What a difference a year makes! Introducing our expanded and talented team of nine (soon to be ten) statewide personnel was incredibly fulfilling at our 2024 Annual Coordinator meeting. Since last year's in-person gathering, we have experienced a remarkable 150% growth, adding valuable expertise, strengthening connections to county programs, and enhancing deliverables.

This growth signifies immediate improvements and lays the foundation for a more stable future for the UC Master Gardener Program. A key aspect of our expansion has been the establishment of permanent positions within the UC ANR central budget. We have increased our permanent employee allocations from one in FY 2013/14 to six in FY 2023/24.

We are excited to welcome our newest team members, Kristian Salgado and Katherine Uhde, who will serve as Regional Operations Specialists. This new role was created to enhance the connection between county programs and the statewide office. Their responsibilities include:

• Reducing administrative tasks
• Increasing program alignment
• Participating in local coordinator recruitments
• Co-hosting professional development sessions and group dialogues
• Promoting program consistency through resource-sharing
• Providing individualized support to county programs
• Guiding conflict resolution

Our coordinator community, advisors, County Directors, the statewide team, and UC ANR leadership identified these objectives as part of our ten-year program review, which was completed in 2023.

In 2019, Kristian Salgado began her career with UC  Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) at the UCCE-Imperial County office as a Community Education Specialist (CES) for the Climate Smart Ag Program.  In that role, she actively engaged with ranchers and farmers in my area to discuss and brainstorm projects that would qualify for state funds. She enjoyed visiting feedlots, dairies, and farmer's fields to see first-hand what management practices they are currently using and how the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) – Climate Smart Agriculture

Grants can assist them in sustaining their operation. In 2022, she became Imperial County's first UC Master Gardener Program Coordinator, hired to build a program and train its first cohort of thirty volunteers.

Salgado graduated from Cal Poly Humboldt in 2018 (formerly known as Humboldt State University) with a Master of Art in Social Science as part of an interdisciplinary program called Environment and the Community (E&C). The E&C Program allowed her to engage with a wide range of literature and research methods (not to mention amazing interdisciplinary faculty) that profoundly shaped her community organizing, research, and career work in the far southeastern corner of California. It also allowed her to shape a thesis exploring her identity and place-based knowledge as a Xicana from the small border town of Calexico, where she has been working on environmental justice issues for over a decade. Her graduate research methodology is grounded in Participatory Action Research (PAR), citizen science, environmental justice discourse, and the environmental decision-making process. As an undergraduate at San Diego State University (SDSU), she double majored in Psychology and Environmental Studies with a minor in Counseling and Social Change.

She is excited to continue with the UC Master Gardener Program as the Regional Operations Specialist in Region 2. In this role, she will support coordinators and volunteers across her multi-county region and provide professional development and educational leadership.

Kristian will support the following counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo/San Francisco, Fresno, Imperial, Inyo/Mono, Los Angeles, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz/Monterey, Tulare/Kings, and Ventura.

 

Katherine has been with UC ANR since 2018. She started with the CalFresh Healthy Living Program in Alameda County. Katherine's work as a nutrition educator primarily focused on older adults. She piloted a gardening-based health and wellness education program for low-income seniors in multi-unit independent housing. From there, she earned a

certificate in home horticulture from the Oregon State Extension Master Gardener Service and became program coordinator for the UC Master Gardener Program of Santa Clara County in 2019. Katherine's role included oversight of the UC Master Gardener Program and supervision and support for the UCCE Composting Education (Master Composter) Program of Santa Clara County. 

As UC Master Gardener Program Coordinator in Santa Clara for nearly 6 years, she supported a large community of volunteers, managed an Advisory Board to oversee program administration, directed the development and dissemination of mission-driven public education projects, and leveraged community partnerships to maximize program impacts. Recently, Katherine completed an urban agriculture policy scan for all of Santa Clara County, wrote a grant proposal for a community garden at a federally qualified health center in San Jose, and contributed to a peer-reviewed article on municipal land access policies for urban agriculture in the U.S.

Katherine is a Bloomberg American Health Initiative Fellow in the Environmental Challenges Focus Area, a blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do, and a former lifeguard and corn pollinator. She has a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Kinesiology and Health from Iowa State University and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from John's Hopkin's University.  

Katherine's regional assignment includes Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Del Norte, El Dorado, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Shasta, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Sutter/Yuba, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne, and Yolo counties.

Thank you for your continued support in developing this new role by engaging with Kristian and Katherine to build relationships, deepen understanding, and identify new opportunities.

 

Additionally, our team has completed interviews for the Training Specialist position and looks forward to having the position filled soon. Many thanks to Jennifer Baumbach (Coordinator, Solano & Yolo counties), Chris Shogren (Advisor, LA & Orange counties), and Lauren Snowden (Online Training Specialist) for their invaluable contributions to the search committee!