Through Mary Wheeler, I saw awesome dedication and commitment to the goals of the CRPC. Not only were she and her team working with different people on different projects, but her group also managed to fully challenge the capabilities of CRPC supercomputers as her group extended the scope of their simulators. Her group led by example.

Richard Tapia continues to be a special mentor. I participated in his "Spend a Summer with a Scientist (SaS)" program for many years. I still remember the first SaS meeting I attended. It was on a Friday and was to be held every Friday thereafter for the duration of the program. I remember thinking to myself, "Certainly, this is not the Spend a Summer with a Scientist program I signed up for." But indeed it was to be so if Richard Tapia had anything to say about it. Scientific training for underrepresented science students had to involve more than just scientific competency. It had to include discussion of professional issues, personal issues, cultural issues, political issues--all issues. And, some of those discussions were quite contentious and passionate. SaS Fridays evolved into a forum for us to deal with baggage that we had carried with us into graduate school from our experiences just trying to get into graduate school. Along the way, we became stronger individuals and better scientists. We would be ready to serve the scientific community as scientists who happened to be women or ethnic minorities. I believe that Tapia's vision and implementation of scientific training of SaS students was right on the mark.