Department Discussion Questions
In order to be able to represent your institution's interests at the 3.5m Strategic Planning Meeting, please discuss these questions within your departments prior to the meeting and come prepared to share the perspective of your department members.
- Do the science highlights shown in the 2018 Science Highlights document accurately capture the types of science currently being done with the 3.5m by your department members? If not, what is missing?
- What do you envision as the future science your department members will be doing (or would like to be doing)?
- Are there specific instruments, observing modalities, or other capabilities that the 3.5m currently does not offer that would be required for that future science?
- Are there any cross-observatory partnerships that would strengthen your department's scientific usage of the 3.5m?
- How important is the 3.5m to your educational mission?
- How important is ARCSAT to your department members? Would your answer change if ARCSAT were improved (e.g. with upgraded software, instrumentation, etc.)?
- Do you expect the amount of time on the 3.5m that your institution would use to stay the same, increase, or decrease over the next 3, 5, and 10 year timescales?
- Can your department members identify uses for the Sloan telescope if, at the end of SDSS-V (~2025), there is no SDSS-VI? Consider it both as an independent facility as well as one that could be used in conjunction with the 3.5m.
Below are materials that meeting participants should review prior to coming to the Strategic Planning meeting. Each item in the below list is a live link to the PDF file. It might also be a good idea to suggest that your department members review these materials prior to discussing the above questions.
- Director's 2018 Report to the ARC Board of Governors
- 2018 Science Highlights and Science Impact
- Time Domain Astronomy Working Group final white paper
- Training and Education Working Group final white paper
- ARCSAT usage survey results
- New Spectrograph Committee Final Report (dated 9/20/16)
- ARCSAT upgrade proposals from Bill Ketzeback (APO) and Steve Majewski (UVa)