- Author: Wendy Powers
After a quarterly meeting with the goal owners of the strategic plan, I headed to Ukiah this afternoon. It was definitely the driest I have seen Hopland, making it a beautiful drive up 101. No wonder the coastal area is home to some of California's happiest cows. I passed San Quentin on the drive. I haven't spent much time wondering where San Quentin actually was so I was surprised to come across it; still so much to see in the state. While I didn't stop in there, I will be stopping in at the Hopland REC tomorrow for the Research Advisory Committee (RAC) meeting.
At the goal owners meeting we focused on how to share the accomplishments of the strategic plan and how those accomplishments position ANR and all of the people in ANR for success. Accomplishments such as:
- A 12% increase in Contracts and Grants for the first 2 quarters of 2017-18, compared to the previous year. This means more resources to conduct programming.
- Development of new partnerships that translates into 3 Advisor/Specialist position FTE becoming 6 full-time positions, thereby making headway towards increasing the academic footprint.
These are just a couple of examples; more to be shared in future posts. Please share your thoughts on other methods for sharing the news as we move through the strategic plan timeline.
The group also spent time talking about the goal of ensuring that ANR is a happy place to be. While we need to be realistic and acknowledge that we are all working and ANR isn't intended to be Disneyworld, many are focused on making the work experience more rewarding and enjoyable. Development of a survey to establish a baseline and identify areas for improvement is on the ‘to-do' list.
It is clearly graduation season. A number of the County and REC Directors shared last week that they have graduates this year. Among those with college graduate: Roger Duncan, Jairo Diaz, Deb Driskill and Mark Bell. I think Mark won the contest for graduation destinations; he was in Honolulu last week to attend his daughter's graduation from nursing school. Take a look at his happy place. I had enough trouble showing up for class in Ithaca; I can't imagine ever making it to class if I was near the ocean.
Tomorrow night I head to Fresno. On Wednesday I am meeting with the UCCE group. We start our day with a UC Walks trip through the Garden of the Sun followed by some program visits and conversation. While I've been to that office before, this will be my first visit to meet the team in their happy place.
Come the end of the week, I am off to one of my favorite places. Hint: it involves water – 21% of the world's fresh water supply.
- Author: Wendy Powers
My civic duty is over. Now it's time to really focus on reviewing merit and promotion documents. With less than 50 days left between now and when I need to have them completed, I have 92 left to review. The math is simple enough so it is just a matter of actually reading 1 to 2 per night followed by reviewing all of the other feedback provided from supervisors, peers/colleagues, and the peer review committee, then writing up my own evaluation document. So far I have 0 complete. On the upside, only 92 more to go.
I have no idea where time is going. I actually started to write this blog on Monday and now it's Thursday. I still have 92 dossiers to review. But in between we've had:
- Program Council which was just a quick call on Tuesday afternoon to more or less check in with few meaty agenda items,
- A really productive meeting with the SI Leaders that covered topics ranging from strategies to increase the number of UC Delivers submissions,
- A call on Monday afternoon with the Task Force on Agriculture and Natural Resources ( a committee of the Academic Senate) where the focus of the conversation was the committee's interest in ANR making itself better known and accessible to all 10 campuses,
- Some administrative things, including the staff evaluation process in both Davis and Oakland (2 different systems so that makes it interesting and a bit of a challenge to keep straight),
- Personnel-related topics that could be any number of things,
- A continuing discussion with CDFA about a potential partnering opportunity that is making headway,
- A couple of meetings and work related to quantifying and conveying progress in our strategic plan, which is relevant to our upcoming annual review meeting with President Napolitano,
- A meeting to talk about the Public Value Statements and next steps,
- And an extended meeting of the executive leadership group to think strategically, which ended up being as much about fires as it did long-term positioning (a reflection of everyone having piles of work in front of us, making it hard to see over the pile)
And now it's Thursday with a whole day of opportunity ahead of me. Mark B., Mark L. and I have a call scheduled mid-morning to talk about the Vice Provost – Academic Personnel and Development position. While I don't have the committee report yet, I want to get their thoughts about the candidate, the position and how it fits into other internal and external factors, including budget and the President's pending decisions about reorganizing UCOP. Regardless of the outcome, the commitment to outstanding personnel development and service remains. Similarly, regardless of the reorganization outcome, the commitment to the mission and the amazing work of ANR remains. There is great comfort in knowing that we will continue to improve the lives of Californians and challenge ourselves to achieve stronger outcomes with greater impact.
Mark L. is packing up in Nebraska today and heading west on Monday. He doesn't start until June 1 but he's already got a number of things on his calendar (meetings, field days) for May. I don't envy him these next couple of weeks. The movers were in Michigan late May 2017 but it seems like that was forever ago and I'm glad to have only a distant memory of the hassle. So glad to be ‘settled' and a part of ANR. Soon, even jury duty will be a distant memory.
- Author: Wendy Powers
There were all kinds of good news this weekend. To start off, the strategic plan annual meeting ended on time and with a sense that it was time well spent. Katherine Webb-Martinez and Jan Corlett did a tremendous job keeping us on task and on time, not to mention their ability to follow and record conversations! I left with a sense that many of the participants had next steps in mind how they were going to share the discussions and plans with their units. Unfortunately, a few of the attendees that aren't part of the regular leadership discussions had to miss the event due to the flu. Hopefully we can catch them up and get their good ideas following a speedy recovery for them.
In other good news, Georgios Vadalakis shared the student feedback from the survey course he ran this fall, PLPA240 Field Plant Pathology. Students toured farms from Riverside and north as far as Fresno (if I recall correctly) prior to the start of the semester. Then all of that information and experience was applied throughout the semester with continued ‘real life' discussions at field stations in the Riverside area. The student comments were all positive, strongly positive, with many stating that it was the best course they've had. Congratulations to Georgios and the team that contributed to such a great student experience. This gave students an opportunity to see Extension in action. Perhaps this is an approach to recruiting the next generation of Extension professionals. In speaking with Georgios before the course launched I know he felt it was a powerful course in his learning and a strong influence in setting his career path. Something to think about….
Equally exciting, was to learn that Rose Hayden-Smith will be honored as the BRAVO 2018 Education Advocate by the National Association of Women Business Owners, Ventura County Chapter. This is quite an honor and recognizes Rose's expertise, dedication, and achievements. Congratulations Rose! During my layover at O'Hare, I learned that Pramad Pandey and California Safe Soil (CSS) won the California Governor's Environmental and Economic Leadership Award (GEELA)! Congratulations to Pramad and team for not only the award but also the nice write-up about it!
It was great to see snow out the windows of my house this weekend! The air was clear and there was actually snow to see. Somehow the sight has a calming effect on me – not quite as nice as the ocean, but better than neither ocean nor snow-covered mountains. It sounds like I won't see too much snow in Michigan despite what is considered a ‘rough winter'. So far my flights to Michigan are on time. That's good news because I wouldn't want to miss my student's defense and it's such a quick trip (out on Sunday, returning Monday) that it will already be a bit tiring without having to modify travel plans. I anticipate a strong defense despite the challenges of long distance mentoring.
Keep the good news coming!
- Author: Wendy Powers
I think short weeks just means the same cumulative effort put into full weeks gets crammed into fewer days. I know many are putting the finishing touches on their merit and promotion packages or their annual reviews. I suspect this took a chunk out of the weekend for some. I used a portion of the weekend to visit Big Tree State Park in Calaveras County. The visitor center ran a video about different activities and attributes at the park including some that resembled Cal Naturalist activities. Sure enough, Sabrina confirmed earlier today that the program works with this particular state park. What a coincidence! And I'm pleased I could recognize the program in action.
Today was the first of 4 interviews of candidates for the Vice Provost – Research and Extension position. Attendance was a bit light this first day back after a long weekend but, hopefully, when the seminar links are released, many will have time to review.
Later this week the group that developed the plan plus those that started the implementation of the plan will be meeting for our annual check in. A primary goal of this meeting is to develop plans to better engage all of UC ANR in the plan, as it is a collective effort for success, and to review and improve metrics used to measure success of the plan as we progress through the plan timeline.
In between I need to finish reading a dissertation in preparation for a defense exam next week. This is my last graduate student from MSU. A bit sad to be thinking about wrapping up my academic career but at least it's ending on a high note. The dissertation is in good shape with 1 manuscript in press, 1 submitted and a third ready to submit. The fourth and final paper is not included in the dissertation but will likely be ready to submit by March.
No time to dwell on that as there are many other things to pursue like working through agreements for new partnerships, moving forward to secure fiscal sustainability for important resources at UC ANR, preparing to identify priority positions, and working to position new academics for success. The Vice Provost positions are only a small fraction of those under current recruitment. It appears that several of those open have strong applicant pools. This certainly makes the change from being an academic to overseeing an academic unit both exciting and rewarding.
- Author: Wendy Powers
You should see my weekend ‘to-do' list. I haven't even thought about adding in anything related to personal obligations, tasks or preparations! I've never been one for homework but I need to buckle down this weekend and get my homework done. Now that we live in an electronic age, there's no using ‘the dog ate it' excuse.
Today I am off to visit Merced and Mariposa County UCCE offices! I'm looking forward to seeing Scott and Russell as well as their teams and learning more about their programs. I drove down to Merced last night after a full day at VP Council. We spent quite a bit of time talking about to communicate better across the division so that we are all better equipped to tell our story and feel more connected as a division. It's a challenge when you consider how diverse and dispersed UC ANR is across California. At the same time, there is such a large leadership group in UC ANR (senior leaders, unit directors, county directors, REC directors, SWP leaders, SI leaders, Institute leaders, supervisors, others I likely missed) that if we all owned a piece of it, we can connect across and throughout the division.
Connection was a theme for the week it seems. On Wednesday the President's Advisory Commission on Agriculture and Natural Resources met in Emeryville and we talked about connecting with stakeholders and decision makers across the state. We can do that through special projects (The VINE), through advocacy efforts, through direct programming to clientele, and many other ways. It comes down to messaging. Of course there's the listening aspect, too.
Tuesday Senior Leadership Team (SLT) met for a couple hours and discussed measuring our success in achieving 2025 Strategic Vision through implementation of the strategic plan. Part of my homework is before daybreak today is to finish my review of metrics for my goals and convey the plan for measuring (what, how, timestep). Overall it was a big week of presenting for John Fox as his goals were a focus of both VP Council and SLT. Hence the thread throughout the week of connecting people.
Congratulations to Jennifer Sowerwine for her FFAR award! She clearly connected with a group pull together a competitive partnership. Read more about her project to strengthen urban agriculture systems.
Next week there's the last minute rush before people are gone for some R&R. I need to finalize some appointments and get some announcements out about the appointments and an endowed chair opportunity. Then there's some responses to send out that are overdue and a couple of exciting opportunities to pursue on behalf of UC ANR including tying up some loose ends on a few. Overall a Nice list though it doesn't quite feel that way right now.
I need to stop going to the Davis office so early in the morning. It is very cold in the office until the heat comes on sometime after 7 AM. Despite winter, the leaf blowers are still running right outside my window beginning at 7 AM on Tuesdays. Beats listening to a plow and the noise is predictable. You'd think by now I would know enough to schedule around it!
As I drove past Turlock yesterday I was just sort of passing familiar places. Places I have seen for decades when I would come to California to work in the area of air quality and dairy management. Then it sort of struck me that this is now ‘home'. Still a bit surreal, thrilling, and strange all at the same time. At the end of the day, home isn't really about geography but belonging and connections. As a result, I will re-prioritize that to-do list a bit. Have a good weekend.
