Annual Meeting - SCEC.org

Report | SCEC Director
Organization and Leadership
SCEC is an institution-based center, governed by a Board of Directors, who represent its members.
The membership currently stands at 16 core institutions and 47 participating institutions (Table 2).
SCEC is one of the largest collaborations in geoscience, involving more than 650 scientists and
other experts in active SCEC projects. A key measure of SCEC involvement—registrants at our
Annual Meetings—is shown for the entire history of the Center in Figure 1.
18 | Southern California Earthquake Center
Table 2. SCEC Institutions (September 1, 2008)
Board of Directors. Under the SCEC3 by-laws, each core institution appoints one member to the
Board of Directors, and two at-large members are elected by the Board from the participating
institutions. The Board is chaired by the Center Director, who also serves as the USC
representative; the Vice-Chair is Lisa Grant. During the past year, Ralph Archuleta replaced Doug
Burbank as the Board member from UCSB. The complete Board of Directors is listed on p. 20 of the
meeting volume.
Advisory Council. The Center’s external Advisory Council (AC) is charged with developing an
overview of SCEC operations and advising the Director and the Board. Since the inception of SCEC
in 1991, the AC has played a major role in maintaining the vitality of the organization and helping
its leadership chart new directions. A verbatim copy of the AC’s 2007 report follows my report in
this meeting volume.
We thank Dr. Chris Rojahn, who is rotating off the AC this year, and we welcome Drs. Mary Lou
Zoback and John Filson as new AC members. Dr. Zoback, who is Vice President for Earthquake
Risk Applications at RMS Inc., succeeds Dr. Sean Solomon as AC chair, and we thank her for her
leadership of this important council.
Working Groups. The SCEC organization comprises a number of disciplinary committees, focus
groups, and special project teams (Figure 3). These working groups have been the engines of its
success. The discussions organized by the working-group leaders at the Annual Meeting have
provided critical input to the SCEC planning process.