During the Fall semester of 2018, Notre Dame of Maryland University (NDMU) piloted a small seminar course in scientific computing intended for junior and senior undergraduates majoring in math, physics, engineering, or computer science. The goal was to develop and test a multi-disciplinary course, which would ultimately be added as an upper-level elective in these programs. Because NDMU is a small, primarily undergraduate, teaching university with limited computational resources, we reached out to Unidata to ask if we could test our new course using JupyterHub resources that are part of the Unidata Science Gateway. Having never offered this course before, we were uncertain the extent of the resources needed and the commitment needed to maintain and tweak those resources as the course progressed. Partnering with Unidata offered us a way to gain this expertise while getting access to the resources we needed for the class.

Unidata Users and Strategic Advisory Committees

Unidata is governed by its community. Our governing committees facilitate consensus-building for future directions of the Unidata Program and establish standards of involvement for the community. Direct involvement in the Program by the academic community helps Unidata stay on top of trends in education and research; for example, recent initiatives on Python and cloud-based computing have benefitted tremendously from committee advice and involvement.

The Unidata Program Center is seeking new people to serve on Unidata's Strategic Advisory and Users Committees. This is your chance to make a difference on behalf of the Unidata community. As Sepideh Yalda, the current Chair of the Unidata Strategic Advisory Committee notes, “Unidata has and continues to serve a critical role in providing data and services to the earth and related sciences community. The opportunity to serve as a member on Unidata governance committees provides you with the ability to contribute and help guide the future developments in data sharing and the associated services in support of research and education in atmospheric sciences.”