Posts Tagged: directors

Apply for WEDA Awards of Excellence for outstanding outreach

Applications are being sought for the Western Extension Directors Association (WEDA) Awards of Excellence. This award recognizes Cooperative Extension outreach education programming that has achieved outstanding accomplishments, results and impacts in addressing contemporary issues in one or more of the 13 states and four territories in the western region. It is anticipated that recipients of the award will include mature programs with documented impacts.

The WEDA Award of Excellence may be given to a total of three programs that represent the work of an individual or multidisciplinary team within a single or multistate/territory setting. If warranted, at least one of the three awards will be given to a multistate/territory program. 

Applications may be submitted to WEDA only by Extension Directors. In California, Vice President Glenda Humiston will submit the applications.

Anyone in UC ANR may recommend potential awardees by completing and submitting an application package. Self-nominations are appropriate. All UC ANR applications must be submitted to WEDA by Humiston to be accepted for consideration.

Humiston may submit up to two program submissions per year. Therefore, an internal application process will be used. All applications for the internal competition must be submitted to Mark Bell, vice provost of strategic initiatives and statewide programs, at mozbell@ucanr.edu on or before February 20, 2018, using a specific format, see attached.

Previous WEDA Award of Excellence winning programs cannot be resubmitted. Programs nominated for WEDA Awards of Excellence but not selected can be resubmitted for future consideration, including those recognized as Honorable Mention.

Please see the attached guidelines for preparing an application package. For more information, contact Bell directly at (530) 750-1288 or mozbell@ucanr.edu.

Given the strength of UC ANR programs throughout the state, I suspect California will be very competitive again this year. This is a great opportunity to have your efforts recognized!

Wendy Powers
Associate Vice President

View or leave comments for ANR Leadership at http://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRUpdate/Comments.

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

ANR forms CD Council

ANR has formed a County Director Council in order to provide an efficient means to identify issues and gather information on matters of importance to Cooperative Extension prior to wider discussion and gathering of input. The council will provide county director perspective on:

• development of policies and procedures
• identification of training needs
• issues and topics to be addressed in monthly county director calls/meetings
• future ANR resource allocation processes

In addition, the council members will be responsible for communicating with their county director and advisor colleagues to gather information, vetting approaches to issues and assisting in distribution of information.

The inaugural council members are:

• Chris Greer
• Greg Giusti
• David Lile
• Valerie Mellano
• Keith Nathaniel
• Jim Sullins

Bill Frost

Director, Research & Extension Center System
Associate Director, Cooperative Extension & Agricultural Experiment Station

View or leave comments for the Executive Working Group.

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

Leadership notes about collaboration, budget and communication posted

An ANR leadership meeting was held June 28 at the UC Davis Activities & Recreation Center. In addition to the Executive Working Group, Strategic Initiative leaders, executive associate deans, county directors, statewide program directors, REC directors, and unit directors attended.

Dan Dooley, Barbara Allen-Diaz, Kay Harrison Taber, Bill Frost, Bob Sams and Don Klingborg gave updates on ANR’s budget and restructuring efforts that have been completed or are under way.

For the majority of the meeting, the participants formed break out groups to discuss four questions and brainstorm answers.

The four questions were:

1. How do we as ANR’s leadership catalyze the development of internal partnerships across the continuum and prevent silos from forming?
2. What changes not mentioned this morning do we need to consider to help preserve more of our budget for hiring positions?
3. Beyond the ANR Report and our weekly email updates, what can we do to more effectively communicate with you, ANR’s leadership team, and with the whole of ANR?
4. How do we better support you in your role of communicating with others in and outside of ANR?  What roles does each of us play in telling our story to achieve awareness, understanding and support?

Group responses from the brainstorm session were recorded by facilitators and are now posted at http://ucanr.org/files/117046.pdf. These brainstorming comments will be used to further develop and refine the Division's structure, procedures and communication practices.

View or leave comments for the Executive Working Group

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

Nominations sought for county structure task forces

ANR is forming task forces to evaluate UC Cooperative Extension structure in the counties. Cooperative Extension advisors and county-based program representatives are being asked to nominate one person per county to join the county director for their respective county on a county structure task force. The deadline for nominations is Friday, May 20.

The county structure task forces will be charged with collecting the data on staffing, facilities, transportation, information technology and administration for their county CE programs, including funding from UC, county government, grants and other sources. This information will be organized and will serve as the basis for evaluating our future structure of local delivery. The task forces will be organized around counties with historical affinities, and in some cases from declarations by the counties that they want to pursue a multi-county partnership within the grouping. The ultimate structure of our county programs will be informed from evaluation of the data provided by these task forces and other study groups within ANR.

The county groupings for each task force are as follows:

• Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara
• Butte, Tehama, Glenn, Sutter, Colusa, Yuba
• Fresno, Madera, Tulare, Kings, Kern
• Humboldt, Del Norte, Mendocino, Lake
• Marin, Sonoma, Napa
• Imperial, San Diego, Riverside
• Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino
• Mariposa, Merced, Stanislaus, San Joaquin
• Modoc, Siskiyou, Shasta, Trinity
• Monterey, San Benito, Santa Cruz
• Placer-Nevada, Sacramento, Yolo, Solano
• San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura

Each task force charge will be finalized and communicated as soon as the task force members have been identified.

View or leave comments for the Executive Working Group

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

County partnerships and UC Cooperative Extension

Dear Colleagues,

Across California, county governments continue to face a funding crisis.  Last year, many local budgets were balanced with the help of one-time federal stimulus money. This year, the major difference between those counties that are “stable” versus those that are facing huge deficits is the use of any available contingency funds.  Indicators suggest next year will be an even bigger challenge for our county partners and will directly impact our county programs.

Some of us hope that economic recovery is in our immediate future and that we will return to the early 1980s when Extension was at its peak in funding and political support. Others are convinced that we must chart a new course, and that the future requires change to prepare for the opportunities that will exist given new economic, social and political realities.

While a number of our counties that faced major county budget cuts or complete elimination have been rescued by hard work from county directors, advisors, program reps, staff, supporters and with ANR support, we believe that the evidence pointing to continuing funding issues for California counties and to the need for new partnership models is overwhelming and that we must move quickly.

As we move forward, we are working to implement county models that will deliver the relevant, high-quality programs that define UC Cooperative Extension, stabilize funding, maximize resources going to programs and deliver essential long-term savings to the counties and UC. A multiple-county administrative partnership changes the funding dialog and will make our programs more competitive for UC, county and other funding.

Following our meeting with county directors in Davis last June, we have presented this concept to county administrative officers or their representatives from Calaveras and neighboring El Dorado, Amador and Tuolumne counties. The concept was well-received and discussions continue. After publication of local news stories about the preliminary meeting, we received e-mail from some people expressing concern about 4-H, Master Gardener and the nutrition programs. We have assured them that the plan is designed to retain and enhance programs. In addition, we are happy to report that about half the e-mail received has been positive – thanking us for looking hard at ways to save administratively, focus resources on programs, and build a stable model for UC Cooperative Extension.

Our Cooperative Extension program is a statewide system that brings the research and education power of the University of California to people in their local communities. While we are a sum of our parts, there is an essential synergy by being a system that is even more important now as we serve a demand for research and education larger than our resources.  A functional system requires viable programs across the state.

Even as we wrestle with the challenges facing California counties, the future is very bright for an evolved Cooperative Extension and, at the time of this writing, we anticipate investing in hiring the largest group of county advisors and campus specialists in many decades. By any assessment, we will have been extraordinarily successful if, in the near term, we can build advisor numbers toward the 300 level with a proportional increase in specialist positions.

The decisions associated with identifying, prioritizing and allocating these resources must be fundamentally different than “backfilling position vacancies” that have occurred since we were 500 or even 300 advisors strong. Doing the hard work to strategically define and place them to meet current and future needs will help us grow even more in the long-term, and placing them into multiple-county administrative units maximizes their visibility and potential impact on our stakeholders.

Over the next several months, we will explore the benefits and costs of restructuring CE in counties that are interested in strengthening their partnership with UC and with their sister counties facing similar issues. California has changed and as a statewide program we will adapt in order to serve it well in the future.

Dan Dooley, Senior Vice President
Don Klingborg, Director, Strategic Advocacy & UC-County Partnerships

View or leave comments for the Executive Working Group

This announcement is also posted and archived on the ANR Update pages.

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