You should see my weekend ‘to-do' list. I haven't even thought about adding in anything related to personal obligations, tasks or preparations! I've never been one for homework but I need to buckle down this weekend and get my homework done. Now that we live in an electronic age, there's no using ‘the dog ate it' excuse.
Today I am off to visit Merced and Mariposa County UCCE offices! I'm looking forward to seeing Scott and Russell as well as their teams and learning more about their programs. I drove down to Merced last night after a full day at VP Council. We spent quite a bit of time talking about to communicate better across the division so that we are all better equipped to tell our story and feel more connected as a division. It's a challenge when you consider how diverse and dispersed UC ANR is across California. At the same time, there is such a large leadership group in UC ANR (senior leaders, unit directors, county directors, REC directors, SWP leaders, SI leaders, Institute leaders, supervisors, others I likely missed) that if we all owned a piece of it, we can connect across and throughout the division.
Connection was a theme for the week it seems. On Wednesday the President's Advisory Commission on Agriculture and Natural Resources met in Emeryville and we talked about connecting with stakeholders and decision makers across the state. We can do that through special projects (The VINE), through advocacy efforts, through direct programming to clientele, and many other ways. It comes down to messaging. Of course there's the listening aspect, too.
Tuesday Senior Leadership Team (SLT) met for a couple hours and discussed measuring our success in achieving 2025 Strategic Vision through implementation of the strategic plan. Part of my homework is before daybreak today is to finish my review of metrics for my goals and convey the plan for measuring (what, how, timestep). Overall it was a big week of presenting for John Fox as his goals were a focus of both VP Council and SLT. Hence the thread throughout the week of connecting people.
Congratulations to Jennifer Sowerwine for her FFAR award! She clearly connected with a group pull together a competitive partnership. Read more about her project to strengthen urban agriculture systems.
Next week there's the last minute rush before people are gone for some R&R. I need to finalize some appointments and get some announcements out about the appointments and an endowed chair opportunity. Then there's some responses to send out that are overdue and a couple of exciting opportunities to pursue on behalf of UC ANR including tying up some loose ends on a few. Overall a Nice list though it doesn't quite feel that way right now.
I need to stop going to the Davis office so early in the morning. It is very cold in the office until the heat comes on sometime after 7 AM. Despite winter, the leaf blowers are still running right outside my window beginning at 7 AM on Tuesdays. Beats listening to a plow and the noise is predictable. You'd think by now I would know enough to schedule around it!
As I drove past Turlock yesterday I was just sort of passing familiar places. Places I have seen for decades when I would come to California to work in the area of air quality and dairy management. Then it sort of struck me that this is now ‘home'. Still a bit surreal, thrilling, and strange all at the same time. At the end of the day, home isn't really about geography but belonging and connections. As a result, I will re-prioritize that to-do list a bit. Have a good weekend.