MICHELLE MCCLURE: We're on the home stretch everyone. Welcome to the last day of our lab review. What's up on the agenda is a review summary and a overview of our strategic plan. I've also included a very brief summary of the recommendations from 2014 and how we've addressed those. I haven't actually prepared a slide for the review summary. I guess I will just say that you've seen a great swath of what we've done. 

But obviously, we can't cover everything that we do. I think we've shown some of the highlights. I hope the tours have been very helpful in seeing the day-to-day of how we're actually able to execute our work. And I suspect that you've seen a few of our works, as well. And we're looking forward to your ideas about how we can overcome some of those issues. And with that, I will progress into our strategic plan. 

So this is an effort that was started last fall. Go to the next slide, please. We had a strategic plan from 2013 to 2017. As I've said before, the research teams that we oriented this review around were from that strategic plan. And that expired in 2017. One of the first things I heard when I came in was, you need a new strategic plan. So we started to work on that. 

We tried to make the process really inclusive. So we actually started out with workshops, both for stakeholders and for employees. We had, primarily, science-oriented questions in the stakeholder workshops, but also asked about how we can make our products, our science more useful for stakeholders and how we can best communicate our work. In the employee sessions, we also asked some organizational questions about how we could improve things. 

We worked with a consultant, Lynne Carbone & Associates, to do those workshops. They pulled together a plan. I have dramatically revised that. We then got reviewed from a Core Review Team, which is a group of volunteers that included scientists, technicians, both CI and federal. 

We then took it to the decision team, which is the senior science leadership in the lab. And then we came out of that retreat with a completely different thing. It was three utterly different documents. We sent that back to the Core Review Team for review, touched it up. And at this point, we're at the last stages, where we're offering it to review by panelists and looking to finalize it after we get feedback. Next slide, please. 

I started out when I made this so I was trying to do two separate slides for stakeholders and employee input. But it turned out that the messages that we got from both groups were extremely similar. So key messages that we got from our workshop is that folks really valued our long-term observing, including our tsunami work and wanted us to retain that and retain leadership from that, both in actually doing the observing and in the design and construction of platforms and sensors. 

They want us to maintain a lead in climate research and there was a big push for multi-disciplinary work and integrated work. So rather than being-- as I said, we've kind of been in cylinders of excellence, to really work across disciplines. There was a strong push for enhancing our work for its inclusion in ecosystems, for looking at the impacts of multiple stressors, not just a single stressor. And the joke I've been using is that I kind of felt like I was in The Graduate, with the emphasis of plastics [LAUGHS] that came across most workshops. 

Folks also wanted us to provide our data more creatively, in formats that were more useful for stakeholders. They wanted us to keep innovating. And while the messages around workforce came primarily from the employee workshops, these actually also came through from our stakeholder workshops. There's a strong desire for us to deal with issues surrounding the fact that we have a blended workforce of CI and feds, to deal with diversity. 

I showed the staff at the very beginning of this about our diversity stats to build the next generation of scientists and, especially from the employees, to reduce issues like the administrative burden that is placed on them. Our partners really wanted us to engage more frequently and more often to start at the beginning of our work with them in developing our science and our outputs from that science. And then finally, there was actually a push for a little bit more presence in the Northeast Pacific and on the coasts, especially for ecosystem-relevant. OK, next page. 

So these are our mission and vision. These are likely to get tweaked a little bit, but the point that we're trying to make is that our work needs to be relevant in the coming decade. Our mission, we're trying to explain what we do to actually push forward to a situation where we're providing information the-- it's like renews as we face the changes that our planet is undergoing. Next slide. Our values, throughout a variety of things, we really wanted to emphasize both the excellence that we have in this lab, the teamwork that we have, and also the integrity that underlies our science. Next slide. 

So what we ended up with was three goals. And this graph is intended to show that we have a central goal, which is our science and research. So this is why we exist is to conduct this research but also to recognize that there are elements without which that science can't happen. And one of those is what we call catalysts, which are the technological advancements, things like the sensor innovation and the platform innovation that you saw in the tour yesterday, that help us move forward into new places. And then the last is foundational underpinnings, recognizing that, without being a great workplace, that none of that is going to happen as well as it can. Next slide, please. 

So first goal-- prepare society to respond to a changing planet by leading integrated interdisciplinary ocean, atmosphere, climate, and ecosystem research. We actually started out trying to develop themes along the lines of what the last plan had been oriented around and ended up deciding that, especially with the focus that we had gotten on integrated and multidisciplinary work, that it made more sense to have one single integrated science goal. Next slide. 

And so this includes-- Adi-- can you click through? Thanks. So this includes a number of objectives that are aimed at using our observations in an integrative way to get a more complete picture of the ocean system; to understand changes in carbon cycles, nutrient cycles, heat budgets, things like that-- to improve the accuracy of our estimates for those. 

A couple slight redirections-- the coastal inundation, this one is aimed largely at our tsunami group and incorporating things like sea level rise, storm surge, other coastal inundation issues-- similarly, describing and defining connections between the oceans and sea floor, looking at the impact of those things on things like the carbon budget, on being able to assess human impacts on those environments; and then finally, sort of broadening our work to include the information that society is going to need to adapt and mitigate to global climate change. 

Finally, I actually want to point this one. This is the one that we put in in response to the plastics issue. And the point here is that we want to take a thoughtful approach to emerging issues. So what we want to do with that is not start by jumping in and creating a microplastics lab, but rather thinking about where PMEL strengths lie and what is needed in this realm that isn't already being done, and defining our position, and determining whether plastics is the right one. And so this is intended to be a scoping goal. Next one. 

Goal 2, again, is the catalysts, the things that we need to move our science forward. Adi. And so this is focusing on things like continuing to contribute to observing system design, optimizing that, to building platforms and sensors, using data science in new ways and AI and machine learning so that we can get the absolute most out of the information that we collect, making sure that we're sustaining our long-term data sets and making sure that we're supporting modeling and predictions, as well, that we are both providing information but also working closely with modelers to build those predictions. Next slide. 

And then our final goal is oriented around our workforce and our workplace and making this an even better place to be. And so these are thirteen objectives that are focused on the workforce of the future. So this is things like training, mentorship, succession planning, dealing with issues like diversity. Partnerships-- we recognized the clear need that our partners and stakeholders expressed of engaging early and often and having those be true partnerships. So what are the things that we need to do to build those? 

We recognized the administrative burden. And we recognized that some of our organizational structure doesn't necessarily fit our needs. So we have several objectives aimed at that; building our outreach and communication so that the public is aware of what we're doing; and then finally, a couple facilities measures, goals to improve the actual physical conditions [INAUDIBLE]. 

So our next steps on this are right here, right now, we're having our five-year review. We're hoping for input back on that. We'll use that input to finalize. And then what we're planning is-- actually, what our consultant recommended was that we have an implementation team for each of our objectives, which-- and again, the joke I've been using is that sounded great until I realized that that meant we had 39 teams. [LAUGHS] That would seem a little overwhelming. But we'll develop teams to tackle groups of objectives, develop multiyear implementation plans. 

And I would like to have a process that involves an annual check-in, both to make sure that we still agree with the direction that we decided here and also to identify the practical, tangible pieces that we need to make for each step along the way. We're actually quite excited about this. We think it's a fun plan. It's a forward-looking plan. We really tried to both stretch and be concrete in our goals. So I'm really hopeful that it will help us move forward. Thank you. 

And then to switch gears, just a few things that came out of that 2014 Review-- and this is in response to questions that we had here. So do please recognize that between the 2014 Review and now, the lab has had three Directors. So there's been a fair-- at least three, maybe three and half if we count Chidong. 

[LAUGHTER] 

So there's been some upheaval, and trying to get continuity on some of these things has been a bit of a challenge, as a consequence. So workforce, the last plan identified, the same issue that we've identified here already, which is, basically, they strongly suggested that we build a comprehensive workforce management plan. While there has been some thought to that, that actually has not happened. What we have done is address the smaller ask, which was compiling diversity metrics and looking at salary equity and parity and things like that. But this is definitely something that we still need to do. 

They recommended increased communication between CI and PMEL leadership. John and I don't get to sit down as often as we probably should, but we actually have upped that. And we both have a standing meeting with each other on the calendar. I should increase my communication with Michael, although we've done some. So we're working on that one. 

The Review recommended that we do competitive seed grants. We're not currently doing that, but I think that's a great idea. And I'm going to look for ways to do that. Along the same lines that this group has been asking questions, there was a there was a suggestion that we evaluate existing programs for their efficiency and effectiveness. 

The mechanism that the lab largely uses for that is both is the annual work plans that each group submits to the lab director. The current lab director has been learning. So this has been, perhaps, less effective than it might have been. [LAUGHS] But we're getting there. This is an area where I think we can improve. 

The last lab review was somewhat in the midst of the TAO Buoy Array disarray. And that has largely been fixed. And then there were a variety of individual group recommendations, largely along the lines of continued investment or trying to make more connections. And many of those were, I think, filled fairly well. 

And that's what I have, which gives us quite a bit more time for discussion, which I hope will be useful for the reviewers.