Posts Tagged: UC Cooperative Extension

ANR releases 6 UCCE advisor positions for recruitment

I am thrilled to announce that the following 6 CE Advisor positions from the 2018 CE position proposals are released for recruitment:

• #12 Production Horticulture Advisor, San Diego County
• #42 Agronomy Area Advisor, Merced County
• #54 Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor, Siskiyou County
• #58 Nutrition, Family, and Consumer Sciences Area Advisor, San Mateo-San Francisco Counties
• #62 Vegetable Crops and Small Farms Advisor, Riverside County
• #66 Pomology and Water/Soils Area Advisor, Kings County

The Academic HR unit will begin to work on recruitment plans for the above CE Advisor positions immediately following the winter break.

In addition, I commit to refill the position “#49 Irrigation and Water Resources Advisor, Glenn County” at such time that a gap occurs.

These were difficult decisions to make because while we need the above positions, there are many more needs for both CE Specialist and CE Advisor positions that continue to wait for additional funding. Additionally, while we have grown the CE Specialist numbers over the last several years, the number of CE Advisors in the field has steadily declined. For this reason, we are not releasing additional CE Specialist positions at this time. I remain deeply committed to the 4-H Youth Development Program and support the current conversations underway about investments in expanding non-academic support to improve program delivery to our local communities.

I hope to release 5 to 6 more positions in the spring/summer. This is possible, in part, due to the advanced notice provided by individuals planning to retire June 2020. In addition, we will complete recruitment of other academic positions currently advertised, including those that are funded through partnerships. See Status of Recruitments and Hires for a list of positions under recruitment now. That list does not reflect a few recent CE Advisor and CE Specialist hires who have not yet started.

I wish to thank the Program Council for their work providing recommendations to me. Likewise, I thank the County Directors, Program Team Leaders, Statewide Program/Institute Directors, REC Directors and Associate Deans for their efforts to identify priority needs.

I look forward to sending more of these notices soon!

Glenda Humiston
Vice President

 

2018 call for Cooperative Extension positions released

ANR is committed to increasing our academic footprint for more effective deployment of Cooperative Extension (CE) specialists and advisors to address local issues with global impact. The 2018 CE Call for Positions is released, with the aim to identify positions that address programmatic gaps and emerging needs. The call, including the position proposal template, new process flowchart and timeline and criteria, is posted at http://ucanr.edu/2018callforpositions.

The advisor and specialist position proposal-development processes will be open from Feb. 8 to Sept. 15, with three phases of groups working collaboratively to develop proposals, and later phases reviewing earlier proposals to add proposals that they think are higher priority. Each proposal development phase is intended to include internal consultation and external input from ANR stakeholders to identify priority needs.

“Strengthening and rebuilding the ANR network remains a top priority for ANR,” said Wendy Powers, associate vice president. “Since the beginning of 2012, ANR has hired 175 academics, and has 11 approved CE positions under recruitment in 2018 (list posted on the 2018 call web page). Through this call, we plan to add around 26 additional crucial CE positions.”

Powers said, “As with the current recruitments, we will remain nimble with future hiring in phases over time to enable us to accomplish the search and hiring process in an orderly fashion, evaluate resources on a real-time basis, deal with unexpected changes in staffing, and address unforeseen critical gaps as they emerge. The resources released through retirements and separations continue to enable us to hire new advisors and specialists. The ANR strategic plan 2016-2020 also prioritizes strengthening partnerships to establish new co-funded positions and developing other new sources of revenue to grow the academic footprint.”

 

 

VP Humiston releases 26 UCCE positions for recruitment

VP Humiston announced on Dec. 14 the release of 26 new academic UC Cooperative Extension positions (see list below) for hiring over the next two years. 

The positions from the 2016 process will be released for recruitment in phases as Human Resources continues recruiting for more than 25 specialist and advisor positions yet unfilled from the 2014 process.

“This new release continues our commitment for hiring to exceed projected turnover, thus achieving our goal of academic growth. And, as funding becomes available, we will consider additional positions,” Humiston said.

“At present, we are also exploring the opportunities to expand academic numbers using non-traditional funding models, such as sharing positions and leveraging resources with public and private partners,” she said. “Furthermore, given that needs change and new challenges emerge that must be addressed quickly, we are optimistic we have some flexibility to react to new needs.”

Humiston thanked Program Council, UC ANR academics, county and REC directors, program directors and ANR stakeholders for the time and effort they put into the 2016 positions process, identifying position needs for the future and helping to prioritize those needs.

UC ANR Cooperative Extension positions approved for release FY2017-2018 (If more than one county is listed, the position is headquartered in the first county.)

Round 1 (Winter 2017)

CE Advisor - 4-H Youth Development: Orange County

CE Advisor - Area 4-H Youth Development: San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties

CE Advisor  - Area Forestry/County Director: Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma counties

CE Advisor - Area IPM: Sonoma, Napa, Lake and Mendocino counties

CE Advisor - Nutrition, Family & Consumer Sciences: Kern County

CE Specialist - Antimicrobial Stewardship: UCD

CE Specialist - Pathology of Vines, Berries & Fruit Trees: UC Davis

CE Specialist - Small Scale Fruit and Vegetable Processing: UC Davis

CE Specialist - Subtropical Fruit Crop IPM:UC Riverside

Round 2 (Spring/Summer 2017)

CE Advisor - Area Agronomy and Weed Management: Merced and Madera counties

CE Advisor - Area Forestry/Natural Resources: Plumas, Sierra and Lassen counties

CE Specialist - Forest Ecology/Silviculture: UC Berkeley

CE Specialist - Soil-Plant-Water Relations/Deficit Irrigation: UC Davis

Round 3 (Fall 2017)

CE Advisor - Area Urban Forestry/Natural Resources: Los Angeles and Orange counties

CE Advisor - Area 4-H Youth Development: Shasta, Trinity and Tehama counties

CE Specialist - Water Resources Economics and Policy: UC Riverside

CE Specialist - Citrus Horticulture: UC Riverside/Lindcove REC

Round 4 (Winter 2018)

CE Advisor - Area Orchard Systems: San Joaquin County and Northern San Joaquin Valley

CE Advisor - Vegetable Crops: Kern County

CE Specialist - Orchard Systems, Southern San Joaquin Valley: UC Davis/Kearney REC

CE Specialist - Sheep and Goat Herd Health and Production: UC Davis

Round 5 (Spring/Summer 2018)

CE Advisor - Area Livestock/Natural Resources: Tuolumne, El Dorado, Amador and Calaveras counties

CE Advisor - Area Rice Farming Systems: Butte and Glenn counties

CE Advisor - Area Specialty Crops: Contra Costa, Alameda and west San Joaquin counties

CE Specialist - Feedlot Management: UC Davis/Desert REC

CE Specialist - Economics of Sustainable Agriculture Management: UC Davis

 

UC archivist begins curating UC Cooperative Extension history

Going back to 1917, farm advisors in Merced County wrote meticulous weekly logs, documenting the number of miles they drove, the farmers they met, the phone calls they took and the trainings they held.

“It is a wealth of information about their activities, and I think it will be a really great resource for research,” said Lisa Vallen, a professional archivist who is working in the UC Merced library under a memorandum of understanding with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The logs, plus annual reports and a collection of photos dating back to 1916 are among the first documents that Vallen will review as she embarks on a year-long pilot project to curate and preserve the history of UC Cooperative Extension.

A native of the Midwest, Vallen earned a bachelor's degree at Lake Forest College and a master's degree in library and information sciences from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).  While completing her graduate degree, she worked on preserving the UIUC library physical collection, digitizing theses and dissertations and processing a collection of author H. G. Wells' personal correspondence, publishers' correspondence, and other printed materials.

Vallen wrote about her experience with the H.G. Wells material on the UIUC Non Solus Blog. She quoted a letter written by Wells in 1945 to his brother Frederick about his frustration at not being credited for predicting the atomic bomb 30 years before it was dropped during World War II.

“I'm all right & everything misses me. I explained the inevitableness of the atomic bomb half a century ago & it is rather infuriating to have all these journalistic halfwits explaining that here's something Mr. Wells did not foresee,” the letter said.

Vallen has also written about the challenge of digitizing old, brittle publications in an effort to provide a usable surrogate for books that can no longer circulate due to their fragility.

“In many cases, we hold the only copy of record and it is incredibly important for this copy to be preserved and readily accessible to our users,” Vallen wrote in the UIUC Preservation Every Day Blog.

In her UC Cooperative Extension work, Vallen found that Merced County office has 393 cubic feet of historical items, totaling about 164,000 in number. There are photographs for which copyright must be established, publications that may already be digitized by UC ANR or UC Davis, weather and climate data, and plant and insect specimens that may or may not have historical value.

“First we'll be going through and identifying materials, arranging the materials, recording metadata, such as date, author and title to create descriptions,” Vallen said. “And then we can begin digitizing.”

UCCE in Ventura County is also part of the pilot. Vallen said the county office has 700 photographs dating from 1916 to the 1950s, and many are mounted on cards with hand-written captions.

“Photos on their own are great, but when they come with context, it has additional value,” she said.

Humboldt County UCCE historical items will round out Vallen's work under the current MOU, but staff and academics at all UCCE offices are encouraged to locate historical materials for preservation, including annual reports, project summaries and raw data.

“They don't have to do anything with it, just hold onto the material they have,” Vallen said. “Even if they think something isn't historical or I wouldn't be interested, I'd still like for them to hang on to it until I have a chance to view it.”

Urban UCCE academics invited to policy workshop

Cooperative Extension advisors and specialists who work in urban or metropolitan communities are invited to a policy workshop in Sacramento on Dec. 1 and 2.

The Western Center for Metropolitan Extension and Research Policy Workshop will meet Tuesday, Dec. 1, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Wednesday, Dec. 2, 8:30 a.m. to noon, with an optional Applied Skill Building workshop at 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The workshop will be held at the University of California Policy Center at 1130 K Street, Suite LL22, in Sacramento.

Participants will learn how policy is made at the local, regional and state levels, and how policy impacts system change.

Presenters will discuss how governmental systems are organized, what makes good policy and how to use science in policy development. They will provide local examples of policy development. In the optional two-hour session on Wednesday afternoon, the group will engage in hands-on exercises.

The workshop runs concurrently with the National Urban Extension Leaders Meeting.
 
Registration is $125 for UC ANR members. To register or for more information, visit

http://ucanr.edu/sites/NUELPolicy. The event lodging discount at the Sheraton Grand Hotel has been extended to Nov. 6.

 

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