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Florida State University's Dr. Paul Ruscher will be pleased to let you know what he thinks of Unidata's community. Define that community as you will. Be it real, virtual, transformative, interactive, or the embodiment of several other virtues, Paul has been contributor, supporter, and active user as well as advocate and friend.

His history with Unidata goes something like this: Unidata was taking its first baby steps, when, as a graduate student, Paul became a user of a software product developed at NASA GSFC called GEMPAK. Five years later he was on his way to Florida State to take up a faculty position in its meteorology department when he stopped by and spent four weeks at UCAR. He attended a COMET/Unidata workshop, and working closely with Dave Fulker (Unidata) and Brian Heckman (COMET) he learned about GARP, a graphical user interface developed at COMET that greatly facilitated synoptic instruction using GEMPAK. He took this software tool to campus, where it was quickly used to transform instruction by developing a departmental computer laboratory, now in its third generation.

In 1992 a small group of FSU meteorology faculty members, came up with the idea for a project called EXPLORES! It is a Florida State educational outreach program designed to bring weather satellite receiving technology into K-12 classrooms. Paul incorporated McIDAS satellite imagery and NOAA polar orbiter direct readout imagery into this program which, having gained its own momentum, remains a tool for Florida teachers to incorporate into their lesson plans.

About this time Paul began a six-year tenure on the Unidata Users Committee, and in addition to serving that group diligently, Paul used the visits to the UPC to work closely with Tom Yoksas, whom he credits with patience and perseverance in providing support. After he served out his term, he continued to be a consistent contributor to the Unidata e-mail system that allows users to exchange ideas, search archives for problem solving, and generally support one another, sometimes with guidance and direction from Unidata support staff.

EXPLORES! helped to spawn outreach efforts in support of broad geoscience and environmental education, with FSU becoming involved in the GLOBE program, now operated jointly by UCAR, Colorado State University, NASA, NSF, and the U.S. Department of State. The FSU team, led by Paul, first developed new and modified scientific protocols for GLOBE, and beginning in 2000, has provided annual training for Florida teachers. They also developed new programs in support of informal, preservice, and inservice teachers who use automated weather stations at their schools and science centers. Throughout these programs, Unidata applications, including the Local Data Manager (LDM), GEMPAK/GARP, and McIDAS have been used to provide important data. Their importance to his research in boundary layer and coastal meteorology also cannot be overestimated.

Paul's teaching will change its look beginning fall 2007 when he plans to introduce the IDV to a small class of non-major honors students in an introductory lab course, and a few undergraduate meteorology majors who will also be part of the class. Then, when he returns to teaching synoptic meteorology in spring 2008, he will be introducing another 40 or 50 students to the IDV and its exciting capabilities.

The Unidata program, with its emphasis on providing data, tools, and support for departments of all sizes has been a sustained contributor to the department's success, as it has grown to one of the largest in the country, with nearly 300 undergraduate and 85 graduate majors.

Paul is an end-to-end long-time user of Unidata services beginning with data ingest, analysis and visualization tool use, data access through THREDDS and model output use through LEAD, and presently, as a member of Unidata's Policy Committee. It's a perfect example of how Unidata is designed to function, to meet the expectations of a broad community with many needs.

But Paul's use of Unidata products does not stop there. Use of THREDDS data servers and their data access capabilities are already part of his repertoire, and he looks forward to using LEAD as it matures its concept of on-demand mesoscale modeling in support of real-time forecasting and teaching of mesoscale meteorology using case study approaches.