The UCAR, NSF NCAR, and UCP community is a diverse and vibrant community, composed of individuals with a wide array of backgrounds, identities, and perspectives.
In order to create a kind and welcoming environment that maximizes scientific, engineering, business, and education excellence, and employee wellbeing, we must understand and value the myriad voices and perspectives of those in our community, and develop a culture of psychological safety and respect that supports all of us in reaching our full potential. These goals are inseparable from the core mission of our organization: to conduct and support exceptional science, engineering, business practices, and education, with and for society and for the betterment of life on Earth.
As an organization, we believe in transparency when it comes to our metrics and accountability mechanisms and we publish many of these publicly on our website for you to see. You can explore our data under “Measuring our Progress."
Our 2026-2031 UCAR ACO Strategic Plan is under development and we plan to release this in 2026 after incorporating the information coming out of the 2025 Workplace Culture Survey.
Organizational Structure
OACO is focused on nurturing a culture across UCAR, UCP, and NSF NCAR that is supportive and allows all staff to feel that they are welcome and belong. A key part of this work is administering the Workplace Culture Survey every four years and then helping labs, programs, and offices across the organization identify and address any issues that show up in the aggregated data. We provide training for staff and leadership and partner with Human Resources and other departments to ensure that all employees have fair access to the many opportunities offered by UCAR. We are also concerned with ensuring that our hiring process does not advantage or disadvantage candidates based on their backgrounds or identities.
The CORE Office is focused on ensuring that NSF NCAR’s many resources and expertise are accessible to scientists, students, and communities who have not historically engaged in research, or had other relationships, with our organization. This often includes Minority Serving Institutions and other emerging research institutions, and much of the CORE Office’s work is focused on building those connections. A major aspect of this work is co-developing research partnerships between our scientists and those at other institutions to build scientific research projects that encompass a range of perspectives and foci and enhance scientific excellence. CORE also helps labs to reach these communities to promote employment opportunities at NSF NCAR.
The UCP ACO Lead is focused on being a champion of UCP’s aspirational culture and goals by cultivating an environment where all employees feel respected, valued, and supported. The UCP ACO Lead collaborates closely with UCP leadership and OACO to ensure alignment with both UCP’s aspirational culture and UCAR’s organization-wide initiatives, while supporting efforts to engage broad audiences within the Earth system science community.
How We Put This Into Practice
Our organization is committed to four major pillars that all contribute to an environment that welcomes and empowers staff with myriad identities and perspectives. These pillars are based on peer reviewed research and adapted for our organization. The four pillars make up the four goals in our strategic plan:
Goal 1: A highly talented workforce embracing myriad identities - ensuring fair and equal access and opportunity to people of all identities at all levels of our organization. We work to understand and lower barriers to fair and equal participation for all potential and current employees to ensure that everyone has a fair chance of employment and promotion.
Goal 2: A welcoming, ethical, and kind workplace - Fostering a workplace culture that promotes community, respect, and psychological safety for all, where we are all encouraged and valued in bringing our talents, skills, and ideas to our mission, no matter our job title. We track our workplace culture through multiple avenues, including an all-staff Workplace Culture Survey every four years and Pulse Surveys every 6 months. These provide data to help guide our many initiatives and direct resources to where they are needed most.
Goal 3: Ethical partnerships - Partnering with others through respectful and thoughtful practices; working with communities with less access to resources in mutually supportive and trusted relationships to enhance and drive co-created scientific research. We partner with professional organizations to support training for the current and next generation of scientists. We also have long-running relationships with Indigenous partners and communities through NSF NCAR’s Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences, and collaborations with Minority Serving Institutions to expand educational and scientific research partnerships.
Goal 4: Accountability and Metrics - Measuring our impact, committing to transparency, and being accountable to our staff, partner communities, and to society. We measure our progress towards all of our goals through a combination of surveys, professional evaluations, benchmarking against national data, external advisory groups, and informal feedback. This information helps us to make data-driven decisions on how and where to target our resources and efforts to maximize our impact. Our outcomes are publicly available on Measuring Our Progress.