Last week at Program Council we had a presentation about the Graduate Students in Extension program that has been piloted at UC Berkeley. One of the successes of the pilot is that one of the participating graduate students was recently hired as a CE Specialist at UC Berkeley. Luke Macaulay, now in the ESPM Department at UCB just finished a AAAS Fellowship in DC at USDA's Foreign Ag Service. I'm looking forward to hearing how the Fellowship has helped him hit the ground running in his CE Specialist position. And I am looking forward to meeting Luke when I am at UCB on Friday to talk about the work groups of UC ANR academics have been doing to develop public value statements and condition changes that lead to achieving the 2025 Strategic Vision.
The group that identified the proposed condition changes is currently seeking input from their colleagues and teams. The list, as it currently reads, will be posted on the strategic plan update page in the next day or so should you have feedback you would like to share. The best way to share that feedback is to contact the Program Team Leaders, Statewide Program and Institute Directors, or any of the Strategic Initiative Leaders.
I've been working with a group to develop a proposal for filling leadership positions that will be vacant as of October 1. The group now has a proposal in front of Glenda. In addition, we have shared the proposal with County Directors and REC Directors for their feedback. We started by identifying goals for UC ANR – what were things we sought to improve and how those goals might be achieved through strategic development of the positions. I was fortunate to have a creative group around the table; one that recognizes the needs across the division and can think broadly on how to achieve those needs. A group that was willing to challenge ideas for the sake of leading to improved decision making. The challenge we faced was that in developing the proposal we identified a list of desired outcomes that may very well exceed the capacity of the FTE available – sound familiar?
Tomorrow I have a chance to talk about the leadership proposal and the condition changes with the County Directors where I anticipate good ideas on how to improve both. Then it's off to Ventura County for the day and a few meetings of various topics before heading to UCB on Friday.
I haven't had a chance to think about next week yet but I do know that I need to complete a galley proof on a manuscript yet this week. Why is it that those things always have a 3-day turnaround time yet never arrive in the email on Thursday when we can steal another day to complete?