Letters From SARA
June 13, 2008
Dear Colleagues,
While I was off seeing the world and talking to many of you at various science conferences this past month (slides shown at the AGU and AAS R&A Town Halls are available for download on the Events page), Max Bernstein has been busy solving your problems and updating this website. He has added some terrific new items in the past month, and you can directly link to them from the “What’s New” page. The grant stats page, for instance, has a nice summary of the improvements program officers have made in the time it takes to get grants out the door. This has not been easy, and I hope you will take a moment to thank them when you have a chance.
The Planetary Science Division budget data for FY2003-2007 is now all in one place, thanks to the insightful questions asked by Mark Sykes (Director of the Planetary Science Institute) and the answers provided by the SMD budget analysts here at Headquarters. We are now working on getting this data for the other Divisions as well.
Max has also added some new information on the FAQ page, where you can find detailed answers to your queries about proposal submissions. Please send in more questions. If it occurred to you, it likely occurred to someone else, too. Let us help!
There have been some fabulous science highlights since the last letter, and we know you join us in celebrating the successful Phoenix landing and GLAST launch! We are fortunate to live in such interesting, although sometimes challenging, times.
Warm Wishes from the Capitol,
Yvonne
May 9, 2008
Dear Colleagues,
I am about to go trekking in Peru for a couple of weeks, so I will be off the grid for a while. Max Bernstein will be on “sara watch”, so please continue sending your questions, issues, and ideas to the sara e-mail address. Yes, that address still works even though my job title is changing. As far as I know, the email address will continue to work, probably long after people forget what sara ever stood for, so feel free to write us there.
There was a snafu that showed up on NASAwatch this week, and we apologize for the heartburn our typo caused a few folks. The NSPIRES announcement that announced a cancellation of a ROSES element said the right words, but used the wrong Appendix number. We are definitely NOT canceling the one that was mistakenly written at first. Rather, we are canceling something that never got started. This is the correct announcement:
NASA ROSES-08 Amendment 8: Cancellation of Space Policy Research program : "This amendment cancels the program element in Appendix E.6 entitled "Space Policy Research."
Speaking of announcements, Ed Weiler is now the official AA, having moved from the “interim” to ‘permanent” just yesterday. The announcement did not come as a surprise, but it was certainly a welcomed statement (well, maybe not for the folks at GSFC who hoped he would be returning soon as their Center Director).
And while I am updating you on items of interest, let’s talk about the status of the supplemental grants (to R&A proposers) for EPO that were suspended last November pending the evaluation of the SMD EPO program. We are getting closer to a decision on how to proceed, and we will definitely be bringing this opportunity back in a simplified form. However, the call will likely not come out until later this summer and the funding cannot occur before early next year at the soonest. It is my intention to make sure everyone who has won a grant since we suspended the 15K supplements at the end of November 2007 will have the chance to apply when we do open the call again, but please be patient.
The EPO MOWG and the SMD EPO staff are working on this. I can assure you the gory details of finance that have factored into this delay are not issues you really want to know about. The philosophical issues that I care most about, in terms of providing a better product, are hard enough. AND- if you have input on how we can simplify the previous process, please send those thoughts to saraATnasa.gov. Now is the time to do so, as we are actively working on ways to make this a better process for all.
The next SARA website update will occur no sooner than June 13, due to a combination of personal and business travel. See the events page to find out which meetings I will hold R&A and EPO Town Halls in May 29 and June 2.
The R&A MOWG and the EPO MOWG are still alive and well, and they are resources I urge you to call upon. You can find their contact info under the appropriate page on the left hand bar of this website or go to the highlighted links in this sentence.
The confidential sara email is still operational, and Max Bernstein and I are the only two who read it. Hundreds of you have used it in the past year, and through that effort we resolved many of your grant related problems. There has been a drop to nearly zero in the email traffic to that address, though, and I find it most interesting. The drop occurred well before the change in administration, and it is well correlated with the increased hits on several of these web pages. As a scientist, I find that intriguing because I believe it indicates that you are getting the information you needed, and the frustration levels are dropping. If this is true, great! If not, let me know what we can do better.
Alternatively, you may have written and the cookie monster may have eaten your message. There have been intermittent computer problems that sometimes keep the mail from reaching us, and sometimes we do not know that has happened. Write again if you did not hear back- no letter goes unanswered intentionally!
Please see the What’s New page, to find out what we have updated since your last visit. In the future, updates will occur between sara letters. So, you do not have to wait a month to see improvements in the site content.
Thank you for your support and continued contributions to NASA Science. The American public and the world benefit from our successful teaming.
Sincerely, Yvonne