We are all UCANR. And while many peers in the UCANR system do not have community economic development in their title or job description, there remains a great deal of crossover and opportunities for collaboration.
Maybe you work in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and your farmer stakeholders would implement your research if you could drive the costs of inputs down. That is an economic development opportunity.
Maybe you work in forestry and you need to responsibly monetize wood products to mitigate wildfires. That is also an economic development opportunity.
If you have a research, development, or educational project with a community economic development component, please reach out. We recommend contacting your nearest County or Regional Advisor first, or look through Team roster and connect to one of our team members closest to your interest area.
We are also looking for individuals to affiliate, join our team, and help us establish the foundations of UCANR’s CED programming! We are the Community Economic Development Program Team of the Healthy Communities Strategic Initiative, and will be forming standing Project Teams to focus on CED specializations. We welcome your energy and ideas.
Our goal is to be the nation’s leading community economic development Cooperative Extension team in the US. We do this through team building, agile strategic planning and coordination, regular and appropriate communications, and team co-production. We are motivated by the Land Grant mission to extend the university to our host communities, assist community members in overcoming barriers through public entrepreneurship, and enhance stakeholder quality of life. It is our intent to make this work a labor of love that is incredibly fun.
In affiliating, we seek commitments to
- Develop and carry out a UCANR Strategic Plan, and seek funding resources for the collective interests
- Co-produce shared programming in research, development, and education
- Publish annually a team-authored, peer reviewed publication, addressing state-of-the-art challenges and innovations in CED
- Lift each other up by promoting each other’s work across our local, state, national, and global stakeholders
- Serve in Project Team leadership roles
- Participate in regularly scheduled check-ins
- Hold rotating open office hours online so local, regional, state, and national stakeholders can interact with our team
- Impromptu Team Huddles, to help our peers think through the initiatives they are working on in their service area.
Affiliation helps us pool knowledge and resources to development shared services.
- Staffing
- Access to student researchers and graduate student researchers (currently located in Davis, but eventually at other UC’s around the state).
CAMPUS-BASED UC PROFESSIONALS
Dear colleague: Welcome! We are your colleagues. As community-facing faculty, we are your eyes and ears on the ground around the state.
COMMUNITY STAKEHOLDER
We are here to serve you. We act as a free consultancy service and are open to serving as partners in your work!