Announcements

UC ANR Controller Jake McGuire retires

Jake McGuire is retiring after 22 years of service to UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.

McGuire joined UC ANR as its first controller in 2000. The controller function was added during a reorganization phase as a UCOP entity, endorsed by the UC Regents, intended to strengthen accountability and control at each campus, and within the Office of the President.

“I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Jake over the years, and I will always be grateful to him for taking on new responsibilities and important projects,” said Tu Tran, UC ANR's associate vice president for business operations.

Through engagement at UC Office of the President, McGuire forged strategic relationships and successfully advocated for equitable treatment of, and resources for, ANR in an effort to better define ANR on par with campuses. He helped implement the UCPath Project Management Office to advance UC ANR's interests and position UC ANR as a single unified business unit in UCPath. 

As Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer for ANR, McGuire advanced UC ANR's compliance program to be on par with campuses systemwide. He advanced ANR's Risk Management program in concert with Systemwide Enterprise Risk Management and campus-based programs.

McGuire also worked with UCOP Office of General Counsel to successfully manage ANR's litigation and legal matters with minimal cost-impact and legal exposure to ANR.

“There is no doubt that Jake's retirement is well-deserved, though we will definitely miss his resourceful leadership,” Tran said.

Jing Yu will be serving as interim controller during the search for a new controller.

Outstanding academics recognized with Distinguished Service Awards

Outstanding academics recognized with Distinguished Service Awards

Winners of the Distinguished Service Awards were announced June 13. Sponsored by UC ANR and Academic Assembly Council, the Distinguished Service Awards recognize service and academic excellence in UC Cooperative Extension over a significant period of time. The awards highlight the use of innovative methods and the integration of research, extension and leadership by UC ANR academics. 

Award categories include outstanding research, outstanding extension, outstanding new academic, outstanding team, outstanding leader and contribution to diversity, equity and inclusion.

We are pleased to congratulate and recognize this year's honorees:

Outstanding Research - Mark Hoddle 

Mark Hoddle has been a UCCE specialist in biological control in UC Riverside Department of Entomology for 25 years. His research program on biocontrol of invasive pests that attack agricultural crops, threaten wilderness areas, and degrade urban landscapes in California has been supported by more than $14.5 million in grants from commodity boards and state and federal agencies and have significant impacts in California, nationally and internationally.

Highlights of his work include the successful biological control of the glassy-winged sharpshooter, a species of palm weevil (Rhynchophorus vulneratus), the Asian citrus psyllid and the Argentine ant, resulting in a massive reduction and elimination of these pests in California and other states and countries.

Hoddle also has developed proactive biocontrol and integrated pest management programs for pests not yet present in California but that are likely to invade, including the spotted lantern fly, the avocado seed moth and the avocado seed weevil.

His outstanding research has led to over 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals, books and book chapters. He also has published over 100 extension articles and 40 web pages. His outreach includes interviews for TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and podcasts.

In addition to his academic successes, Hoddle has mentored seven graduate students, more than 40 undergraduate students and nine post-graduate researchers. He also has received several national and international awards throughout his career.

Outstanding Extension - Lyn Brock 

Lyn Brock is the academic coordinator for statewide training for both the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program and CalFresh Healthy Living, University of California. Brock leads the training and professional development efforts for academics and staff that work at the state and county levels for both programs.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the EFNEP and CFHL, UC programs were stymied by the inability to provide in-person education. Through her persistence, innovation and leadership, Brock transitioned more than 140 program staff to virtual delivery in a matter of months so that they could continue to serve the people of California. 

She spearheaded novel trainings pertaining to a wide variety of topics that suddenly became relevant, including learner-centered programming, online learning platforms and copyright policies, among others. Under her leadership, 24 evidence-based curricula were adapted for virtual delivery during the pandemic. These programs are still regarded by the programs' federally funded partners as cutting-edge in virtual education.

Brock has produced numerous limited distribution publications and also presented during conferences, trainings and presentations to extend knowledge in her role as training coordinator. Highlights of her extension work include the What's Up Wednesday meetings, virtual staff check-in meetings to facilitate communication between program leadership staff. She also developed training material and trained staff on available virtual platforms to allow them to deliver programs virtually.

Outstanding New Academic - Aparna Gazula 

Aparna Gazula became a UCCE small farms advisor in 2016. Her extension program provides training and technical assistance for nutrient management, pest management, irrigation and food safety to diversified vegetable farmers in Santa Clara, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties.

Because a majority of the crops grown by Asian immigrant farmers – including amaranth, bok choy, gai choy, gai lan, a choy, Chinese celery, edible chrysanthemum, yam leaves, garlic chives and pea tips – are considered minor crops, there is little research-based information about them that can be used as the basis for management decisions or to fulfill regulatory requirements.In six years, she has secured more than $1.6 million in grant funding for research, outreach and technical assistance to fill information gaps on pest management, food safety and water and nutrient management.

Many of the socially disadvantaged farmers Gazula works with face language and cultural barriers. To provide targeted extension to non-English speaking farmers, she secured grant funding to hire specialists and educators who are fluent in Cantonese and Spanish. With her team, Gazula provides technical assistance, workshops, and outreach publications in Chinese and Spanish.

She also has led her team in assisting farmers in the region to access pandemic relief funding and state programs to improve soil health and water use efficiency. Gazula and her team helped non-English-speaking farmers submit over 200 applications for relief between April and December 2020. These farmers received $3.1 million in emergency aid, allowing them to maintain vegetable production during the pandemic. With her team she also provided training and technical assistance, in both Cantonese and English, to farmers about the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program and Healthy Soils Program.

Although Gazula is a new academic, she is recognized throughout the region for her expertise and is often called on by community and local government groups to contribute to food and farming initiatives. She has established herself as a leader in supporting the Asian vegetable industry.

Outstanding Team - UC ANR Winter Cover Cropping/Water Use Team

The UC ANR Winter Cover Cropping/Water Use Team is composed of UCCE specialists Daniele Zaccaria, Samuel Sandoval Solis, Amelie Gaudin, Jeff Mitchell and Khaled Bali, UCCE advisor Dan Munk and UC Davis students Alyssa DeVincentis and Anna Gomes.

In direct response to prominent knowledge gaps around implementing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, the team conducted a focused applied research program on water-related impacts of winter cover crops in California's Central Valley from 2016 to 2019.

Their research showed that the benefits of winter cropping in processing tomato and almond production systems offset or compensated for water used during the winter by the cover crops. Contrary to widespread belief, research results showed that cover crops did not use a lot of soil water because evapotranspiration during this period is normally low, crops shade and cool the soil surface, and improve soil aggregation, pore space and soil water infiltration and retention. 

This research provided the basis for a series of 11 invited extension education presentations and outreach activities to inform and guide policy implementation of local stakeholder agencies and entities including the Madera Regional Water Management Group, the American Farmland Trust's SJV Conservation Partnership Program, the CA/NV Chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, and the East Stanislaus, the Eastern Merced, Fresno, Kings, and Tulare Counties Resource Conservation Districts, as well as the California Irrigation Institute. 

Outstanding Leader - Gail Feenstra 

Gail Feenstra, director of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, is a distinguished leader and visionary, not only in UC ANR, but across the food systems landscape. Her career has been exemplary in terms of her pioneering success in applied, multidisciplinary research, evaluation, and outreach. In the early 1990s, Feenstra began to parlay her graduate training in nutrition along with her experience in community development and food systems into what was then a very new, poorly studied discipline that she would continue to develop and lead for the next three decades.

This field of work comprises regional food systems that merge the business and livelihood needs of small- and mid-scale farmers with the economic well-being and nutritional health of their local communities. Feenstra developed SAREP's and the nation's understanding of values-based supply chains. She has been a pioneer in the farm-to-school movement and has developed widely adopted tools for farm-to-school evaluation. In recognition of her stature in this field, CDFA selected her to lead a four-year, $60 million evaluation of its Farm to School Grant Program.

Feenstra also has shown tremendous leadership within UC ANR through her role as co-chair of the California Communities and Food Systems Program Team where she has helped shape collaborations within UC ANR. She has worked to bridge interconnected disciplines of nutrition, food, health, community development and agriculture within UC ANR. She also has led efforts to work across program teams, particularly in developing new specialist and advisor position descriptions. Her energy is infectious and her leadership through collaboration is compelling. The Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society recently honored Feenstra with its 2022 Richard P. Haynes Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award.

Outstanding Contribution to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - Katherine Soule 

Katherine Soule began her DEI work in 2013, focusing on providing solutions to the challenges that marginalized youth, families and communities face on the Central Coast.

Her work particularly focused on the needs of Latino youth and families, LGBTQ+ youth and adults, neurodivergent people, and individuals living in poverty. Through a timely intervention, Soule's DEI work has helped to increase health equity, improve food security and safety, and promote economic prosperity in marginalized communities.

She implemented a very impactful “Schools as Hubs of Health” program that reached more than 4,000 students annually in more than 150 classrooms and created a college and career readiness pathway that engaged more than 12,000 youth. She brings an interdisciplinary approach to her work with an emphasis on engaged and participatory research, and lifelong commitment to personally unlearning and decolonizing.

Soule also demonstrates DEI leadership by serving on the UC ANR DEI Advisory Council as the inaugural chair and serving on the City of San Luis Obispo's DEI Taskforce.

Fact sheets help guide programs with equity lens

The 4-H Program Leaders Working Group has published a series of fact sheets titled “Thriving with an Equity Lens.” While the fact sheets are written for 4-H professionals, the information is applicable to all of UC ANR's work with communities. 

“These fact sheets provide information and recommendations on how to foster a sense of belonging for marginalized youth, list staff competencies needed to engage a youth population, and offer recommendations for culturally adapting program evaluations,” said Fe Moncloa, 4-H youth development advisor for Santa Clara County. 

“Programming with an equity lens necessitates having an understanding of these concepts at the same time: paying attention to multiple systems of oppression, knowing the past and present cultural histories of your target population and having the ability to shift practices on the spot.

“The information on these fact sheets will hopefully help you have a greater understanding of the cultural histories of diverse populations and support you to offer culturally responsive programs.” 

The first fact sheet defines many terms used to talk about diversity, inclusion and equity.

The 11 fact sheets  cover the following topics:

1. Intro: Thriving Through an Equity Lens
2. Immigrant and Refugee Youth
3. LGBTQ+ Youth
4. Youth Experiencing Homelessness
5. Youth in Foster Care
6. Youth with Disabilities
7. Youth Living in Poverty
8. Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing
9. African American Youth
10. Latinx Youth
11. American Indian/Alaskan Native (First Nations) Youth

All of the “Thriving with an Equity Lens” fact sheets are posted at https://access-equity-belonging.extension.org/resources/fact-sheets.

 

In memoriam: William Hambleton

William “Bill” Hambleton, UCCE farm advisor emeritus passed away on May 26 at age 94.   

He began his UC ANR career in 1966 as a UCCE farm advisor and worked with 4-H youth in Madera County. He subsequently became director for UCCE in Madera County, and then director for UCCE in Fresno County.

In 1985, Hambleton was appointed director for the 12-county UCCE South Central Region, where he served until his retirement in 1995.  

Read more about his life at https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/fresno-ca/william-hambleton-10788411.

In memoriam: Lawrence Schwankl

Larry Schwankl, UC Cooperative Extension specialist emeritus, died from complications due to cancer May 2, 2022, in Visalia. He was 68.

Schwankl was born to Margaret and Orville Schwankl in Mankato, Minnesota, and attended Mankato State for two years before transferring to Iowa State University for a degree in civil engineering. After earning his masters from UC Davis, he worked for FEMA in Philadelphia on flood control issues.

He returned to UC Davis and obtained his Ph.D. after which he was hired as a University of California Cooperative specialist affiliated with the UC Davis Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources Department.

During his career he worked with growers and industry members on sprinkler, drip and flood irrigation management. He researched irrigation system maintenance and chemigation, irrigation scheduling using soil moisture monitoring and evapotranspiration techniques. 

“I have had the privilege to work with Larry since I was a graduate student at UC Davis back in the mid-1980s, Larry was very instrumental in teaching me practical methods for measuring infiltration rates in the field,” said KhaledBali, UCCE Irrigation Water Management specialist and director of Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

“I worked for Larry as a teaching assistant at UC Davis in the 1990s and then had the opportunity to organize irrigation workshops with him over the years. Larry's extension work was very practical and addressed the needs of the growers in California, Larry along with other UCCE specialists published several practical guides for irrigation management including UCANR publications such as Measuring Irrigation Water Flow Rates (Publication 21644) and Maintaining Microirrigation Systems (Publications 21637)."

Ben Faber, UCCE farm advisor in Ventura County, said, “He taught me that you cannot irrigate knowledgeably without a flow meter, and you might as well just gamble away your orchard unless you do a distribution uniformity test on the irrigation system. These are critical tools, creating good water management and healthy orchards.”

In 2004, Schwankl married Carol Frate, UC Cooperative Extension advisor, of Visalia and transferred to Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center near Parlier.

In 2014, the Irrigation Association presented Schwankl with their Person of the Year Award. In their award announcement, Dana Osborne Porter, associate professor and extension agricultural engineer in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Texas A&M University, was quoted as saying “Through his well-recognized applied research program, technology transfer efforts and service activities, Dr. Schwankl has dedicated his career to developing, evaluating and promoting water-efficient technologies and irrigation best management practices.”

Schwankl retired from his 28-year UC Cooperative Extension career in 2014.

“During his retirement, Larry used to visit KARE and I always enjoyed talking to him about various topics. He was always organized and soft spoken, very smart person and he enjoyed the outdoors,” Bali said.

In Schwankl's obituary, Frate wrote, “Larry was a thoughtful, kind and generous man who enjoyed fishing (particularly for walleye in Minnesota lakes), hiking, birding, gardening and turning wooden bowls. He loved animals, especially his cats. He attended St. Mary's Catholic Church.”

He is survived by Frate; sister Gail (Dale) Erickson of Mankato, Minnesota, and sister-in-law Vicki Salzberg.

He is survived by his wife Carol Frate of Visalia;  sister Gail (Dale) Erickson of Mankato, Minnesota, sister-in-law Vicki Salzberg, nieces Sarah (Chris) Tracy and Emily Salzberg, grandnieces Anna and Simone, and grandnephews Owen and River of Olympia, Washington.

A rosary followed by a Mass of Christian Burial will be at 1:30 p.m. on July 18, 2022, at Holy Family Catholic Church, 1908 N. Court St, Visalia. Interment will be at a later date in Olympia, Washington. Donations may be made to Pacific Wildlife Care, 1387 Main St., Morro Bay, CA 93442 or to a charity of the donor's choice.

 

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