After reading about the Cornell professor, I decided to hang onto my thesis data just a bit longer, though I think after 20 years I'm suitably safe, particularly given that the sponsor of my Master's research was Jack Daniels and the Florida dairy industry funded my PhD work. Nonetheless, I took some time over the weekend to confirm that all of my paper towels (I wasn't much of a student so it never occurred to me to get a notebook) were safe and secured, each carefully dated and signed, then organized chronologically. On to the next thing on my list.

When we visited the UC ANR News and Outreach in Spanish (NOS) team last week, I learned that we are now halfway through Hispanic Heritage month (September 15 – October 15). That explains National Guacamole Day which, it turns out, I did not celebrate after all. Hopefully, Lupita pointed this out to her audience at the Engaged Scholar Consortium. One of the participants sent me a photo of Lupita talking to the group about her program. Along with the photo, the sender messaged “she's so passionate about her work!” Yep, we knew that!

NOS is located at the same site as the Citrus Clonal Protection Program at UCR which I had a chance to tour in March 2017, hosted by Georgios. I didn't get a chance to see Georgios this trip to UCR and, unfortunately, I will miss him at an upcoming event at the Lindcove REC on October 10. That day is shaping up to be exciting for Beth and the Lindcove team. Be sure to ask them about it.

I need to get going on my homework of reading through the 46 position proposals so that I am ready for the Program Council discussion of them next week. In the meantime, I am in Portland for the National Extension Directors Association's annual meeting. We talked about the Farm Bill (or lack thereof) this morning. We also talked about the value of our programs, across the U.S., in youth development, gardening, and nutrition/wellness and how the integration of those programs can serve to drive funds to Extension. Not to mention that these programs meet the goal of the Morrill Act. That's right, if you haven't read the Morrill Act, it is far more than just cows and corn. The intent was to improve the lives of people in rural communities by providing a public institution that included programs in youth development, home economics, agriculture, and mechanical arts. One of the things I've seen in my travels through our counties is that where these programs are highly integrated, we are able to have greater community engagement and, therefore, the potential for broader impact (i.e. changing lives). Our conversations this week have focused on how we ratchet that up a notch and accomplish even more, by leveraging all of the other resources at our respective land grant institutions. It so happens that UC's Global Food Initiative is looking for a means of greater systemwide connection. Maybe there's an idea forming…

Lots more to share, but this post is already long and already lacking cohesion. So many thoughts, so little time to pull them together.

I hear that one of my colleagues who also resists homework assignments is now well ahead of me in reviewing positions. Now I could justify the fact that I haven't reviewed them yet by stating that I am traveling or I have too many other demands on my time, but the bottom line is that I haven't made it a higher priority than doing other things (writing a blog post, for example). No harm in just owning my actions. It will get done on Monday night, with time to spare before the Program Council meeting starts on Tuesday. After all, I don't really want to come into the meeting with my mind made up (that is not an invitation to contact me and lobby for your favorite positions) and I feel like I understand the 24 CE Advisor positions. Across all positions, I feel like I am better prepared to review than I was 2 years ago. That, alone, buys me some time. The other factor is that no matter what the final decisions are, all of the 46 positions, and at least 46 others that aren't in the pool, are needed. This doesn't make the decision-making process ‘difficult' or ‘hard', it just makes it less than ideal and unpopular because there are winners and losers.

The truth is that while we may not be able to move forward with all of the positions we would like to have, we are fortunate to have all of the talented and devoted people that are already on board. It's easy to lose perspective and get caught up in what we lack. It takes effort on my part to stay calm at times. I recall a conversation with an Educator at Michigan State University Extension where that didn't happen. He was lamenting how ‘hard' it was to enter his information into the reporting system. Finally I told him that he needed a reality check. ‘Hard' is not knowing where your next meal is coming from. ‘Hard' is living in a war zone. ‘Hard' is having a life-threatening or debilitating disease. I've never known ‘hard'. That's not the case for many, even some amongst us. I am so fortunate that it's things like budget shortfalls, personnel actions, REC charges, and a long ‘to-do' list that keep me up at night rather than things I really can't do anything about.

One of the speakers this week commented that “we're all just interim”. His approach is to just do the very best he can each day, doing what he knows is right and for the good of the broader organization and not worrying about what impact it has on his specific unit, much less him, in the long run. His comments were in the context of having collective, broader impacts as a result of Extension's work. It's something to think about for our new types of partnerships. Those approaches may not realize their potential success if either party gets too hung up on who gets credit, whose logo is on the shirt, and which sub-brand is depicted on the paperwork. I left that session wondering what the world would look like if the UC brand was critical in everything we do, the UC ANR brand was considered essential where possible, and the sub-brand became nice to have but not the focus. I think we know that if UC loses, we all lose. Would it be hard to take a leap of faith, even if only on a small scale, and test whether or not we all win if UC wins?

I think most of us, if not all, have realized that we need to do things differently in order to really achieve the intent of the Morrill Act; improving the lives of all state residents by providing access to formal and informal education. We're not alone. In talking with the Extension directors from a number of states last week, it seems to be a common theme. One of our Western neighbors has an upcoming annual conference where the theme is ‘fail fast'. This refers to the concept of ideation where you develop ideas and quickly test them on a small scale so that you can determine what may and may not work before making a large investment of time and/or money only to find that the idea doesn't work. UC ANR will be trying this out at an ideation workshop in late November. I look forward to seeing what ideas emerge to help us think about how we continue to provide the impactful programming and research we always have in a changing environment. To get a glimpse of some of the innovative approaches to Extension that are going on around the U.S. take a look at the current issue of the Journal of Extension.

I talked with the director in Iowa as well. I knew that Iowa had a standardized formula for county support of Extension, unlike many states, including CA. The formula is that each of the 99 counties directs 2.7% of collected property tax to Extension. That equates to $830k in support from Polk County (Des Moines) for FY18/19. The Polk County budget is $276M for FY18/19. Compare that to the numbers I heard when we were in LA a week+ ago ($475k for Extension out of a $28B county budget). I don't think LA is unusual for counties in CA. But Iowa is considering change. Following a 2009 budget reduction, all of the county contributions remained with the counties and all employees paid from those funds became county employees. As a result, the sense is that there is a weakened connection between the county and campus. That then weakens the ability to connect the general public to science; a pillar of what led to the creation of Extension.

I thought of LA County, among other counties, during conversations last week about urban extension. The general sense was that Extension is well positioned to do this around the country because we are grounded in our mission to serve the people of the state, aligned in vision and values with urban populations, and positioned to lead locally. Sound familiar? It should as these are the elements of the UC ANR promise. A key topic identified as relevant to an urban audience was green infrastructure was a focus. I envisioned Darren's demonstrations at the Orange County UCCE/SCREC that illustrate the principles of green infrastructure well. And, having just been back to the LA UCCE office I thought about Siavash and his program that works closely with the LA Housing Authority. My take away - we've got this as it's been a part of UC ANR for quite some time now. That doesn't mean we couldn't do it better. Given that continuous improvement is one of our core values, we must constantly seek better ways to do more, more efficiently and more effectively.

Now I really need to get to the position proposals.

You might think that Tu Tran is smiling because this week is his birthday and he's expecting a big surprise party. Nope. He's smiling because he and Greg Gibbs were part of a ceremony to celebrate a UC ANR Presidential Endowed Researcher at the Lindcove REC, made possible by a generous donation from the Citrus Research Board and matched by the President's office. Great work everyone! I'm looking forward to identifying the first holder of the endowment.

A generous donation from the Citrus Research Board has made creation of a Citrus Research Endowment possible. (Photo credit: Jeanette Warnert )

That's not all that Beth Grafton-Cardwell has to smile about. Her webinar-based training was called out by Western Farm Press and then re-run in UCOP's Daily News Clips yesterday. Thanks to Jeannette for sharing this information with the media! This group is doing things differently to meet clientele needs. According to Jim Farrar, this is the first of three pest management webinars available to clientele for continuing education credits required by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Beth Grafton Cardwell is conducting two of the trainings (citrus thrips in October and Fuller rose beetle in December). Ben Faber is conducting the third, avocado diseases, to be offered in November.

In addition to the 46 position proposals, I've done a little bit of reading this week. Adina Merenlender shared an article about ‘boundary organizations', such as Extension, and how to evaluate the work of these organizations (Pitt et al., 2018 in Conservation Biology). From the paper: "... boundary organizations face the challenging task of demonstrating their value to diverse stakeholders...Although no off-the-shelf solution is available for a given boundary organization, we identified 4 principles that will support effective evaluation for boundary organizations:engage diverse stakeholders, support learning and reflection, assess contribution to change, and align evaluation with assumption and values." These all sound familiar, with at least two of the 4 principles, core to what I think we regularly consider indicators for UC ANR. That's something to smile about.

The other reading I've done was a document someone left on my desk that provided 4 strategies to avoid overworking high performing employees: 1) Refrain from asking high performers to help on small efforts, 2) Let high performers occasionally pick their projects, 3) Create high-performing pairs of employees at similar levels, and 4) Keep track of additional demands on their time and consider micromanaging what high performers are allowed to say ‘yes' to. Given no context I don't know what to read into the anonymous gesture although I do wonder if the sender questioned whether or not they should enter my office, uninvited, versus leaving the document in Joan's box with my name on it.

Here's hoping that next time someone leaves me lottery tickets or a dark chocolate mint truffle (smile)!