Cooperative Extension advisors and specialists who work in urban or metropolitan communities are invited to a policy workshop in Sacramento on Dec. 1 and 2.

The Western Center for Metropolitan Extension and Research Policy Workshop will meet Tuesday, Dec. 1, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Wednesday, Dec. 2, 8:30 a.m. to noon, with an optional Applied Skill Building workshop at 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The workshop will be held at the University of California Policy Center at 1130 K Street, Suite LL22, in Sacramento.

Participants will learn how policy is made at the local, regional and state levels, and how policy impacts system change.

Presenters will discuss how governmental systems are organized, what makes good policy and how to use science in policy development. They will provide local examples of policy development. In the optional two-hour session on Wednesday afternoon, the group will engage in hands-on exercises.

The workshop runs concurrently with the National Urban Extension Leaders Meeting.
 
Registration is $125 for UC ANR members. To register or for more information, visit

http://ucanr.edu/sites/NUELPolicy. The event lodging discount at the Sheraton Grand Hotel has been extended to Nov. 6.

 

Respect, trust, accountability, shared vision, integrity and partnerships are needed to sustain a welcoming and inclusive ANR workplace environment.

UC ANR's Principles of Community Committee met for the first time on Sept. 29 in Davis to develop an outline for the Principles of Community. This document will serve as a guide for ANR employees to resolve and address conflict. In creating the Principles of Community, the committee strives to promote positive communications in the staff and academic personnel units, represent all organizational units, and provide examples of best practices.

Elizabeth Villalobos of Fresno County was elected chair and Tina Jordan of Davis was elected co-chair by the committee, which also includes Mary Blackburn, Emily LaRue, Chris Martinez, Laura Snell, Katherine Soule, Erin Spaniel, Jeff Tibayan and Terri White.

In 2012, ANR embarked on a journey to find out about the status of the working and learning environment across the entire UC system. As soon as the findings came in, ANR put into place an action plan. 

This plan included regional workshops across the state to present results to all employees and to offer opportunities for employees to discuss the findings. One of the findings selected for discussion was the prevalence of “exclusionary behavior” experienced by employees. To help address this issue and to create a more welcoming and inclusive work environment, ANR leadership announced that a set of Principles of Community would be developed and used as a tool for education and training. To solicit input from the employees for the principles, 24 breakout sessions were held this year. At the end of each session, volunteers were recruited to form a statewide committee that would use the input from the employees to develop the Principles of Community for ANR.

After reviewing the charge, the Principles of Community Committee broke into groups to identify common themes derived from the 24 work environment breakout sessions held earlier this year.

The committee found that many ANR staff members viewed communication, perspectives, commonalities, age and generational differences to be both challenges and benefits for a diverse workforce. Respect, trust, accountability, shared vision, integrity, and partnerships were common values necessary to make a community and are characteristics needed to sustain a welcoming and inclusive ANR workplace environment. The committee also learned how ANR employees voiced their opinions on specific rights and responsibilities within the community such as communication, respect, a safe place, training, tools and work ethic, to name a few.

With the help from Emily LaRue, the committee's scribe, our team is on track to make history. We anticipate delivering a first draft of the principles and implementation plan by the end of the 2015 calendar year with a final draft due to ANR leadership in February 2016.

The committee plans to meet by conference call every two weeks. Feel free to contact any committee member with suggestions to share with the group because we want to capture the voices of ANR employees as we work to foster a more welcoming and inclusive work environment. Before we begin developing an implementation strategy, there will also be an opportunity for UC ANR members to provide comment and feedback.

The Principles of Community Committee wants you to know that we have heard what you have said and plan to develop a set of principles to help minimize the exclusionary behaviors staff has experienced in the past and move all to a positive working environment.

Author: Erin Spaniel (Thompson)

The establishment of UC ANR's new Staff Assembly is well underway. Last spring's Work Environment Assessment workshops marked the beginning of the effort to create a staff assembly for UC ANR. Each of the UC campuses has a staff assembly, and at UC ANR, an Academic Assembly Council has been active for decades. The staff at ANR were alone in their lack of such an organization.

In September, ANR Vice President Glenda Humiston charged a committee of UC ANR staff who volunteered at the workshops to help design a process and structure of the UC ANR Staff Assembly. The committee includes Matt Baur, chair; Jeannette Warnert, scribe; and members Andrew Besson, Janelle Hansen, Tammy Majcherek, Lori Renstrom and Nikolai Schweitzer.

The committee met in September and is now developing the new Staff Assembly's mission statement and bylaws. In a few weeks, the drafts will be circulated among all staff at ANR so they can offer feedback.

In time, the Staff Assembly will hold regular elections to form a board to lead the UC ANR Staff Assembly. The Staff Assembly will also elect delegates to attend the annual meeting of the systemwide Council of UC Staff Assemblies so that the interests of UC ANR staff are represented.

 

Sharon Junge, UC ANR advisor emeritus, has been inducted into the National 4-H Hall of Fame for her lifetime achievements and contributions to 4-H.

Junge, who retired in 2009 after nearly 40 years of working with UC ANR's 4-H Youth Development Program, was among 16 people inducted during the ceremony at the National 4-H Youth Conference Center on Oct. 9 in Chevy Chase, Md.

“Sharon is fully invested in 4-H and the powerful impact 4-H makes on the lives of youth, families and communities,” said Shannon Horrillo, associate director of 4-H Program and Policy.

The 2015 National 4-H Hall of Fame honoree became a 4-H youth development and nutrition, family and consumer sciences advisor for Placer and Nevada counties in 1972. She became county director for those counties in 1985. By the end of her career, Junge was ANR's Healthy Families and Communities Strategic Initiative leader and acting director of the UC 4-H Youth Development Program.

“As an emeritus advisor she continues to develop curricula for youth nutrition education and supports and mentors 4-H Youth Development academics and staff,” Horrillo said. “She continues to be a trusted colleague whose knowledge and expertise is valued and consulted.”

Most notably, Junge was a pioneer in afterschool programming, developing the first 4-H afterschool programs run by 4-H and Cooperative Extension in the nation and the largest California effort to reach more Latino youth in 4-H. More than 1,500 youth were reached annually in Placer and Nevada counties with a yearly budget of over $1.5 million.

Her state afterschool expertise led to her work at the national level on several projects, including director of one the 4-H Afterschool Centers for Action (1991-1995), and a member of the National Extension Network for Child Care Board (1995-1999), USDA's Extension CARES Initiative Steering Committee (1999-2003), the National School-age Editorial Board (2001-2002), and the Leadership Team for National 4-H Afterschool. She has written extensively on these projects and her curricula and evaluation findings are cited in many other works on afterschool programming. She authored other National Extension System afterschool resources such as Reaching Out to and Meeting the Needs of Diverse Audiences and Teens as Volunteer Leaders…Recruiting and Training Teens to Work with Younger Youth in Afterschool Programs and co-authored three other curricula with the National 4-H Leadership team that are used in 42 states.

Expanding on her 4-H afterschool work, Junge served as co-principal investigator for the multi-year Youth Experiences in Science project funded by the National Science Foundation ($980,000). As the 4-H Program Leader, she continued her efforts in afterschool and science education securing a grant to co-develop “Tools of the Trade I and II, Inspiring Young Minds to be SET Ready for Life,” which allowed 4-H to provide professional development to afterschool providers and enrich the experiences of nearly 114,000 youth statewide and countless more nationally.  

With Junge's leadership, the 4-H SET Leadership Team launched the state's 4-H Science, Engineering, and Technology Initiative. She provided expertise to secure funding to develop the “There's No New Water!” curriculum, a five-year CYFAR project focused on science through gardening, and other SET projects, resources and training.

She also launched California's Healthy Living Initiative. In 2010, Junge secured a $1.2 million gift to strengthen the 4-H club program through 4-H Thrive, which integrated cutting-edge research on positive youth development and growth mindset. This gift resulted in youth leadership development projects that reached 8,500 youth and 2,000 adult volunteers who contributed 9,746 hours of volunteer service to their communities. The volunteer service is valued at $1,101,267, essentially doubling the value of the initial gift of this ongoing project.

During the ceremony, honorees were presented with a National 4-H Hall of Fame medallion, plaque and memory book.