This is first week of the spring 2015 semester.

ALERTS:

  • You may drop and add online this week without instructor or Dean’s permission.
  • If you are enrolled in 12-14 hours and plan to file a petition waiver request, go here: and click on “Flat Rate Tuition” for all the details. Part-time students (enrolled in 1-11 hours) will be charged tuition on a per credit hour basis and do not need to file this form. Please note that your request must also include a petition waiver form from the A&GS Dean’s Office (NWC 3630).
  • Go here: to bookmark the Spring 2015 Academic Calendar, which lists important academic dates and deadlines, such as drop & add, auditing a course, final exams, and vacations & holidays.
  • There will be no classes next Monday, January 19, due to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. You will receive your next Monday Memo on Tuesday, January 20.
  • THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS!Just 104 days until Sunday, April 26, and the gala opening of the 2015 NWC Biennale an international juried exhibition presenting: Art's Window on the Impact of Weather on the Human Experience.

WELCOME New A&GS Students!

A hearty welcome to our new A&GS sophomores and transfer students! The following information should help your semester run more smoothly:

  • The College of Atmospheric & Geographic Sciences is home to the Department of Geography & Environmental Sustainability (DGES), located in Sarkeys Energy Center, Room 510, and the School of Meteorology (SoM), located in the NWC, Room 5900.
  • The NWC is also home to the AG&S Dean’s Office (Room 3630), the A&GS Multi-Media Lab (Room 3650), the NWC Library (Room 4300), and the Flying Cow Café. DGES in Sarkeys is also home to state-of-the-art computer labs and the Bedrock Café.
  • You will receive “Monday Memo,” the college’s online newsletter, every Monday during the fall and spring semesters.
  • Students are assigned a faculty advisor in their major department for semester advising and for assistance with internships, career options, and personal letters of reference. You will receive advising information via OU e-mail in February (DGES majors) or March (METR majors).
  • The A&GS Dean’s Office is here to assist you with any academic problems or concerns you have, along with degree checks, signing forms (e.g., VA, ROTC, tuition exemption requests, etc.), verifying transfer work, and to assist you with finding the academic resources you need on campus. You may call 325-3095 to schedule an appointment, or stop by during our walk-in hours, which are M-F from 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM.

Access to the National Weather Center

Please note that ALL A&GS studentshave access to the National Weather Center daily from 7:00 AM – 7:00 PM*, to take advantage of the NWC Library, quiet areas to study, the Flying Cow Café (open till 3:00 PM M-F), and great parking. With a new semester underway, it’s a good time review NWC policies and procedures.

The NWC follows federal security regulations due to the housing of federal entities in the building. Therefore, students must display approved identification (OU student ID) at all times while in any area of the building. If you do not have approved identification available, you must check in with NWC Security to receive a visitor badge upon arrival.You may use a free NWC lanyard to display your OU ID or a lanyard of your choice. Meteorology majors may pick up a lanyard in NWC 5900 (SoM main office). GEOG/GIS/ES majors may pick up a lanyard in NWC 3630 (A&GS Dean’s office).

*A&GS students with sophomore standing or above will receive 24-hour access to the NWC after the third week of classes.

You must have a valid OU parking permit in order to park in the NWC lot. Please do not park in visitor spaces (the first two rows on the west side of lot).

If you have any questions, please ask in the Dean’s Office (NWC 3630).

Spring and Summer 2015 Degree Candidates

If you are an undergraduate student who has not confirmed your remaining requirements with a degree check, please call 325-3095 to schedule one immediately.If you are a graduate student, please contact the Graduate College at 325-3811 to confirm your remaining requirements.

You also need to apply for graduation; both undergraduates and graduate students may now apply for graduation anytime online in Ozone; under the “Academics” tab, click on ‘Apply for Graduation.’

Remember to stay current with all commencement and convocation-related activities by bookmarking and visiting it often.

Transitions

If you’re new to OU this spring, we recommend that you consider enrolling in UCOL 3001, “Transitions.” This one-hour course is designed to assist new transfer students acclimate to campus culture as well as become familiar with a variety of campus resources. Please call 325-2574 for clearance to enroll.

Summer Internship at CDC/ATSDR

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Environmental Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR) offer paid 10-week summer internship programs for students who are passionate about the environment, interested in human health, and curious about how they are linked. During the course of the internship, students are introduced to environmental health at the federal level through collaborative projects, experiential learning opportunities, environmental health presentations, journal clubs, field trips, brown bag lunches, and mentoring relationships at NCEH/ATSDR. Interns will be based at NCEH/ATSDR’s Chamblee Campus. For more information, please visit the program web sites:

Collegiate Leaders in Environmental Health (

  • Open to all undergraduate students who are enrolled in school fulltime and will be a rising junior or rising senior by fall 2015. The application deadline is January 28, 2015.Contact:

Graduate Environmental Health Program (

  • Open to graduate students who are currently enrolled full-time graduate student in a degree granting program from which a degree has not been conferred at the time of the internship. The application deadline is February 25, 2015. Contact:

This Week’s Seminars and Colloquia:

Dr. Alan Shapiro, from OU’s School of Meteorology will present A Unified Theory for the Great Plains Nocturnal Low-Level Jet on Friday, January 16, at 3:00 PM in the National Weather Center, Room 5600.

Heliophysics Summer School

Applications are now open for the 2015 Heliophysics Summer School, which will be held in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. They are seeking students and undergraduate level teachers and instructors to join them this coming summer for a unique professional experience. Students and teachers will learn about the exciting science of heliophysics as a broad, coherent discipline that reaches in space from the Earth's troposphere to the depths of the Sun, and in time from the formation of the solar system to the distant future. At the same time, a goal of the Summer School is for the group of instructors to develop materials from Heliophysics that can be applied in their classes. To learn more about this exciting program, and to access an application (the deadline to apply is February 27, 2015), go here:

ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR MM?

If you have any announcement you would like posted in Monday Memo (e.g., meetings, seminars, jobs, internships or just some great news) please send it to Asst. Dean Hempe () by Friday at noon to appear in the next week’s edition.

On this Day in History:

In 1773, The Charleston Museum, the first public museum in America, was established in Charleston, South Carolina. They’re still in business, too:

In 1888, the so-called "Schoolchildren's Blizzard" swept across the Northwest Plains in the US, killing 235 people, many of them kids on their way home from school. Some accounts say that the temperature fell nearly 100 degrees in just 24 hours.

In 1896, at North Carolina’s Davidson College, three students bribed a janitor to let them into a physics lab, where they took the first X-ray photographs to be made in America. Their physics prof, Dr. Henry Louis Smith, had planned to be the first person to take an x-ray, but his students beat him to the punch!

In 1908, a wireless message was sent long-distance for the first time from the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

In 1912, the morning low of 47 degrees below zero at Washta, Iowa established a state record.

In 1915, the United States Congress established the Rocky Mountain National Park.

In 1932, Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a democrat, became the first woman elected to the United States. She represented Arkansas.

In 1969, in one of the most dazzling performances in sports history, quarterback “Broadway” Joe Namath led the New York Jets to a stunning 16-7 victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, held in Miami, Florida.

In 1984, workers restoring the Great Pyramids in Egypt stopped using mortar and adopted the original system of interlocking blocks practiced by the ancient Egyptian builders. The pyramids were showing signs of severe decay by the early 1980s, when the restoration project began. The modern construction techniques turned out to be quite destructive, when water in the modern cement caused adjacent limestone stones to split. Upon returning to the ancient methods, the project ran smoothly.

In 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the Caribbean island nation of Haiti. The quake, which was the strongest to strike the region in more than 200 years, left over 200,000 people dead and some 895,000 Haitians homeless.

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