Following an interview process and review of the feedback collected from the search committee and seminar attendees as well as the application materials, AVP Wendy Powers requested that the Vice Provost – Cooperative Extension search be extended so that we may solicit more candidates for consideration.
“Although we saw several strong applicants, we want to be certain that we have done our due diligence in finding the very best person for this critical job,” she said.
The Vice Provost – Cooperative Extension is a key position that provides oversight and coordination for the academic review process. In addition, the person in this position will provide leadership and vision for our network of county leaders and how we partner with counties, seeking to strengthen these partnerships going forward while providing support to UC ANR county leaders. Chris Greer will continue to fulfill the duties of the Vice Provost until June 30.
"I want to thank the search committee for the exceptional work they have done to date," Powers said. "I especially appreciate their continued willingness to search for that extraordinary leader who possesses the unique set of skills needed to build on UC ANR's current successes and direct our programs toward California's future needs."
The ideal candidate will be a leader who
- understands the complexity of our county partnerships and the county-by-county needs across California;
- can create, gain buy-in to and deploy a vision to support Cooperative Extension county leadership and facilitate their success;
- appreciates the breadth in program areas within UC Cooperative Extension;
- has extensive personnel experience with academic hiring and merit and promotion processes; and
- can quickly get up to speed, building on his or her past demonstrated expertise in Extension and academia.
The Vice Provost – Cooperative Extension position is an ongoing recruitment until the position is filled.
Wendy Powers, associate vice president, announced the request for proposals for ANR's 2017 competitive grants program, which can be found at http://ucanr.edu/compgrants2017.
In addition to releasing ANR's competitive grants call, she shared information on a couple of newly developed funding opportunities: “high risk/high reward grants program” and “opportunity grants program.” Below are descriptions of the three different funding mechanisms.
ANR Competitive Grants Program
The purpose of the ANR competitive grants program is to address high-priority issue areas identified by at least one of the strategic initiatives: Endemic and Invasive Pests and Diseases (EIPD), Healthy Families and Communities (HFC), Sustainable Food Systems (SFS), Sustainable Natural Ecosystems (SNE), and Water Quality, Quantity and Security (Water).
ANR Competitive Grants Program 2017 Cycle:
- Application submission cycle
- Letter of Intent (LOI) due March 20
- LOI decisions April 26
- Full proposals due June 19
- Technical peer review: mid-June to early September 2017
- Strategic Initiative review and recommendations: end of September 2017
- Program Council review and recommendations: October/November 2017
- Announcement of funded grants: November/December 2017
Through this program, ANR will continue to invest in short-term, high-impact research, education and outreach projects that address high-priority issues that are consistent with the Strategic Vision, encourage collaboration among academics from diverse disciplines and across initiatives, strengthen the research-extension network and demonstrate relevance and likelihood of impact on significant agricultural, economic, environmental and social issues in California and beyond.
For questions about ANR's competitive grants program, please contact Melanie Caruso at mmcaruso@ucanr.edu.
High Risk/High Reward Grants Program
Given the complexity of societal problems, high risk research is necessary to achieve gains for real progress in addressing present and emerging challenges. This program will provide funds to initiate and complete research and proof-of-concept efforts that serve as the basis for larger funding opportunities. These projects must be of a high risk/high reward nature that are best conducted in a controlled, research setting and, if successful, lend themselves to subsequent larger funding opportunities and/or intellectual property development.
Proposed projects must be within the scope of the ANR Strategic Vision. All ANR academics with PI status are eligible to apply. Proposals will be accepted using the same timeline as outlined for the traditional competitive grants program, but reviewed separately due to the nature of the proposal.
High risk/high reward grants will be limited to no more than $100,000 per project. Proposal format and duration is available at http://ucanr.edu/highrisk2017.
For questions about the High Risk/High Reward grants program, please contact Melanie Caruso at mmcaruso@ucanr.edu.
ANR Opportunity Grants Program
This opportunity grants program will provide small amounts of resources to initiate and complete critical short-term research, outreach or training efforts. These projects must be time-sensitive in nature and take advantage of a unique opportunity where a small pilot project to collect initial data or an immediate, crucial outreach effort must take place in a timely manner to address an issue of importance.
Proposed projects must be within the scope of the ANR Strategic Vision. All ANR academics with PI status are eligible to apply. Proposals will be accepted at any time, as the opportunities arise. Proposals will be submitted to the Associate Vice President and reviewed by the ANR Strategic Initiative Leaders and two ANR Vice Provosts.
“Because we recognize that these are time-sensitive projects, the review process will take no more than one month,” Powers said.
Proposals will be no more than three pages in length and must include a justification indicating why it is critical that this project be addressed in a short timeframe, description of the project (study design, educational framework/audience, training program, etc.) and detailed budget. Opportunity grants will be limited to no more than $10,000 per project. All projects, including the final report, must be completed within 12 months of initiation. Furthermore, no extensions will be allowed. All projects will require a final report with stated outcomes/impacts or anticipated outcomes/impacts.
ANR will provide a limited pool of funds for this grants program on an annual basis. The exact amount will be determined and announced annually based upon resource availability. The pool of funding will be managed to ensure that some resources are available year-round for timely projects.
For questions about opportunity grants, please contact AVP Wendy Powers at wendy.powers@ucop.edu.
- Author: Wendy Powers
Editor's note: This is an excerpt from AVP Wendy Power's new blog “ANR Adventures.” For news about the recruitment process for the Vice Provost – Statewide Programs and Strategic Initiatives and Vice Provost – Cooperative Extension positions, read her blog at http://ucanr.edu/blogs/Adventures.
Wednesday (Jan. 18) was the Town Hall meeting to provide an overview of the UC ANR strategic plan and answer any questions. At one point, 177 participants joined the conversation via Zoom and approximately 50 of us were in the UC ANR building in Davis.
VP Glenda Humiston provided overviews of the goal of the strategic plan, the process used to gather input and the resulting goals in the plan. The remaining 45 minutes or so of the hour-long meeting was focused on questions.
One of the questions was about the program prioritization process (Goal #5). Like pretty much all of the goals, we don't know what the result of this will look like and haven't formulated a plan to go about gathering information and making any decisions needed to reach this goal. This will be a portion of the agenda for a two-day retreat to take place at the end of the month. As the “goal owner” for Goal #5, I have to admit that I was perfectly comfortable early on in the strategic plan development process to leave this as a strategy under another goal. But I understand and “buy in” now to the idea that this is so important to who we are and the value we bring to California that it makes sense to have this as a stand-alone goal. As I said at the town hall, it is a good business practice to review what you do and how you do it. But this is no easy task for such a large organization with so many different programmatic efforts, all of which make a difference in someone's life. And key questions to think about as we undertake the process are what, if any, programming is needed to realize the 2025 Vision and how do those needs align with current efforts? Still a huge task and, as a result, a few of us have met with someone who I think can help all of us work toward answers.
Following development of a draft plan at the retreat, I intend to share the plan with strategic initiative leaders, statewide program and institute directors and county directors, then finalize a process and approach for having these big conversations so that they are inclusive, not overly time-consuming and lead to information that furthers us in our goals. No doubt success will take time and will benefit from the collective brainpower of everyone at UC ANR. I suspect it's one of those things that you get out of it, what you put into it.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
“If UC ANR isn't an incubator, I don't know what is. Furthermore, I would argue that the partnership of our land-grant university system with Cooperative Extension is the original and most productive incubator that the world has ever seen,” VP Glenda Humiston wrote in the October-December 2015 issue of California Agriculture.
Since joining ANR, Humiston has been working to expand UC ANR's incubation activities by joining with diverse partners to develop a much broader innovation infrastructure specifically designed to support intellectual property, innovation, entrepreneurship, tech transfer, startups and commercialization aimed at agriculture, natural resources and rural communities.
“A lot of people have ideas, but they don't know how to be business leaders. An incubator connects them with the things they need to be successful as new entrepreneurs,” said Gabe Youtsey, chief information officer.
To kick off development of such a system, Humiston brought together 40 people on Aug. 30 with a wide range of expertise and representing a variety of sectors: agriculture, banking, business, government, technology and higher education – including leaders of several successful incubators. The purpose of the meeting, held at the ANR building in Davis, was to engage the group in developing a comprehensive strategy to nurture new technologies and innovative businesses for agriculture and natural resources.
“We're not looking to reinvent the wheel or duplicate existing efforts,” Humiston said, explaining that she hopes to support and leverage the strengths and efforts of partners.
Christine Gulbranson, UC senior vice president of research innovation and entrepreneurship, and Reg Kelly of UC San Francisco, who created QB3, – one of UC's best performing incubators – participated in the session. The quantitative biologists at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz who comprise QB3 take on challenges in biology using physics, chemistry, and computer science. QB3's Startup in a Box provides legal and grant-writing help for biotech startups.
“We want to take the QB3 model and modify it for ANR,” Humiston said. “But we don't have the resources to build a statewide system by ourselves so we're catalyzing like-minded partners to jointly develop the needed statewide innovation infrastructure.”
Such an innovation system could benefit a wide array of entrepreneurs in rural areas and help to commercialize ideas generated by UC Cooperative Extension specialists and advisors.
“Over the past eight years, ANR researchers have filed 148 patents,” Humiston said. “However, it is unclear if many of those had the support they needed to go the next step.”
At the meeting, the group divided into five tables of eight people. Each table had representatives of UC ANR, various UC campuses, state and federal government, funding institutions, incubators, and different industries. They discussed issues around innovation, place, talent, stewardship and engagement, answering the following questions:
- What exists now?
- Where are the gaps that need to be filled?
- Which of these gaps could UC ANR help catalyze and fill, either with partners or on its own?
- How could this work to fill the gaps be funded?
- How do we measure success?
Conversations were lively and many ideas were brought forth for specific projects and other implementation. “It's really exciting,” said Humiston. “People were jazzed. Virtually all of the participants said they want to work with us on next steps.”
In addition to Humiston and Youtsey, AVP Wendy Powers and UCCE advisors David Doll and Andre Biscaro participated for ANR. Consultant Meg Arnold is writing up a report, which is expected to be released in early October.
Powers brings excellent executive skills from a different land grant college so she will be a great addition to ANR's leadership team. She knows Cooperative Extension and has experience in helping programs grow, which will be very valuable as we expand the CE footprint in California. An accomplished researcher and administrator, Powers has the leadership qualities to help us take ANR to new heights.
From 2010 to 2014, she directed statewide agriculture extension programs in Michigan. As MSU's first director of environmental stewardship for animal agriculture, Powers represents MSU on a number of state technical committees and has done an impressive job of leading efforts to minimize the environmental impact of animal agriculture. Her extension efforts focus on policy and implementation of management practices to reduce environmental impact. In addition to her research and extension program, she oversaw construction of the Animal Air Quality Research Facility and currently manages the facility and coordinates its activities. Prior to joining Michigan State University, Powers was an assistant and associate professor with an extension appointment at Iowa State University for 10 years.
“There is no better place to be involved in extension and agriculture than California, and no place better positioned to impactfully address the challenges of tomorrow than University of California Ag and Natural Resources,” Powers said.
She has a Ph.D. in animal science and M.S. in dairy science from the University of Florida and a B.S. in animal science from Cornell University.
Powers was chosen to succeed Bill Frost, who retired June 30.