Spring forward, fall back
Program Council met this last week. We had another installment on the great work being done in the fire space throughout UC. Keep in mind our focus was on fire prevention both in areas with structures and wildlands. I scoured quite a few websites prior to the meeting. There are some incredible programs across UC that can be collaborators with UC ANR. The Fire Foundry is has “amazing partnerships” to “increase access to sustainable wage careers in the fire services for women and people of color currently underrepresented in the sector”. There are opportunities for the individuals in this program to work in Cooperative Extension in their careers. Berkeley also has the Fire Research Laboratory, the Center for Fire Research and Outreach at Berkeley Forests, Forest Research and Outreach, Wildland Fire Research and of course UC ANR fire website. This is just a flash in the impactful work being done across UC in fire research.
Kudos to Jing Yu, Director of Financial Services and Interim Controller, Jennifer Bunge, Executive Director of Resource Planning and Management, Tu Tran, Associate Vice President of Finance and Katherine Webb-Martinez, Program Planning and Evaluation and everyone who worked the last many months on our NIFA Audit. Financial review occurred on four grants from 2014 to 2018 from a variety of federal funding streams including Hatch Research, Smith Lever capacity awards, AFRI and Crop Protection and Pest Management. Non-federal matching funds associated with the Hatch and Smith Lever capacity awards were reviewed. Every academic plays a part in documenting how funds are spent through effort reporting and through annual contributions to Project Board. Your input is used for our USDA and other reporting needs. A total of 31,000 ledger entries were reviewed and 45 samples were selected for further testing. Findings were presented at our Compliance Review Virtual meeting. Among the USDA NIFA team we met with the Deputy Director, Office of Grants and Financial Management, National Program Leaders, and numerous others associated with financial management. The NIFA staff were very impressed with how our programs are organized and aligned with our condition changes and public values statements. It was an exciting interaction. Thank you to everyone who participated with the audit process. It takes a village!
Speaking of Project Board, many ANR academics participated in Project Board training this last week spearheaded by Kit Alviz and Chris Hanson. Project Board is how we collect programmatic information to compile annual impact stories, county and campus reports and ad hoc queries. It's also used to complete UC ANR's contributions to the UC annual accountability report, sustainability report, Office of the President budget reports and other ad hoc requests. This information is used for our USDA Federal reporting needs.
Trees are changing colors and dropping leaves. Flowers are at the end of their season. We just fell back out of daylight savings time. And our cycle continues.
