ANR Update

Join the Cool Campus Challenge April 1-26, 2019

Dear Colleagues,

The University of California is on its way to becoming the first university system to wipe out its carbon footprint by 2025, as part of President Napolitano's Carbon Neutrality Initiative. We can do it, but only if we do it together.

Participating in UC's collective effort will demonstrate UC ANR's commitment to protecting California's natural resources and building climate-resilient communities and ecosystems.

That's why I'm asking you to join in the Cool Campus Challenge and move us closer to becoming carbon-free. ANR is teaming up with UCOP for the challenge, and we'll compete on the side against the other UCOP units.

If you sign up, you'll get weekly emails with actions you can take to lower your carbon emissions in classrooms, labs, offices, homes and when traveling. As you take action, you will score points for ANR in the competition. Trophies will be awarded for locations with the most points and most points per participant.

Please take a minute to learn more and become part of the Cool Campus Challenge by registering at CoolCampusChallenge.org. Let's show the UC community that UC ANR is Cool!

Glenda Humiston
Vice President

 

View or leave comments for ANR Leadership at http://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRUpdate/Comments.

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

UC ANR website gets a new look

Colleagues,

Last month, Strategic Communications and IT “soft-launched” the website redesign project to test the site in the live environment and complete bug fixes before an official launch was announced. Bug fixes are complete, so we are now happy to share broadly that the site is live.

Why the new design?

Goals of the web design project include:

• Improve the content structure and new top down navigation for the ucanr.edu home page and high level pages beneath ucanr.edu
• Increase utility and discoverability of news and event information on ucanr.edu
• Resolve major brand inconsistencies across the Division's web presence
• Better showcase the impacts of UCANR's work
• Implement a workflow structure; update content workflows and curation strategy
• Implement new design elements that will update the appearance of all 600 Site Builder sites

What is the scope of the redesign project?

The website redesign project has two areas of scope. The first was to refresh the design of the main ucanr.edu website, comprised of the top few pages of news, events and educational content for the Division. This content is now broken out into six focus areas (aka brand strengths) and managed through editorial workflows in Strategic Communications. The second area of scope is making the designs compatible with all Division websites without a significant impact to website owners. This second area of work is happening now, and IT has begun rolling out websites using the new design. You can learn more about the second phase here.

How can you share your feedback on the first phase?

There is a feedback link on the lower right side of the home page footer. We welcome your input.

What's next for ucanr.edu?

CSIT is meeting with leadership next month to establish the long-term strategy for evolving the website to (1) better address the core goal of making educational content easily discoverable by our target audiences and (2) effectively showcase the impact and value of ANR as a whole to increase awareness and support of our programs.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have questions or comments about editorial workflows or feature ideas for the home page. 

Linda Forbes
Director of Strategic Communications

 

View or leave comments for ANR Leadership at http://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRUpdate/Comments.

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

Staff-performance appraisal webinars offered March 20, for supervisors March 26

ANR Human Resources will host two more Zoom webinars for staff and supervisors in March:

• Employee Role: March 20, Wed., 10 a.m.–11 a.m.              
• Supervisor Role: March 26, Tuesday, 3 p.m.–4:30 p.m.

• Zoom: https://ucanr.zoom.us/j/8151602829
• Telephone   US: +1 408 638 0968  or +1 646 558 8656
• Meeting ID: 815-160-2829

This year ANR Human Resources has modified the Employee Performance Appraisal Form to align with the UC system-wide core competencies and to prepare supervisors and employees for the future online appraisal process. They will discuss what's new during the webinars.

Supervisors need only to participate in a supervisor session.

For those unable to participate during the scheduled times, recorded versions of both webinars – Employee Role and Supervisor Role – have been uploaded to the ANR HR website and are available for viewing: https://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRSPU/Supervisor_Resources/Performance_Management.

The staff performance review period runs from April 1, 2018, through March 31, 2019. An annual appraisal should be completed for all ANR staff employees, including represented and non-represented, career and contract employees with at least six months of service as of March 31, 2019.

More information about the annual process, including timelines, guidelines and Performance Appraisal Tools are available on the ANR Human Resources website: http://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRSPU/Supervisor_Resources/Performance_Management.

If you have questions regarding the appraisal process, please contact Mary Vlandis at maryvlandis@ucanr.edu.

John Fox
Executive Director, Human Resources

 

View or leave comments for ANR Leadership at http://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRUpdate/Comments.

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

 

 

Workgroups, Program Teams and Strategic Initiatives - Where are we?

A major factor in job satisfaction is the extent to which people feel part of a wider supportive community. Such connections have historically been offered in UC ANR through various means, including our structural units (i.e., our 81 workgroups, 21 program teams and 5 strategic initiatives).

Healthy organizations should regularly look at their structure. Important elements of structure include how the pieces fit together and how people may better connect to more effectively implement their work. In the summer of 2018, we began a series of discussions and surveys to revisit aspects of our structure.

Thank you to the 120-plus people who provided input on our structure and suggestions regarding how we may connect.

Findings

1. Clarity of purpose:

The seeming fuzziness of the roles and goals of our Workgroups (WGs), Program Teams (PTs) and Strategic Initiatives (SIs) is not as great as people may think. Many consistent findings arose across the different structural groups. A summary of our findings follows.

Workgroups (our oldest unit of structure) are the most readily understood. They represent active “communities of practice” (that can come and go) and are the primary place where people plan and implement (noting that such groups are both formal and informal).

One point of interest is that people didn't realize they could close or start workgroups as needed. 

Program Teams bring together people (typically from different workgroups) who are working on related but distinctly different topics to network, share and learn.

One clear observation is that PTs vary considerably in terms of the diversity of WG representation (e.g., 1 PT has 12 WGs and a few PTs have just 1 WG).

SIs are our highest form of aggregation (and currently the one that enjoys the least clarity). They function to unify, communicate and advocate as the umbrellas for the work we do. The recent addition for the SIs is the development of the Focal Areas and Grand Challenges, providing the opportunity to see the unifying focus in our efforts.

For more information about how workgroups, program teams and strategic initiatives fit together, see https://ucanr.edu/sites/StrategicInitiatives/files/295191.pdf.

2. Workgroups – Don't fix it if it ain't broken:

Of the 81 workgroups, quite a number are considered very active and effective (21) - while another 29 are somewhat active and 3 are new in 2019. The remaining 28 WGs have been inactive as reflected by personnel or goal changes. The inactive WGs will be officially closed (see list at end). These can be easily reopened if demand arises.

The goal is for WGs to align with a single PT which likely means realigning the PTs - see point #3 below. Currently some workgroups have no PT, whereas other WGs have aligned with many PTs.

3. Reformulate the topic areas for Program Teams:

The next step is to collect input and look at reformulating/reaffirming the PT themes. Currently, we have 21 PT themes. Some have no WGs under them. Others have many WGs under them. As indicated above, some workgroups have aligned under many PT. This creates uneven structure and at times uneven activity.

As we go forward, we encourage people to help identify needed PT themes to 1) better represent the collective work of UC ANR, 2) create or show clearer paths for people to connect at the WG, PT and SI levels, and 3) help us refine the SI Focal Areas and Grand Challenges – providing greater clarity of our efforts and clearer SI alignment with the reformulated PT themes and WG efforts.

Opportunity for more input on PT themes

The PT discussions will include a webinar and county visits over summer.

Thank you all for your efforts and we welcome input.

Sincerely,

Mark Bell (Vice Provost Strategic Initiatives and Statewide Programs)

Strategic Initiative Leaders

HFC: Lynn Schmitt-McQuitty

SFS: Deanne Meyer and Neil McRoberts

Water: David Lewis

SNE: David Lile

Pests: Jim Farrar

—————————————

Workgroups to close 

Note: If there is interest and leadership, workgroups can be readily opened by this simple new workgroup request.

1.   Air Quality

2.   Animals in Educational Settings

3.   Bioenergy

4.   Body Weight and Health

5.   Building Food Security

6.   Conservation Biology

7.   Dairy Goats

8.   Ecological Restoration

9.   Economics and Mgmt in Food, Ag, Nat Res and the Environment

10.   Environmental Observation Network

11.   European Pear

12.   Exotic Fruit Fly

13.   Garden- Based Learning

14.   Health Promotion & Disease Prevention

15.   Mosquito Research and Extension

16.   Pest Management in ANR

17.   Postharvest Integrated Pest Management

18.   Rangeland Watershed Program

19.   Turfgrass

20.   Urban Horticulture

21.   Water Quality

22.   Woody Biomass Utilization

23.   Families with Young Children

24.   Food Safety Horticultural Crops

25.   Land Use

26.   Linking Research & Education in Agricultural & Environmental Biotechnology

27.   Peppers

28.   Spray Application Technology 

 

View or leave comments for ANR Leadership at http://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRUpdate/Comments.

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

 

Save the date: ANR town hall March 21

Please join ANR leaders for a virtual town hall discussion March 21 from 11 a.m. to noon.

[A recording of this town hall can be viewed at https://ucanr.zoom.us/recording/share/cDyQszkVruRcozHg2JVp8YJqy5V0s_4InlDmDgpa7Q6wIumekTziMw.]

In an effort to better connect ANR members across state, we will hold an hour-long town hall via Zoom to update you on UCPath, ANR's budget and other current topics and answer your questions.

Glenda Humiston, Tu Tran and I will be participating to provide information and answer questions.

During the town hall, participants may submit questions and comments via the Zoom chat box.

Join from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device:?   

• Please click this URL to join. https://ucanr.zoom.us/j/945480090?       
• Description: UCANR Town Hall??

Or join by phone:?   

• Dial (for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):?       
• US: +1 646 558 8656 or +1 669 900 6833 ?    Webinar ID: 945 480 090?   
• International numbers available: https://zoom.us/u/acJrRrxK8w

Wendy Powers
Associate Vice President

 

View or leave comments for ANR Leadership at http://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRUpdate/Comments.

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

 

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