President Kathy Sherman-Morris
For those who were not able to attend the annual meeting, I thought I would share some updates from my State of the NWA presentation. If you registered for the meeting, but just missed the awards luncheon in which I made this presentation, you can watch it on the Whova app. First is a look at the membership. We are currently sitting at 1714 members. This is down slightly from last year. If you know someone who is thinking about joining the NWA or deciding whether or not to renew, please encourage them to become or stay a member. This is especially true for those of us in academia who interact with students. Students make up a surprisingly small percentage of our membership given the number of students in meteorology programs. The annual dues for students are very low ($30) and set to increase only gradually for 5 years after graduation.
I am pleased to say that our finances are good. After two years marked by the uncertainty of the pandemic, we have come out doing well financially. We have been able to successfully pivot first to an all-virtual meeting in 2020 and then to hybrid meetings in 2021 and 2022. The hybrid format has given members extra flexibility in how they can attend. In addition to saving the need for travel for some, two attendees told me that they even attended sessions back in their hotel room when they needed to take a moment away from the in-person activities.
Speaking of the annual meeting, this year’s meeting in Pittsburgh was attended by 491 participants. We had 255 presentations including keynotes and invited talks that focused on special operations forecasting, the convergence of social science and meteorology, the intersection of emergency management and meteorology, the anniversary of Hurricane Agnes, and the new director’s vision for the National Weather Service. This also included our reimagined poster session format, which we called showcases.
I also presented some updates on NWA programs. We have had four articles published so far in the Journal of Operational Meteorology this year. The journal receives about 3000 views each month. Please consider the JOM if you have research to present to a wide audience of meteorologists, and people in related fields.
The NWA has been working to provide members additional opportunities to interact with each other outside of the annual meeting and they are about to reveal a new platform that will help encourage interaction. It’s called NWA Community and it is a program that will allow members to post information, create networks, access content, and eventually come together in groups that share common interests (more on that in a future column!).
Lastly. I presented an update on our 2022-24 strategic plan. The Board of Directors worked on this plan at our mid-year meeting in June, and recently approved four goals that will help shape NWA programs and efforts in the coming years. These goals are to
- Establish a governance structure for NWA that enables stakeholders to fully exercise their legal and ethical duties.
- Make pathway of involvement for members intuitive and explicit both internally and externally.
- Ensure short and long-term financial health and organization sustainability through flexibility that enables innovation.
- Ensure that we cultivate representation, inclusion, and equity in a reciprocal process of reflection, feedback, and evolution.
Each goal has associated steps that help describe how we can structure our efforts in meeting the strategic goals. A full view of these goals will be posted shortly on the website.
