- Author: Wendy Powers
This week I am attending the virtual APLU (Association of Public and Land Grant Universities) meeting. This is one of those meetings that should always be virtual. For some reason, they spread the meeting over a 2-week period this year. Let's just say that didn't improve my opinion of the meeting. And to make things worse, every session has a unique Zoom ID and I don't have them in my calendar. I suspect participation may be down this year. I will miss Wednesday's sessions to attend jury duty. Who knew I would welcome a summons?
Other activities include preparing to repost a Vice Provost position, some prep work for next week's meetings, and planning for the December Program Council meeting. I know many continue to work hard on Advisor and Specialist position descriptions that are due in less than a month. Time sure does fly by! It seems impossible to think that next week is Thanksgiving already. This means that Giving Tuesday is right around the corner. Speaking with Scott today, it sounds like the giving has started early. It is always nice to hear such things.
There's much going on at the RECs this time of year. Ashraf and team are busy preparing for the Citrus Tasting at Lindcove. To add to the planning this year, the President's Advisory Commission (PAC) are holding their winter meeting during the tasting. Karmjot and her team will be sharing some of their efforts with the PAC. It's a busy time for Hopland as well. Take a look at all that John and team have been doing. It's great to see local coverage of the efforts! The projects at Hopland REC continue to grow.
Later this week, I have a chance to meet with some of our newer hires that opt to participate in office hours. And, the monthly Town Hall is Thursday, which is always a chance to hear what's on the minds of people across UC ANR. I have a number of meetings related to national Extension commitments as well. The schedule feels a bit lighter this week because there is no travel to schedule around.
I have procrastinated on the weeds for a couple of months now, but likely must get into the yard this weekend. The rain has been great and while perhaps insufficient for addressing the drought, my weeds flourish. Perhaps if I ever get ahead of the weeds, I will expand my hobbies. Somehow I doubt I will have the same level of artistic talent displayed by others who teach themselves to draw when they can't sleep.
- Author: Wendy Powers
I am traveling! Last week almost seemed normal, with back-to-back trips between Monday and Friday. This week was even more ‘normal' with a flight cancellation. I have more travel scheduled with a few days off with in-state travel over Veteran's Day week. By mid-November, I suspect I will be complaining about travel disruptions. I think it is human nature to complain about things even when we have longed for such circumstances. Traveling has changed a bit since I was last frequenting airports. I like that we no longer show our boarding passes at security; less fumbling around with ID plus my boarding pass. I have even applied for my Real ID, just in case leaving my garage becomes customary.
It is getting difficult to keep up with all of the new hires! What a great situation to be in! Curt Pierce started last week as the Area Irrigation and Water Resources Advisor, based in Orland, with programmatic responsibilities in Glenn, Tehama, Colusa, and Shasta Counties. Welcome, Curt! Please reach out to Curt to send your welcome.
While I try to keep up with new hires, I also try to stay on top of the successes of past colleagues. Take a look at this fantastic article about Lupita and her impressive story. Congratulations to Lupita and the CA 4-H team that will receive an award in a couple of weeks. I get confused with the various meetings, but this may be one of the awards I will virtually present to recipients on November 9. If so, that will be special for me.
Another great story appeared recently in the Morning Ag Clips. Be sure to read Laura's story. Her commitment and passion for her work are evident throughout. And, it was nice to see her faithful companion featured as well.
This week I have followed the rain from California to the East Coast. I am part of a committee interviewing advocacy firms for our national Cooperative Extension and Ag Experiment Station Sections. The firms are all located in D.C. so it is only committee members impacted by the intense rain. Hopefully the storms are past before I head back west on Thursday evening.
I hope everyone is starting to dry out. I wouldn't be surprised to see Sandhill Cranes back in our back yard. It will take some time for all of the water to drain. While the photo is of Mark and his wife paddling the delta, no doubt we could have used the kayaks to navigate our property after the rain we had on Sunday. Let's hope the 2021 fire season has ended as a result.
- Author: Wendy Powers
I am in DC for a few days this week to meet with Extension Directors and partners, including the new NIFA National Science Liaisons. These are the NIFA employees who stayed behind in DC while the rest of NIFA headquarters relocated to Kansas City a few months ago. My understanding is that the Liaisons will work to build stronger connections with other federal agencies, as part of an effort to increase funding opportunities for agriculture, nutrition, natural resources, and youth development programming and research. While I know half of the team, I want to hear directly from the Liaisons what they see as the vision for their newly created roles and how they plan to interact with Extension and the land grant universities as well as other federal agencies.
Because I had to fly in the day before the meeting started, I made good use of my time this morning by meeting early with a group regarding how we make the work of Cooperative Extension known in university circles. All of us, in all academic circles, need to do more to help the public better understand the public impact of research, i.e., how the results of the research will improve the lives of citizens everywhere. Within the academic family, we can work more collaboratively to engage local communities in the identification of research needs and implementation of research findings in ways that enhance adoption at the local level. The conversation was much like the one had at the ANR Governing Council meeting last week, where we discussed the public impact of our work and that of the broader UC system and the missed opportunities to partner more closely and achieve more in a streamlined manner. No surprise in this funding environment that this topic is on the minds of many.
Traveling to the east coast has its upside. The time zone difference is such that if I skip group dinners, I can still participate in Pacific Time business (email, webinars, and phone calls) such that I don't get too far behind. Except for Thursday's email traffic, I expect to be pretty much up to date on things when I land in Sacramento Thursday evening. The weather is similar on both ends of the country this week - rainy and anywhere between 40 and 60 F. While not ideal, regardless of the coast, this, too, shall pass.
- Author: Wendy Powers
Last week I mentioned that I am spending my long weekend attending a conference in New Orleans. The theme of the meeting is Resilience: Turning Challenges into Opportunities. Rebecca Blank, Chancellor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, gave the keynote address. She talked about the importance of the public university in today's world, citing the data about the increase in the difference in lifetime income based on the level of education and how that difference has drastically increased since the 1970's and continues to do so. Despite the data, the public university is under heavy scrutiny and the relevance is questioned. Chancellor Blank stressed the importance in perseverance and the need to meet students where they are, making it easy to attend such that the composition of, particularly the land-grant institution, reflects the demographics of the population. She talked about UW-M's new commitment to make it easy for those less fortunate to attend UW-M: if a student's family annual income is less than $56,000 and the student meets the criteria for enrollment, the campus guarantees that student sufficient scholarships, loans, and grants to attend. No complex formula, no strings.
A panel discussion followed Chancellor Blank's address. On the topic of the public research university, the President of the University of Houston stated that research is what defines us but we need to remain true to our core mission (training students). If we focus on the core we will quickly determine that there are many ways to achieve the mission; we don't have to stick to what we have always done and how we have always done it. She gave as an example of an innovative solution, that when hurricane Harvey hit at the start of the semester, the leadership team quickly realized that the university was vulnerable to losing many of its students so they made a decision that they would accommodate students however necessary to avoid dropouts. This included personal phone calls to work with the students to address the student's needs. The result was that the University of Houston did not see a single student drop out, despite the destruction caused in the region. Quite an impressive statistic!
One of the comments made was that “Excellence and diversity are not mutually exclusive”. I don't recall who made that statement but I believe it was the President of Montana State University. I agree completely and I think our Extension programs demonstrate so.
In general, while the conversations on Sunday seemed very focused on students, the essence of the conversations were very much applicable to Extension – the whole idea that the system is underfunded and perhaps even threatened, the idea that Extension needs to change how it achieves its core mission in order to remain relevant to the clientele who change each generation, and the sense that Extension is needed more than ever before.
None of this is new to anyone reading this. When I went back to my room this evening I started to listen to a TED talk and the add that ran before the talk included a statement that may be a new concept to many, and one that we really need to think about: “Be willing to disrupt your traditional model because if you don't, someone else will”.
- Author: Wendy Powers
It turns out I had two consecutive hours of unscheduled time on Tuesday. I was at a loss what to do – first I wondered if I was in some sort of time warp and actually late for a meeting. Then I thought I had misread my calendar. This progressed to wondering if I had been fired or perhaps it was Saturday and there were just a lot of people working the weekend in the Davis building. After about 4 minutes of this I embraced the time and got some work done! Before I knew it, it was time to go to Program Council for the rest of the day. Overall, last week was a series of ups and downs; of time that was rather fun and then times of not-so-fun. Good meetings, not-so-fun travel, now holding out hope that the APLU meeting breaks the cycle.
While the drive up to Tulelake was not ideal, the daylight drive back lead to spotting a few ring-necked pheasant, a species I have missed and was really excited to see alongside the road. Growing up in New York State, there was a field across the street from our house that was owned by the Naval Reserve and there were always pheasant there. Then I moved to Florida and didn't see any. From there I move to Iowa where they were quite abundant, followed by Michigan where I never saw a single one. So it seems I have cycled back to a state where the ring-necked pheasant calls home. Thinking about this cycle had me wondering about the CA population of pheasants because in Iowa there is a lot of talk about the bird and projected populations. So I did some digging and learned a few things, including the fact that I grew up in New York when populations were at their peak and they are actually difficult to find now. And apparently I was fortunate to see a few in CA last week. So it seems the Midwest (sans Michigan) is where most are now found, due to habitat and grain fields.
At the APLU meeting, one of the speakers talked about Project DrawDown which emphasizes 12 steps to carbon neutrality. I may need to look up the site but I'm not sure there is much life cycle assessment data available for some of the strategies. The speaker also referenced a Nature article by Jonathan Foley, who I mentioned in a recent post, that is focused on food footprints.
In the meantime, I need to get VP Humiston the grant recommendations that came from Program Council and tackle a few other items that have deadlines on them. Fortunately I have some flight time to use towards 2 manuscripts I need to edit and send back to a graduate student who is trying to wind down his program.
Still not bored.