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Best Practice Hub

Examples of success

Sharing "Best (Extension) Practices"

The "Best (Extension) Practices" hub highlights examples of good practice within UC ANR.

Who does it well?

Examples of good practice.

Materials below can help you do it, too.

Help us help you. Send suggestions on topics, "skill gurus", examples of good practice and/or simple practical resource materials or links.

On this page

Funding Models
Blogs and Twitter
Field Days
Newsletters
Tools
Video
Caution

People at hackathon











Before developing a new skill or communication channel

There are lots of tools to help you communicate.

Before investing time, ask yourself

"Who is your audience and how do they get their information?"

"Can I feed my information through an existing channel?" 

Funding Models

As more traditional sources of support shift, a number of alternate funding models (some around for a while) are becoming increasingly  important.

Statewide programs have a number of CES and academic positions that are at least in part funded through grants (PSEP, Western IPM Center, 4-H, NPI, CalNat). What’s ‘different’ is that we are increasing the number of academic and program staff positions that are located throughout the state and not centrally funded.

(There are other examples of different and innovative funding. Please let us (Wendy P or Mark B) know positions missed, so they can be included.)

Advisors and Specialists

Urban Agriculture/Food Systems Advisor supported through the County Waste Reduction Program). Santa Clara; Contact: Sheila Barry

Area Fire Advisor (Funded through grants). Humboldt; Contact: Yana Valachovic

Nutrient Management and Soil Quality Advisors (supported through NRCS) ; Counties Fresno and Stanislaus 

Organic Agriculture Specialist (supported through Campus)

Watershed Specialist (supported through UC Merced):

Table Grapes CE Advisors (supported through CA Table Grapes Commission) 1) Tulare/Kings County, 2) Kern

IPM Advisor (supported through county) Imperial Valley Contact: Oli Bachie

Area Citrus IPM Advisor (supported through Citrus Research Board). Lindcove Research & Extension Center.

Other Academic positions

Multiple Programs have advisors and academics funded through grants: including NPI, UC IPM, UC CalNat and UC 4-H

Community Educators & Research Assistants/Associates

County funding

UC 4-H and UC Master Gardener Community Educators. (Funded by the County) Stanislaus. Contact: Jennifer Heguy.

UC MG community educator (County funding?) San Bernardino Contact : Janet Hartin

DREC Farm Smart Educator Position (Imperial; Valley: community college; county support); DREC, Imperial Valley; Contact: Jairo Diaz-Ramirez

Other models

Climate Smart - Community Educators for soil health. (funded through CDFA) Counties: 10 total; Contacts: Eric Porse

California commodity groups. Staff Research Associate (SRA) positions fully funded (salary and benefits) to support the UCCE Advisors’ applied research and extension activities. Contacts: Greg Gibbs, Karmjot Randhawa & Katherine Jarvis-Shean

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Social Media - Blogs and Twitter

Who does it well?  Susie Kocher ;  Faith Kearns ; Theresa Becchetti

Examples of good practice.

Note: People often integrate Twitter, Facebook etc. with a blog.

- Raising awareness and sharing information and stories.
  • Blog: Food Observer (Rose Hayden Smith) > 1 m impressions with the associated Twitter.
- Using Twitter, etc. to drive people to content

  • Forest Research and Outreach (Susie Kocher) e.g., 36.7K impressions over 28 days in July 2018.

  • UC Rangeland (Theresa Becchetti) While currently not a large number of users, it demonstrates a promising way to get users directly to relevant content.

Need indications of Subscribers? Shares? Hits? etc.
Saoimanu Sope, Strat Comm

Caution 

Social media is an area where (depending on your audience) you should definitely consider feeding your information through an existing social media initiative.

Field Days

Who does it well? Brad Hanson plus many others

Examples of good practice. UC Weed Field Day

Materials to help you do it too. WSARE

Field Day Check list (UC ANR)

Newsletters

Who does it well? Steve Elliott

Examples of good practice. Examples

Materials to help you do it too. Link

Tools

Who does it well? UC IPM

Examples of good practice.

Materials to help you do it too.

  • Manual for developing an on-line repository
Video

Who does it well? Steve Elliott; Petr Kosina

Examples of good practice.

Materials to help you do it too.

  • Key: Meet an interest, have useful information, be easily discoverable.
  • Take better Videos Fact sheet
  • Videos 101 short manual

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay