions were significantly advanced.

• UNAVCO Board member Ronni Grapenthin joined the committee. He replaces UNAVCO Board member Andrea Donnellan.

• Robert Gagosian joined the meeting to share his experience as the initial President and CEO of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, which formed through the successful 2007 combination of the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (CORE) and the Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI). He shared lessons learned from the process and answered questions from the committee.

• The committee reaffirmed the commitment to a new organization of equals and discussed research on the legal options for the process, with guidance from experienced nonprofit attorneys, including a review of the benefits and costs of several technical variations. The discussion also included a review of the contracts and liabilities of each organization that would inform the legal options.

• Staff from both organizations shared data on the financials, personnel policies, and benefit packages of each organization to inform discussion of the integration structure and costs.

• Criteria were discussed for which functions and activities of the new organization might be co-located. Also discussed was developing a community-informed process by which locations would be chosen for these facilities and offices.

• The committee developed a draft timeline. The timeline will include substantial efforts to inform and engage our members prior to any decisions being made. Subgroups were assigned to further develop the member engagement and transition plans.

• The next Negotiation Team meeting is scheduled for June 16th and 17th via video conference.

The vision of a strong, combined geophysical consortium is beginning to take shape. We look forward to your questions and input this summer prior to the development of formal recommendations for approval.

On January 28th, the joint IRIS/UNAVCO Negotiation Committee held its 2nd meeting. UNAVCO’s new president, Dr. Rebecca (Becks) Bendick, joined the committee, as did IRIS’ Director of Instrumentation Services, Bob Woodward. The meeting was positive and productive, reaffirming our shared values and the complementary strengths of our two consortia. Topics included:

• The mission of an integrated geophysical consortium was discussed together with our shared vision of the desired impact to science and society.

• The similarities and differences in the current bylaws and corporate practices of the UNAVCO and IRIS nonprofits were reviewed. We agreed upon the key elements of bylaws for a combined organization that would serve the needs of our broad community and advance the expansive fields of geodesy and seismology in the future.

• We began to discuss functional organizational structures aimed at ensuring effective alignment between geodetic and seismologic instrumentation services, data services, education and outreach, advocacy, and the infrastructure undergirding them.

• We identified issues to be addressed in preparation for the next meeting of the Negotiation Committee including exploring legal options for integrating our corporate entities, as well as options for financial and facility structures.

In Portland, the UNAVCO and IRIS Boards met and agreed to continue exploring closer collaboration, under the guidance of La Piana as a neutral third-party. The next phase is one in which we need to determine what a new construct might look like. The approach of restructuring will be explored; this may include creating a new entity. As you can imagine, this is a significant task requiring both forward thinking and institutional knowledge. To manage this process, a subset of Board members and facility management will work together over the next six to nine months to examine all possibilities for our path forward. This group is being referred to as the Negotiation Committee. The Negotiation Committee is charged with developing the terms under which combining organizations would occur and developing a vision for a new entity that will leverage the strengths of our existing organizations. This committee will identify all issues and make recommendations that the full Boards will need to consider in determining the path forward.

The Negotiation Committee representatives for UNAVCO include:

• Lucy Flesch (Board Chair)

• Andrea Donnellan (Board Vice-Chair)

• Ed Nissen (Board member)

• Chuck Meertens (Acting President)

• Glen Mattioli (UNAVCO Senior Management representative).

IRIS representatives include:

• Rick Aster (Incoming Board Chair)

• Bob Detrick (IRIS President)

• Samantha Hansen (Board member)

• Susan Schwartz (Board member)

• Doug Wiens (Board Chair).

It is expected that the full Negotiation Committee will meet four to six times. The final recommendations of this committee will be presented for consideration to the full Board of Directors of each organization. Each Board of Directors will evaluate the recommendations and present any actions to the membership.

Support of the community continues to be a priority for both UNAVCO and IRIS. We are committed to representing and advocating for the best interests of the scientific community and the facility staff. In addition to working collaboratively with UNAVCO during this process, the IRIS Board is committed to transparency and soliciting community input whenever appropriate and possible.