I arrived in Burlington, VT (think Stowe, the Von Trapp family and Ben & Jerry's ice cream) this afternoon to attend the National Extension Director Association annual meeting. The fall colors are far from spectacular but peak color won't be for another two weeks this year. I grew up not far from here so I know that some years October 1 would be closer to peak time no such luck this time. Note this is also my excuse for not having a photo. Given the timing of peak color, it is unlikely any of the ski resorts will be open in time for Halloween this year but soon enough it will be time to welcome the 2018 ski season.
For now, we are excited to welcome Randi Black and Brooke Latack to UC ANR! Both start tomorrow. Randi is an Assistant CE Advisor in Area Dairy Systems, headquartered in Santa Rosa, with programmatic responsibilities in Sonoma, Marin and Mendocino Counties. Brooke is an Assistant Cooperative Extension Advisor, Area Desert Livestock Advisor, headquartered in Holtville, Ca with programmatic activities in Imperial, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. Please welcome both new additions. I hope to meet Randi and Brooke at the upcoming New Academic Orientation in mid-October.
In the meantime, I need to prepare for the meeting this week. The Tuesday afternoon session focuses on 'Communicating the Impact and Value of Extension' – sound familiar? UC ANR is not alone in working on this. NIFA is part of the conversation as well as states across the US work to help get the message out about the importance of the work that Extension professionals do and, simultaneously, develop a mechanism for those Extension professionals convey the societal benefits of their work. No doubt a large portion of our conversation this week will address condition changes and the indicators. The timing of the conversation is completely coincidental with our own work within UC ANR, though not surprising given the need, nationally, for better messaging of Extension impacts to the public. What's different, perhaps, is the driver. A number of land grants are facing budget challenges of a magnitude greater than that faced by UC, at present. While those institutions may be looking at sharing impacts as a means to maintain budgets, we are looking at is as part of what might parallel an adaptive management approach to resources (conceptualize, plan, do, analyze, learn) – we have conceptualized the Vision, planned the Strategic Initiatives as a result of the 2025 Strategic Vision. The Strategic Initiatives have been a means to pull people together across program areas and/or audiences. Now we need to analyze how we are progressing towards achieving the Vision and the condition changes are a means of doing this that break the Strategic Initiatives down into societal changes. After we analyze our progress we learn from the information and adapt our plan by determining where gaps in reaching the Vision may exist and directing resources towards filling the gaps.
The timing of this really good in that we are now looking at proposed revisions to the current draft of the condition changes. I'll keep you posted what comes out of the conversation.