- Author: Deanne Meyer
By now academics and their supervisors are aware the deadline for Project Board and merit and promotion dossier is December 8. We've moved the date for two reasons. First, the Federal Report is due earlier, so we had to move the Project Board deadline. December 8 is now the deadline for everyone (campus and ANR). Program Planning and Evaluation needs sufficient time to harvest information out of Project Board for our Federal Report. Second, the compressed time frame for merit and promotion dossier reviews is unreasonable. Ask anyone who is on the Peer Review Committee, and they'll let you know. My suggestion was November 1. In a compromise we went with December 8. This due date can be tried for a year or more. In a few years, this date may need to move to November 1 with all our extra academics. You can expect trainings to come earlier. Stay tuned for additional information.
Last week Vice Provost Daniel Obrist and I spent a few hours with Anna Lee and Steven Worker to run through discussions related to PRC activities. Before we know it, it'll be time for our debrief in August.
I am so impressed with the scholarship, scholarly activities, ideation, and general superb work that is done throughout ANR. We have great work that makes a difference to Californians daily.
Saturday was the State 4-H Field Day and Fashion Review at Wellman Hall on the UC Davis campus. I took a break from writing merit and promotion decisions and comments to drop over. The 4-H members, leaders and support teams were in full force. Club members were in their uniforms doing presentations. Although I missed some of the events, I was able to see the great skills members gain. Presentations take organization and courage. For some, presenting to a group of people requires bravery. Everyone was happy to be back to in-person events. And it was a beautiful day! Ryan Cleland, Gemma Miner, and Carolyn Warne were busy answering questions and helping people at the ANR table. Countless others were engaged in making the event happen. Kate Lynn Sutherland (Program Support Unit) was a volunteer wrangling sound equipment proving that 4-H youth give back to their community. Way to go Kate Lynn! The day was complete when I ran into a friend who is a volunteer leader in Hilmar. It's a small world!
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Two changes have occurred that require moving due dates for Project Board reporting, program review dossiers and academic annual evaluations from Feb. 1 to Dec. 8. This impacts all academic titles managed by UC ANR.
“We have more academics!” said Deanne Meyer, interim associate vice president, programs and strategic initiatives. “The current program review (PR) Dossier count for 2023 is 71. It is anticipated that by 2025 we will have over 100 dossiers for the Peer Review Committee (PRC) to review.”
This increased review load cannot be managed in the current compressed time frame while respecting the various levels of reviews (letters of evaluation, ad hoc committee, PRC and Associate Vice President review), Meyer said. She noted that most campuses begin their review process in fall at the start of the academic year and finalize decisions in late spring. With more academics, more time is needed to maintain the quality of the review process.
Our federal partner, USDA NIFA, has changed federal reporting deadlines. As a result, the Project Board due date for UCCE specialists with campus merit/promotion had to move to early December, which was previously March 1. Now, all Cooperative Extension academics will have the same Project Board reporting due date. This will also give Program Planning and Evaluation more time to analyze Project Board information, draft our federal reports, seek academic then leadership review, finalize and submit.
“We presented this information to the Academic Assembly Council Personnel Committee Chair, and received feedback on how this could impact academics,” Meyer said. “We have decided to move the PR Dossier and Annual Evaluation due dates to Dec. 8, 2023. Making this change now, before we have 30 more dossiers to handle, allows us to work through any unforeseen challenges.”
The change of due dates of PR Dossiers and Annual Evaluations to Dec. 8 allows supervisors to complete evaluations by mid-January and provides greater separation between academic and staff evaluations.
New timeline
Advancement actions are confirmed by supervisors July 17-Aug. 7
E-Book available and Project Board-WFA opens End of August/Early September
Submit packet to supervisor for input Nov. 1, or as arranged
Project Board, PR Dossiers and Annual Evaluation and Dec. 8
Project Board Reporting due
Required letters (supervisor, ad hoc, and external) Jan. 17
PRC committee analysis complete Feb. 22
Summary letters turned in March 11
Issue final AVP decisions May 31
One of the benefits with this modification is that it will allow Human Resources additional time to properly enter the projected increased number of transactions into UC Path for recommended merits and promotions.
There is precedent for earlier reporting due dates and changes in due dates. UC ANR internal program reporting due dates used to be late October/early November for DANRIS-X, the system that preceded Project Board.
Dates will be forthcoming for the Advancement Cycle Timeline, which includes trainings for PR dossiers, Annual Evaluations, Project Board reporting and preparing impact statements.
“We appreciate your understanding of the need to change these due dates,” said Meyer.
- Author: Deanne Meyer
Spring forward, fall back
Program Council met this last week. We had another installment on the great work being done in the fire space throughout UC. Keep in mind our focus was on fire prevention both in areas with structures and wildlands. I scoured quite a few websites prior to the meeting. There are some incredible programs across UC that can be collaborators with UC ANR. The Fire Foundry is has “amazing partnerships” to “increase access to sustainable wage careers in the fire services for women and people of color currently underrepresented in the sector”. There are opportunities for the individuals in this program to work in Cooperative Extension in their careers. Berkeley also has the Fire Research Laboratory, the Center for Fire Research and Outreach at Berkeley Forests, Forest Research and Outreach, Wildland Fire Research and of course UC ANR fire website. This is just a flash in the impactful work being done across UC in fire research.
Kudos to Jing Yu, Director of Financial Services and Interim Controller, Jennifer Bunge, Executive Director of Resource Planning and Management, Tu Tran, Associate Vice President of Finance and Katherine Webb-Martinez, Program Planning and Evaluation and everyone who worked the last many months on our NIFA Audit. Financial review occurred on four grants from 2014 to 2018 from a variety of federal funding streams including Hatch Research, Smith Lever capacity awards, AFRI and Crop Protection and Pest Management. Non-federal matching funds associated with the Hatch and Smith Lever capacity awards were reviewed. Every academic plays a part in documenting how funds are spent through effort reporting and through annual contributions to Project Board. Your input is used for our USDA and other reporting needs. A total of 31,000 ledger entries were reviewed and 45 samples were selected for further testing. Findings were presented at our Compliance Review Virtual meeting. Among the USDA NIFA team we met with the Deputy Director, Office of Grants and Financial Management, National Program Leaders, and numerous others associated with financial management. The NIFA staff were very impressed with how our programs are organized and aligned with our condition changes and public values statements. It was an exciting interaction. Thank you to everyone who participated with the audit process. It takes a village!
Speaking of Project Board, many ANR academics participated in Project Board training this last week spearheaded by Kit Alviz and Chris Hanson. Project Board is how we collect programmatic information to compile annual impact stories, county and campus reports and ad hoc queries. It's also used to complete UC ANR's contributions to the UC annual accountability report, sustainability report, Office of the President budget reports and other ad hoc requests. This information is used for our USDA Federal reporting needs.
Trees are changing colors and dropping leaves. Flowers are at the end of their season. We just fell back out of daylight savings time. And our cycle continues.
- Author: Kit Alviz
Pleased to report that Project Board Help was IT's test bunny and first adopter for the new sitebuilder design based on ANR's web refresh efforts. Here's a look at what your future sitebuilder pages will look like: https://ucanr.edu/sites/ProjectBoardHelp/
IT is going to work on a few additional minor formatting changes, so I'll hold off on fixing any font size inconsistency issues or borders until that is done.
- Author: Jonathan Ash Wilson
Hello everyone. There have been a lot of changes to Project Board (and Program Review) lately. I decided it was time to start posting updates in blog form.
Changes present in the latest release of Project Board:
Issue ID | Issue Description |
---|---|
PB-28 | Clientele Groups: Added “Compliance Notes” feature, allowing academics to provide more information to the Affirmative Action Analyst (David White) about their compliance and/or A.R.E. |
PB-566 |
Review/Compile and Dossier Export: It is now possible to restrict the activities present in the dossier export by Federal Fiscal Year (these options will change as the years pass):
|
PB-709 | Campus-based academic themes: Replaced publication counts with text inputs meant to hold the actual peer-reviewed citations: B: Peer-reviewed scholarly journal publications, C: Other peer-reviewed publications. These are text-editor inputs, similar to the ones employed for Theme Background/Outcomes. |
PB-717 | Fixed: UC Delivers link for Campus-M&P users is not showing when it should |
PB-730 | Fixed formatting of HTML content in the Dossier Export for some users (ie. Marissa Neelon) |
PB-732 | Increased width of 'New Activity' pop-up, making the longest help text more legible. |
PB-733 | To cut down on confusion (and accidental switches of activity type) when creating a new activity, we now constrain the "Type" dropdown menu to the types related to the user's initial type selection (but only for Prof. Comp. and Uni/Pub service only) |
PB-736 | Fixed Help text for Activity Type: Individual Clientele Contacts. It now reads: "Does NOT populate Extension Activity tables in dossier export; instead, summarize in your Program Summary Narrative." |
More updates to come!