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Users Group: Board of Directors Minutes

Minutes of the meeting on Wednesday, June 21, 2000

Present: Charlie Glashausser, Don Geesaman, Gary Adams, Rory Miskimen, Alicia Uzzle, Gail Dodge, Mark Jones, Werner Boeglin, Dave Mack, Donal Day, Haiyan Gao, Karen Hokansson

  1. Charlie Glashausser introduced the new members of the board: Haiyan Gao, Dave Mack, Mark Jones (representing postdocs), Alicia Uzzle (representing graduate students) and Alan Nathan (vice chair), who was unable to attend. Three members are leaving the board: Don Geesaman (past chair), Werner Boeglin, and Donal Day.
  2. Roy Whitney presented the schedule for the Fall DNP meeting, October 5-7 in Williamsburg. There will be a workshop on "Electromagnetic Physics at the Next Energy Frontier" on October 4, which consists of a plenary session in the morning and two parallel sessions in the afternoon, one on "Physics with Greater than 10 GeV Electron and Photon Beams" and one on "Detectors, Data Acquisition, and Data Analysis for Greater than 10 GeV Experiments." See http://www.jlab.org/intralab/calendar/DNP2000/ for more information about the meeting. In addition to the physics sessions, there will be a JLab tour and reception on Thursday afternoon, a JLab user group meeting on Thursday evening, and a town meeting Friday afternoon. JLab users will be asked to help with tours.
  3. Herman Grunder thanked Don, Donal and Werner for their service on the board of directors. He also commented on the 12 GeV white paper and planning exercise. In particular he emphasized that only a unified nuclear physics community has a future worth having. He encouraged the JLab users to put their best case forward for the 12 GeV upgrade, but to support RIA and RHIC improvements as well. All of these projects are important to the future health of our field. He stressed that a well written 12 GeV white paper WILL be read and have an impact, both inside and outside the beltway. He also encouraged the users to publish, not only in scientific journals, but in the popular press (e.g., New York Times), because these articles have a big impact. The BOD expects to invite the JLab public relations office to discuss such publicity at our next meeting. [Note added: In the morning workshop, CG had emphasized the importance of archival papers as well as Letters; review committees pay close attention to them.]
  4. Nathan Isgur also spoke about the need for unity among the Jefferson Lab users, the electromagnetic community and the nuclear physics community in general if we are to succeed in advancing our field. He confirmed the steps toward the LRP discussed in the morning workshop. Users should pay close attention to the 12 GeV white paper Web site:

    http://www.jlab.org/div_dept/physics_division/GeV/whitepaperv11/

    It must be a statement that we will all support.
  5. Kees de Jager reported that Hall A has established a tradition in which a seminar is given at JLab to present final results just before a paper draft is submitted for publication. He asked if the board would consider recommending this practice for the other halls. In executive session the board agreed on the following statement:

    "The JLab Users Group Board of Directors would like to encourage following the tradition, well established at other laboratories, that experimental data be presented at a Physics seminar at JLab when ready for publication."

    Larry Cardman mentioned that the lab has a very difficult time keeping track of publications and encouraged the users to promptly inform the lab of all publications.
  6. Gail Dodge reported on graduate student issues. A thesis prize was recently approved by SURA. The deadline for applications for the 1999 prize is August 1. For details, see http://www.jlab.org/news/user_news/2000/thesis.html The issue of whether Masters theses were eligible for the prize was discussed and the board decided that they were. However, they will be judged on the same basis as the Ph.D. theses.

    The graduate student web page continues to grow and has improved information flow to the graduate stuents. A brochure and information packet is being prepared for new graduate students arriving on site. There are plans to ask each new student to meet with Bob Welsh for further introduction to the lab. There is a lot of concern that many graduate students do not have adequate health insurance when they are away from their institution. JLab offers health insurance to graduate students. A better job must be done to inform the graduate students and their advisors that this health insurance exists. Advisors must take responsibility for seeing that all their students at JLab have an adequate health care plan. For details, see http://www.jlab.org/user_resources/insurance.html
  7. Don Geesaman reported on his area of responsibility, running experiments. The new system of end-of-run reports by spokesmen, suggested by the BOD to keep us up to date and to see that problems are fixed, has been working well. There do not seem to be any major problems requiring the attention of the board. In general the reports were quite positive. There were several minor problems which have been fixed, or are being worked on. In particular, the Hall B stability is steadily getting better, but will require lots of effort to solve. Some users requested advance notice of when the Halls will be closed during maintenance and Larry Cardman noted that they are working on a policy under which only one Hall would be used as a beam dump during maintenance under most circumstances. It was decided that only two board members, the Chair and the member responsible for running experiments, would see the actual end-of-run reports, and they would report to the BOD. This should encourage a frank description of problems.
  8. Donal Day reported on quality of life issues. So far the new badge system seems to work smoothly. He suggested a survey on user satisfaction to identify issues that the board should address.
  9. Werner Boeglin reported on computing. The bottle neck problem is pretty much solved, because of new tape drives and the fact that CLAS changed their disk access procedure. New disks have been bought and are being installed. There is a good web site with information on computer issues at http://cc.jlab.org/scicomp/ which users should find helpful for a variety of issues. The BOD considered a request to add a Hall D representative to the Computer Liaison committee and decided it seemed premature. Minutes of the Computer Liaison committee meetings may be available from Bob Michaels, rom@jlab.org.
  10. Rory Miskimen reported on environment, health and safety issues. The practical part of the radiation exam will soon have a permanent site in a trailer. Users will be able to take the exam at any time, if they contact Shauna Cannella well in advance to schedule it. Once the new training site becomes available, users will only have to take the new version of the practical test once in their career here. On September 30, web based video training is expected to be available for EH & S training. Radiation worker and oxygen deficiency video training will follow.
  11. Gary Adams reported on the a web oversight committee which has recently been formed and is chaired by Dennis Skopik. The goals of the committee include making the JLab web site more intuitive, easier to search, more informative for users, etc. Suggestions are welcome.
  12. Gary also reported on PAC issues. The agenda for PAC18 is on the web at http://www.jlab.org/exp_prog/PACpage/PAC18/PAC18_agenda.html The PAC allocation is 30 days plus 1/2 of the days available from experiments in jeopardy. The following chart indicates the days requested and available in each Hall.

    Hall   # expts    days requested    PAC target days for approval
 A        10             251              109
 B         2              37               30
 C         6             102               50
  13. In executive session, the BOD discussed a number of issues. To keep abreast of the 12 GeV effort, and to have an impact on the white paper, it was decided that each member of the BOD keep close contact with the 12 GeV web site and CG would request comments at various intervals. The first comments are due on July 11, before the PAC meets. Al Nathan, the new vice-chair, will have the 12 GeV effort as his area of prime responsibility. Dave Mack will take over responsibility for installation and running experiments, Mark Jones for computers, and Haiyan Gao for quality of life. Gail Dodge will continue to work on grad student issues, now sharing responsibility with Alicia Uzzle. A thesis prize committee will be named after the Aug. 1 deadline, so that conflicts of interest can be avoided. CG will solicit suggestions for two new PAC members as requested by Cardman. After some consideration of the timing of the next BOD meeting relative to the Long Range Plan activities, it was tentatively scheduled for Friday, October 27.

Reporting for the board,
Gail Dodge