- Author: Brent Hales
Happy Monday all,
I have had the pleasure of visiting numerous Research Extension Centers (South Coast, Hopland, Sierra Foothills, Intermountain, West Side, Lindcove, and Kearney). I have also visited UC Irvine, UC Davis, and UC Berkeley. I soon will visit UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz. I have engaged with hundreds of ANR employees, campus-based faculty, specialists, and administration, and many stakeholders. My main takeaway throughout these visits is that UC ANR is truly an amazing organization!
As I have had the pleasure of getting to know everyone, I have consistently been amazed with the people, the organizations, and the programs that are all things UC ANR. I have had the pleasure of meeting many of you and I look forward to meeting you and learning from you.
My goal has been and continues to be to improve what we do and how we do it. That only comes as we work together to improve our organization and the communities that we serve. If there is an opportunity to engage with you in your programming or if there is an event that you think it would be good for me to attend, please invite me. I won't likely be able to get to everything this year but my engagement with everyone does not have an expiration date. I genuinely want to hear from you and learn from you.
I promise to take more pictures and use less text in the future. I just had to say this. I am eager to meet you and meet with you. I hope that you know that I am so grateful for what you do to improve the lives of Californians throughout our amazing state. I wish you truly the best!
Brent
- Author: Deanne Meyer
If you're a fan of Groundhog Day, you know that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow (Feb 2) and we've got six more weeks of winter. Whether you believe this tale or not, we're definitely in winter. Thank you everyone who shared pictures from throughout California over the last few days. It's been incredible to see SNOW from Arcata (sea level) to Vacaville hills (900') and elsewhere. Frankly, the photos on the evening news are awesome. The days ahead will identify how severe crop damage is and the final impact on our great agricultural bounty. The sky in Yolo County had its share of helicopters out on Saturday.
The week started off with Programmatic Orientation. Thank you Vice Provost Daniel Obrist and Greg Ira, Lead for State Wide Programs and Institutes who working along with Katherine Webb-Martinez (Program Planning and Evaluation) and Lynn Schmitt-McQuitty (Director of County Directors) to share great information to our new academics. Darren Haver shared about opportunities at our RECs for research. Although I was unable to stay for the entire orientation, I hear presentations were superb: Fadzayi Mashiri (conducting informal needs assessment), Yana Valachovic (strategies for community engagement), Margaret Lloyd (working with diverse, multilingual audiences), JoLynn Miller (increasing reach with social media) and Aparna Gazula (measuring outcomes and communicating impact). Katherine Webb-Martinez and Vikram Koundinya (Evaluation Specialist, UCD) finished off the morning with measuring outcomes and communicating impact.
It was exciting to see the information in employee news from the staff assembly. Beginning March 1, 2023, the UC ANR Wellness Reimbursement Program will begin accepting applications for reimbursements of personal wellness expenses up to $75. Thank you everyone involved in making this happen. Be sure to take advantage of this opportunity! If you read the staff assembly e-news you know UC ANR Staff Assembly Ambassadors are committed to making a positive difference for our staff experience and work environment across our community, helping to make UC ANR the best to work, live and learn within the UC system. Thank you, Staff Assembly colleagues who put in time to make this program work!
There's exciting news in the ANR building. Drilling, hammering, and anything else needed is occurring to refresh all our meeting rooms. The new system will enhance our meeting rooms and the ability to zoom people into hybrid meetings. This is fantastic. Recently I used the Coast Room for a hybrid meeting (back in January during floods in Monterey) where we needed to zoom folks in. We had multiple technology failures before Sherry Cooper was able to get the temperamental system to function. Thank you to Sree Mada, David Hatter, Heather Moore, and everyone else involved in making this transition happen. Also, a quiet shout out to everyone who endured noise while working through these fabulous upgrades!
Welcome to Elizabeth Ramierz, Fresno/Madera MCP, a new Blank Assistant 2. We're excited to have new Community Education Specialists as well: Heidi Holmquist, San Diego; Brittany Gore, Los Angeles; Nancy Chang, Santa Clara; Heather Montgomery, Sutter/Yuba; Vianca Nunez, Riverside; and Kelsey Dugan, San Luis Obispo. We're fortunate to have some familiar faces in new roles as well: Lani Landayan, Immediate Office of the Controller; Bridgette Alvarez, Program Support; Jason Dillon, Resource Planning and Management; Nancy Lu, Statewide Programs and REC ops; Jessica Falor-Ward, Development Office; and Violeta Kavocevic, Facilities, Planning and Management.
- Author: Wendy Powers
We did it! Yesterday, 281 donors gave $100,000 to UC ANR programs. THANK YOU to each and every generous donor! So many good things will come as a result of the support. I really would not have guessed we would have raised so much during Big Dig Day given that it was the first event of its kind for UC ANR. ‘New' can be good!
In other good news, David Haviland has been determined as the recipient of the Western Extension Directors' Award of Excellence for 2019. The award will be presented to David at the 2019 Western Region Joint Summer Meeting at Albuquerque, New Mexico. Awardees are asked to give a 5-7 minute overview of their program during an award lunch. This continues the streak for UC ANR as Jeff Mitchell, Dan Munk, and the team were recipients last year.
This week was the SI Leader meeting on Tuesday. We planned to summer road show a bit and talked about the new story pipeline. I'm excited to see more stories in it so that I have it as a resource to talk with stakeholders about all the great things we are doing! If you have a story to submit, you can find the link here under 'Telling Our Stories' (Knowledge Stream).
On Wednesday we had Program Council. The highlight was a presentation by Katie about the Master Food Preserver Program's new strategic plan. That program is an example of where UC ANR can really make a difference for some who have so little. The program is more than canning; it's about food safety and using preservation methods (drying, freezing) to make use of excess produce and make it available all year long.
Today the Vice President's Council met. Topics included the elements of a strategic plan (funding plan, staffing plan, vision and mission elements). John Bailey and Sabrina Drill provided a close look at the funding plans for Hopland REC and the Cal Naturalist program, respectively. It was a busy day for Sabrina; she also led the presentation on citizen and community science in UC ANR. The UC Davis Center on this topic (Heidi and Ryan) were co-presenters. Other topics included the economics of the ability to accept credit cards at events throughout the state.
Tomorrow is the REC Directors call followed by the County Directors call. Then the Davis building is having their summer BBQ. Another week in the books. Almost 3 years ago, I would never have imagined how fast time would fly!