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4-H & Families
UC ANR campaigns to prevent food waste
March 5 - 9, 2018, is California's inaugural Food Waste Prevention Week. During this week, UC ANR and a range of partners statewide, including the Governor, the Secretary of Agriculture, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, as well as many other agency leaders in public health, natural resources management, nutrition, and other sectors, are coming together in an unprecedented collaboration to raise awareness about the impacts of food waste in our homes, workplaces and communities.
Food waste is a significant issue. The United States is losing up to 40 percent of its food from farm to fork to landfill. That translates to $218 billion lost, including costs of food to consumers and retailers, as well as costs of wasted water, energy, fertilizer, cropland, production, storage and transportation. CalRecycle estimates that Californians throw away almost 12 billion pounds of food each year – 18 percent of all landfill use in this state. The food in landfills decomposes and releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas linked to climate change.
Reducing food waste requires action by partners throughout the food system. During Food Waste Prevention Week, stay tuned to the UC ANR Twitter and Facebook accounts for food waste prevention resources, tips and ideas. Even incorporating a few simple food waste prevention actions has great potential to reduce food waste in California. Your efforts to be a Food Waste Reduction Hero this week, and into the future, will make an impact.
Nominations open for staff assembly leadership
The Staff Assembly Council currently consists of a chair, a vice chair/treasurer, a scribe, a program chair, a senior Council of University of California Staff Assemblies (CUCSA) delegate and a junior CUCSA delegate.
ANR staff members are being sought to serve in the posts of junior CUCSA delegate, vice chair, program chair (s) and scribe. Candidates can be self-nominated or nominated by someone else.
Matt Baur is currently chairing the nominating committee, which conducts the elections and will communicate the results of the elections at the Staff Assembly Networking function at the ANR Statewide meeting in Ontario in April. In addition to Baur, the nominating committee includes two UC ANR Staff Assembly members at large.
Nominations for positions on the Staff Assembly Council will take place from March 1 through March 9. Voting will be by survey and will take place March 19 through March 30.
The duties of the positions can be found on the Staff Assembly website http://staffassembly.ucanr.edu under the “Bylaws” tab. In short, the vice chair/treasurer drafts annual budgets, the scribe takes meeting minutes, program chair develops programs and meetings, and the Junior CUCSA representative attends quarterly CUCSA meetings and participates in CUCSA workgroups. All members of the council assist with committee responsibilities and committee assignments as needed. The council meets monthly by zoom and has in-person meetings once or twice a year.
If you have additional questions, please contact your local staff assembly ambassador.
In memoriam: Rick Melnicoe
Melnicoe was the first director of the Western Integrated Pest Management Center, launching the project at UC Davis in the early 2000s when the regional IPM centers were just getting off the ground. He had served as western regional coordinator for the Pesticide Impact Assessment Program and assistant to the UC IPM director since 1991. He also oversaw the Office of Pesticide Information and Coordination.
In 2011, UC Davis awarded Melnicoe a Citation of Excellence for supervision. The nomination noted that as a model of a can-do attitude and approach, Melnicoe encouraged others to aim high and stretch.
“When he retired in 2012, the Western IPM Center was an important and valued partner in integrated pest management in the West and across the country, and much of that was due to Rick,” Steve Elliott, communication coordinator for the center, wrote in the Western IPM Center newsletter.
“You could count on him to try to move past difficult things and to get people to try to move forward together," said Jim VanKirk, former director of the Southern IPM Center. "If there were 300 million people like Rick in this country, we would be a lot better off.”
A celebration of Melnicoe's life will be held in June, according to his obituary in the Sacramento Bee.
Read more about Melnicoe in Elliott's blog post at http://ipmwest.blogspot.com/2018/02/remembering-former-center-director-rick.html
Market-based adjustment plan for staff salaries enters second year
Attracting and retaining highly qualified employees is a top priority for UC ANR. To be more competitive among many diverse employment markets, UC ANR has developed a plan to address the competitiveness of our staff salaries.
As part of UC ANR's overall Strategic Plan, VP Glenda Humiston approved a four-year Market-based Adjustment Plan for non-represented staff to ensure salaries of existing staff are better aligned with the labor market. This is the second year of the four-year plan.
All non-represented staff are eligible to participate in this plan, regardless of their position's funding source. For some staff members whose compensation has fallen behind market rates, the Division is making a significant effort to address this issue, as long as it is fiscally viable and prudent to do so.
Using UC Career Tracks, UC ANR Human Resources will be able to identify, review and address the salaries of non-represented staff members whose pay is not in the targeted competitive zone. This strategy is being implemented over four years, which will allow us to better manage the fiscal impact of the salary adjustments.
Eligible employees will be notified individually within the next few weeks. These market-based adjustments are separate and distinct from any merit program approved centrally by President Napolitano.
For more information, please read the FAQs at http://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRSPU/Supervisor_Resources/Compensation/Equity_.
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.”
