The County Directors were in Davis today. The agenda was meaty with lots of details, discussions, and decisions to be made. It was a bit overwhelming at times to think through everything. At one point I thought to myself, “Did we really talk about topic X just two hours ago? It seems like it has been days, so much has been covered since”.

Many, many of us continue to work to secure program support for UC ANR from traditional funding sources. Efforts haven't translated to that increase in state funding that may be viewed as the big win. However, we continue to plug away, building the foundation for success. The anxiety and frustration comes from waiting for that positive change while simultaneously having to manage with less. In the meantime, we've had an amazing number of tiny victories that we might before never imagined possible. Some may not recognize that the sum of those tiny victories is truly impressive.

One tiny victory on this front is that Regents are asking to learn more about us! Just 6 months ago, we still hadn't had the opportunity to make a presentation to the full Regents committee. Now, we've hosted two tours and some of the Regents are tweeting about our work. I've posted in the past about other tiny victories and hopefully many recognize that there are a host of other examples.

Because it's not in our best interest to rely solely on traditional funding sources to meet program needs in the future, we've placed equal effort into diversifying our support through new and expanded partnerships. So while those looking at success through the lens of what it's looked like in the past don't see what they would like, anyone who's closely watching the results of what's happened when we've tried something new can't deny that it's pretty exciting. That's not to say we don't need to recover what we used to have. What I see in the sum of the tiny victories is the potential to not only get back what we've lost but to go beyond that and to do so in a way that makes us more resilient to whatever lies ahead.

Thanks to all of the Directors for their contributions to today's think sessions and to their leadership in meeting tomorrow's needs for California. And, many thanks to all who have made the victories happen! We'll get there, not without some bumps along the way, but we'll get there. As I was recently reminded, one rock starts a landslide of good things.

Despite no rain yet in California, the Midwest and Northeast have had snow days, making it time to acknowledge that winter is on its way and so, too, are the holidays. Some years I undertake crafty projects for the holidays. This year has been one of them. I recently finished a project where the vision grew as I went along. Because I didn't have a template or pattern to follow, I had to make things up as I went along, basing decisions on experience, input from colleagues, and intuition. While the end product wasn't exactly what I expected and left me with some practice samples, I'm confident the recipient will be pleased. Sometimes it helps when creating something that, while the functional criteria are clear, the design criteria remain a bit fluid.

Congratulations to Surendra for his recent recognition by the Entomological Society of America with the 2019 Distinguished Service Award!

Yesterday the Academic Assembly Council met. I was able to visit with the Council for a couple of hours. I'm not sure where the time went; before I knew it, our time was over. That tends to be the case when I meet with the AAC. It turns out there are some outstanding 'to-dos' on my list that I need to complete. Those meetings occur frequently enough that things keep moving forward. And, now that Mark, Mark, and I are meeting with the committees (one of us for each committee), we hope to keep ahead of concerns and maintain open two-way communications with this vital group.

Today I had a chance to meet with Yana to work on a grant. No surprise, we got side-tracked. However, we made significant progress thanks to all of the work that Yana, Scott Stevens, and others did to set the stage. What's really cool is seeing how pieces of seemingly unrelated opportunities are falling into place, much like what sometimes happens when you don't have a pattern to follow. Surendra wasn't the only one to receive kudos - Yana had nothing but praise for Kendra Rose. I only hear good things about Kendra so no surprise there.

Tomorrow is a County Director meeting. It's a tight agenda. The position reconfirmation process, 4-H support and a vision for the future, and a model for improving communication with County Directors are all on the schedule.

In between, I hope to shake the last of the cold I managed to catch last week and give some thought to what projects I want to take on over the upcoming long weekend. After all, even creating on the fly takes some preparation to ensure you have all the necessary supplies on hand.

The meeting over the long weekend in San Diego is rarely my favorite meeting, but I managed to leave with some reading. I need to become more of a reader if I am to keep up with it.

A manuscript I hope to read talks about the changing role of higher education dealing with wicked problems. I have no excuse not to read it because it is available for download via Digital Commons. Our opening speaker, Richard Meyers, took us on a brief journey of his experiences both as the15th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the U.S. Air Force and now as the 14th president of Kansas State University. He talked about the role of public universities and the similarities he has observed within his very distinct careers. One of the speakers later in the conference spoke about the need for public institutions to serve the critical role as an anchor and catalyst for community improvement. I suspect Justin Morrill had the same idea.

Throughout much of the conference, we talked about community engagement as a key to successfully effecting change to improve community challenges. We received an update on the efforts by Cooperative Extension to partner with the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in policy, systems, and environmental change in communities across the country. I highly recommend a visit to the webpage to read the report. During the first phase of the project, three locations in Utah serve as pilot projects. We learned about the work taking place in Emery County, UT, led by youth, to drive suicide and addiction prevention programs. The activities are impressive. I can't wait to learn about outcomes. The conversation was about more than this project addressing community-scale condition change and the value of measuring change at both the individual level but also the community level. One example made use of zip code-driven data on community life expectancy. However, even at this scale, there are differences. For instance, in a 10-block area in one Northeastern city, the average life expectancy is 16 years less than the national average of 75 years. The conversation, as a whole, was worthy of thinking.

The RWJF announced the 2019 Culture of Health Prize winners. Among the five is the community of Gonzales, CA (Monterey County)! The community story demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement to make tomorrow better than today.

One of our final speakers was not only dynamic but had a great message. His comments reflected that of an earlier speaker who repeated C.S. Lewis' words that "You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” He, too, talked about the importance of higher education and public institutions and the need to make that experience accessible to all so that we really can make tomorrow better than today. To do so, requires each of us stepping beyond our comfort zone to be the change we seek. I appreciated his example that this means changing the paradigm from having 'weed out courses' in the first-year curriculum to 'opt-in' courses. Finally, he reminded us that our habits become our character. Our character becomes our destiny. I left with more reading, The Empowered University.

There will be no time for reading tomorrow. However, I have a chance to see some of our newer UC ANR members during the Administrative Orientation, so it will be a great day. Beyond that, I haven't looked at my calendar but, we will keep working to make each day a bit better.

The week has flown by. The fall is flying by. It's all good but hard to keep up. Others have made the same comment. I hope this isn't a sign of age.

Monday turned out to be one meeting after the next, but all good meetings. During the CE Specialist meeting at Davis, we had a chance to meet a few of the newest CE Specialists and say hello to others. That meeting always seems too short. My last meeting on Monday consisted of a Zoom call with, among a number of others, Shannon Horillo. It was nice to see her!

The Program Council schedule was full. We had a presentation from the chair of the SAREP program review committee, planning the process to review CE Advisor and CE Specialist needs at our next meeting, a more generic conversation about academic planning, and an update from Academic HR regarding emeritus status. I'm not sure how Katherine and Jennifer keep up with the conversation, but I'm counting on them to remind me what ‘to-dos' I left with from the meeting.

Oddly, today was a light day, as is tomorrow. I must be missing something. Likely it is a reflection of the fact that I haven't been out to visit any county offices or RECs lately. I am not short on things to edit or prepare so no doubt the day will pass quickly. Who knows, I may catch up on things before heading to a meeting that runs Saturday – Tuesday.

Congratulations to Jairo, Gilberto and the DREC crew! They survived an AAALAC review with apparently no actionable items. The final report isn't in yet, but things look promising. My lab in Michigan underwent an AAALAC inspection twice while I was there. Fortunately, I had an outstanding manager who kept the lab inspection-ready at all times.

Be sure to thank all of the veterans for their service that continues to keep us safe.