2025-10-07 - ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

(v) indicates a voting member

Decisions made during the meeting:

Agenda

Additional Agenda Items

2. NSF Update - (0 minutes) Sharon and Ed - NSF in shutdown mode

3. RP By-Laws - Ratify and Accept - do we have a quorum? (John and Shelley Out)

   1. The new By-Laws were reviewed last week but they were not accepted and ratified;

   2. 09/25/2025: by a vote of 12 for and 3 not present, the motion to make ByLaws changes making the vice-chair elect position retroactive passed. 

      Eric Adams of Purdue will be acting chair for the remainder of my term and then will officially assume the role of RP Forum Chair in January as the current chair-elect. 

      Per the ByLaws:

      ●    In the case of the Chair being unable to complete their term as specified, the Vice-Chair will assume the role and will appoint a new Vice-Chair to serve the remainder of that term; the Chair (formerly vice-chair) will continue into the new term as Chair and new Vice-Chair elections will be held in January as expected. 

   3. Was just changing how to handle a chair leaving - no changes to what ACCESS will or won’t do for them

   4. No Vote Needed: EC acknowledges the RP forum charter updates

4. Quarterly Meetings - (10 minutes)

   1. Date discussion - per Shelley’s team

      1. for our 4-day meeting in the Spring 2026 - the possible dates in order of preference are:

         • Week of Feb 23

         • Week of March 1

         • Week of March 16 is acceptable also

         • Last resort week of March 30

   2. Survey results - complaining about having a long travel day for people - is Buffalo the best place since it is harder to get there - move discussion to next meeting

      1. Amit says San Diego might be

5. User Audience - (15 Minutes Team Discussion)

   1. Revised approved Text from last week: Our primary user audience includes researchers and educators who consume ACCESS-allocated resources, with active support prioritized for those directly using these resources. At the same time, ACCESS secondarily supports prospective users and broader communities who may benefit from our services, training materials, documentation, and outreach. To meet varying user needs, we tailor support and materials to users at all experience levels.

      1. Shelley will share with Eric and Tim/Leslie - then we will share with NSF - was this done?

         1. Yes - Eric was OK with it in the final version

         2. Yes - Tim and Leslie got it

   2. Part 2: about coordination: (2) creating a way to surface projects across ACCESS teams that may impact user support, with a check/coordination point built in

      1. CHARGE: Charge from NSF:
         Discussion is needed among the five awards and agreement needed on
         who the ACCESS user audience is, and how the needs of different
         segments of users will be addressed. For example – novice advanced
         computing user, intermediate advanced computing user, advanced
         computing power user. This segmentation should be reflected in
         targeted and consistent messaging, outreach, communications,
         services provided, etc. by the five awards

      2. I believe this is a hard problem to solve, and as I’ve said I myself don’t exactly know the answer given the current structure of ACCESS.  We do have some places where we track what we are doing, but that’s not exactly the issue that I see at least (although I don’t want to speak for NSF).  The issue I see is that the decisions we make on what to do is not made with the users at the front and center of that decision.  To me this is not about surfacing processes and awareness; it’s about changing fundamentals on how we work.  

      3. From Tim B: For Part 2
         I agree with Shelley that this is a harder problem to solve. From my perspective, I would like for us to talk about how we can change our planning approach to address the problems here more generally to account for all stakeholder groups, not just decisions made that impact users. This could, for example, end up looking like some form of cross-track/co-planning exercise that incorporates a review/assessment from the perspective of each stakeholder group. I think our process for addressing the challenges here (when we get that point in the discussion) should focus on using the EC as the cross-track team that is informed of and responds to topics that impact our stakeholders. And, yes, writing all that out has me wondering where we'd find the time to establish that kind of process.

      4. John - suggests - regularly reminding EC if you have something coming up - bring it in … next as each team embarks on year 5 planning - id clear priorities and bring them to an EC discussion to align - then take back and do planning - this is a December quarterly meeting discussion

         1. Shannon - remember our lesson learned about December quarterly meeting

         2. Tom suggests a day long meeting on Zoom with this team to do this - when we do the PY4 plan integration

      5. Finalize this statement - this meeting

         1. Tom/Tim Since we only have 1 more planning cycle - we could just do an ad hoc process to make sure all plans are in agreement

         2. Dave H - We don’t really need to over respond - but NSF wants a level of coordination when making the annual plans

         3. Tim - we need to Co-plan - and then make decisions - need to understand what everyone’s decision cycles are - could we do the co-planning in December and then go back and finalize - then come back and confirm the plans are

         4. Tom - no need to tie it into a quarterly meeting

         5. Tim - maybe a breakout - not the full group

         6. Stephen - reporting - we can start planning asynchronously and using a small amount of time in each EC meeting ahead of time

6. How to surface plans from our teams for the coming year - and factor in discussion of user impacts (15 mins)

   1. Stephen - reporting - we can start planning asynchronously and using a small amount of time in each EC meeting ahead of time

   2. Tom - each track bring ideas to meeting and we can discuss

   3. Stephen - where is the balancing point between discussion of impacts on a regular basis

   4. Dave - gives us chance to make sure we are informing AND coordinating/adapting other plans when they coincide

   5. Tom - bring 3 top things we want to do better for the users and discuss that - rather than just list everything we are working on - Sharon doesn’t like what they are doing with the recommender system - how can it be improved

LINKS

Program Milestones

EC Meeting Task Tracking + Quarterly and Annual Meetings To Do Follow Ups

Misc Topics:

Next EC Meeting: Sept 23 is CASC meeting - next meeting Oct 7, 2025

Reference:

Risk Register:

Project Change Request: