Next week I am heading to Redding and north to spend some time with Larry Forero, Yana Valachovic and their offices. The United flight I was on earlier this week ran an advertisement for Redding on the video entertainment system which has me once again in awe of the resources in California. But the state has nothing over UC ANR as far as impressing me. Last week seemed to be full of recognitions for a number of people in UC ANR. Here's just a few that you may or may not have heard about:

• Tim Paine, professor and AES researcher at UC Riverside, was named the inaugural Tokuji and Bettie L. Furuta Endowed Chair, recognizing his work in IPM for woody ornamentals. It was a really nice reception with Furuta family members present and a strong turnout from Dr. Paine's colleagues. John Kabashima and Loren Oki, to name just two, were among presenters who had great memories to share of both Dr. Furuta and Dr. Paine. Dr. Paine gave an eloquent acceptance speech; highlighting that is was collaborations throughout his career that fostered his success.

• David Lewis, UCCE watershed advisor and County Director of UCCE in Marin and Napa Counties, was named one of the two recipients for the 2017 Bradford Rominger Agricultural Sustainability Leadership Award by the Agricultural Sustainability Institute. The award recognizes the work David has done to help communities find practical, science-based ways to protect salmon habitat from agricultural erosion, cleaning up oyster beds polluted by dairy operations, riparian ecosystem restoration and conservation, and water quality planning to protect the Napa and Sonoma Rivers. Way to go David!

• Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr, CE Specialist at UC Davis, was awarded the 2017 Academic Federation Award for Excellence in Research in recognition of the impact and significance of her recent work on school nutrition education and scientific literacy, school gardens to teach nutrition, and multicomponent interventions to reduce the incidence of childhood obesity. Congratulations Sheri!

I suspect I missed some recognitions so if you are aware of any, please feel free to share as a Comment to this blog.

And while those recognitions are acknowledgement of career successes, a number of new hires are just beginning their UC ANR careers. While attending the Western Extension Directors Association spring meeting this week we met with the Western Region Program Leaders Council (UC is represented by Chris Greer) and heard about the many, many plans that group has to develop resources for new, and experienced, academics including program evaluation and assessment videos and a new idea to develop an innovative way of sharing program approaches and successes that could have multiple uses, would be peer-reviewed and is an outlet for deliverables that are focused on engagement beyond what a journal article can provide. Here's just one example of their work to develop resources: http://extension.wsu.edu/wrpl/.

Enjoy your day off tomorrow in recognition of Caesar Chavez. If you get a chance, try to locate and watch “The Wrath of Grapes”. Did I mention that the Western Extension Directors Association spring meeting was held in Kona? There are definitely some advantages to being located in the Western Region. I wouldn't be surprised if the Midwestern Region meeting is held in someplace like Mankato or Omaha – equally as expensive to get to without the view. So before I head back and get some more reading done on the flight, I am going to take advantage of the 3-day weekend and go up 14,000 feet or so to see what snow pack remains on Mauna Kea. Hopefully the ‘vog' isn't too thick.

Not in CA this week

This week I will celebrate Cesar Chavez Day for the first time. I am interested to see how Californians go about remembering the work and impact of Cesar Chavez. I don't recall learning about Chavez or the struggles of migrant laborers during my primary education; perhaps the result of living in New York State. However, when I was enrolled in a literature course at Cornell I happened to see a flier advertising an upcoming seminar which I mistakenly read as “The Grapes of Wrath”. I decided to attend the event in hopes that I could skip reading one of the assignments for the course. It turned out the title of the event was “The Wrath of Grapes” and was a movie followed by discussion about the life and efforts of Cesar Chavez. Needless to say, I had to read John Steinbeck's work later that semester.

I've never been one to sit down and read unless confined with no other activities from which to select. As I write this, I am on a long flight to attend the Western Extension Directors Association spring meeting. Knowing I would spend much of the day in the air, I packed up what I hope to be the final draft of a graduate student's M.S. thesis, a manuscript draft from my MSU technician for a project she led, the electronic files of a promotion packet from a faculty member at a non-US university, and a draft of the 2016 UC ANR Federal Report. Then, of course, there is still that Crucial Conversations homework that I really need to complete.

Thus far, I have only tackled the federal report. I can see where the information within it will be quite useful not only for the mandatory reporting, but also for future conversations much like the one we had when a group of us made Hill visits in early March. The impact stories provided by Specialists, Advisors and staff have tremendous use to me as I go about my work. They are one of the best ways I can stay up-to-date on what's going on around the Division and what impacts the work is having. I am optimistic that at some point there will be a means for me to query a database and have targeted information at my fingertips. During my 20 years as a Specialist I often wondered if anyone ever read what I submitted; it turns out that Katherine Webb-Martinez, Chris Hanson, Kit Alviz and others do read the information and assemble it in a manner for me to read. And I do intend to make use of the information. So as painful as it is to write things up and submit them, believe me, it is equally painful to read things that are carelessly assembled and just submitted so that it can be checked off the ‘to-do' list. Fortunately, that's not what I encountered today – so ‘thanks' to everyone who took time to thoughtfully prepare and submit impact statements about their work!!!

And speaking of reading… did you know that the UC ANR Davis building has set up a ‘Leadership Library'? It is in the lounge area on the second floor, just outside VP Humiston's office. We just set it up recently because in one way or other we are all leaders and can benefit from some tips and strategies. There are already some books on the shelves but if you have a stack at home or in your office that you are considering whether or not to keep, consider donating them to the shelves. And if you see a book that interests you, feel free to take it and replace it when you have finished it and are back in town. I've still got a stack in Michigan that I will have to work on getting to California. If the shelves are full, we can make more space or consider establishing a branch library in Oakland. Academia and UC ANR are about continuous education and improvement. For some of us that means picking up a book every now and then.

A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days in Washington, D.C. attending the APLU meeting with several people for UC ANR and the UC campuses as well as the UC ANR CARET representatives. I have to say, photo ops with politicians is not my thing but it was really fun to spend some time with UC ANR's impressive CARET representatives and hear what our work means to them. Equally exciting was to see Clare Gupta, Lorrene Ritchie and Gabe Youtsey talk about their work. Lorrene and I were paired together a fair bit throughout the day and a half of hill visits so I was able to see firsthand her exceptional ability to connect with staffers; she was amazing! I've already nominated her to participate again next year! Not only did I learn a lot just observing her in action, but I was able to hear Lorrene talk about NPI's work around the state and the impact it has for communities and families. This week I met Dani Lee for the first time, one of the newest members of NPI. Hopefully I will get over to meet the rest of the team soon.

Lorrene Ritchie makes a visit to her local Congressman

You can imagine that after spending that time in D.C. talking about UC ANR efforts, how disappointing it was to return only to learn of the proposed ‘skinny budget' which proposes a 21% reduction to USDA funding. This certainly illustrates the importance of highlighting the impact of our work on food security, community vitality, natural resource protection and youth development every day, not just for 1+ day in early March. That's the purpose of Goal 15 in the strategic plan – help people understand the positive impacts we have and not be the best kept secret. Now more than ever we need to constantly communicate our impacts in a way that people can relate to even if they aren't directly tied to our programs. And, I believe, the more we can aggregate our impacts across programs to some common indicator that many, many people can relate to the better off we will be. This will be part of the conversation when we hold regional information sessions this summer to share plans for executing the strategic plan, particularly goal 5. Dates and locations are still in planning phase but I will keep you posted and I am sure something will come out in the ANR Update. In addition, there's some work planned with statewide program and institute directors plus the strategic initiative leaders for mid-May to get that conversation started. Just like I learned a ton of new things during my travels the past couple of weeks, I look forward to learning from this group of directors/leaders.

For now though, I need to get back to catching up on some things, including a couple of manuscript reviews I forgot I had promised to complete last week. Not to mention my Crucial Conversations training reading assignment that I had planned to complete by now….

Our first full day in Can Tho started early. In order to experience the full effect of one of Vietnam's largest floating markets, we had to be up at 3:30; a typical time for my days in Oakland so not a big problem for me. But the traffic congestion was quite different. Hundreds of boats each selling different fresh food items were parked on the river while tourist boats maneuvered through looking for their favorite vendor. Some of the vendors prepared hot soup for tourists. I'm not clear how effective these floating markets are for selling large quantities of produce given that most of the purchasers appeared to be tourists but Can Tho has a long history of using this approach to market in the Mekong.

Daybreak at Can Tho's floating market

At daybreak we left the river and headed to campus for a day of meetings. It was in those meetings that I learned of the work by David Biggs from UC Riverside. I will definitely need to connect with him as this course progresses. We also met with the advanced students in the biotechnology program who take all of their coursework in English. And we toured the current facilities and saw plans for the new agriculture building, paid for by Japan, which is scheduled for completion in 2018. Given that ground has not broken yet, I'd have to guess the campus works at a much faster pace than U.S. campuses or the building occupants are in for a disappointment if they think it will really be completed by 2018. We met with three of the largest faculties on the campus to talk about our purpose for the trip and areas for cooperation and partnership. Overall, it made for a long day. Given that we would repeat the schedule the following day (Saturday) before making the 4-hour drive back to Ho Chi Minh City, it's clear that the group at Can Tho are hardworking academics deeply committed to their goal of international recognition in academics, including agriculture.

Watermelons for sale

Reality has set back in as I head to Oakland for the day. Overall, a great trip with tremendous opportunity for UC ANR. Liz and I will need to take a few days to catch up at home and then start thinking of next steps, recognizing that it's not hard to schedule twice the amount of activities that is feasible for the time we will actually have to spend in Vietnam when the course runs. One thing that really stuck out as I made my way through airports was the number of spring breakers and U.S. tourist groups that also spent a hot and humid week exploring all that Vietnam has to offer. While my fifth trip there, I always come away having learned so much from a place that is rapidly changing and clearly on the world's radar screen.

Andrea's selfie with our host from Can Tho University