The 2005 West Antarctic Ice Sheet initiative (WAIS) Workshop was held in Sterling, Virginia starting on September 29. The workshop is a continuing series which is the primary means for exchanging information and ideas pertinent to WAIS. An exclusive, multidisciplinary group of Antarctic scientists that are pursuing the WAIS goals of understanding how rapid global climate changes occur and how the potentially unstable West Antarctic ice sheet may affect future sea level gathered for this workshop.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded various scientists to attend the workshop that are not currently connected with WAIS, but have connected activities, in order to expand the approach to the WAIS goals and promulgate the goals of the WAIS.

Representing ECSU were Dr. Linda Hayden, Director of the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER), Dr. Malcolm LeCompte, Assistant Director of CERSER, Dr. Lloyd Mitchell of the ECSU Geological, Environment and Marine Science Department, and Jerome Mitchell, a research student at the university.