Announcing the Chief Scientist's Honor Roll

March, 1999

Many schools acknowledge the academic, athletic, or community service achievements of their students. I wish to acknowledge the data collection achievements of GLOBE students and their schools through a new Chief Scientist's Honor Roll! The datasets collected by GLOBE schools are especially valuable when they are thorough, persistent, and complete. The Honor Roll will celebrate these accomplishments.

The Honor Roll will be announced every two months under the GLOBE Stars page of our website. Making the Honor Roll will be based on a review of each school's GLOBE data reporting. Generally, for atmosphere and hydrology measurements, this review will cover the previous four month period, and for Soil, Land Cover/Biology, and Climate, it will cover the previous year. Where data reporting meets the established criteria (given in the attachment), the GLOBE school will be listed on one or more of the individual Chief Scientist's Honor Rolls. The initial Honor Rolls recognize data reporting in Clouds, Atmosphere (air temperature and precipitation), and Hydrology for three periods ending May 31, 1999, July 31, 1999, and September 30, 1999, respectively.

Additional Honor Rolls are being developed for the areas of Soil Temperature and Moisture, Soil Characterization, Land Cover, Climate, Earth As A System. There will also be an Honor Roll recognizing schools whose measurements cover the full set of GLOBE science investigations.

Initially only a few schools have achieved Honor Roll recognition. Their contributions are an example for everyone and help strengthen this program for all participants. There is no limit on the number of schools that can make the Honor Roll, and it is my hope that every GLOBE school will eventually achieve Honor Roll status. In the mean time, my thanks to every Honor Roll school and my appreciation for the efforts of all the teachers and students at other GLOBE schools.

For teachers interested in providing special recognition to individual GLOBE students, in the Resource Room under Instructional Resources there is a GLOBE Star Certificate which you can download from the Web and print.

Dr. Dixon Butler, GLOBE Chief Scientist (March 1999)

For more information, see the Specifications for the Chief Scientist's Honor Roll.