Congratulations to Georgios Vidalakis who has been named the Citrus Research Board Presidential Researcher for Sustainable Citrus Clonal Protection. This is all the result of the generosity of the Citrus Research Board in providing the endowment that was then match by the UC President! What this all means is that Georgios will have more funding to carry out the great work he does!
In other good news, ZoAtopia (a combination of 2 of the teams that participated in a November Ideation workshop that UC ANR held with eXtension) recently attended an eXtension Impact Collaborative and walked away with an invitation to apply for a $5000 grant to bring new capacity to your project. If that's not enough, the team had the second highest score at the LaunchFest, and won additional consulting support to launch their project. Team members that attended the Atlanta Impact Collaborative included Shane Feirer, Vanity Campbell, John Bailey, and Megan Marotta. Feel free to contact any of the group to learn more about their project. Congratulations ZoAtopia!
I continue to learn about more artists among us. After learning about Ricardo's talent last week, I had a chance to see some of the work from the son of our newest CE Specialist. What amazing talent! As someone who can't draw two straight lines, I am in awe. That's a fairly common sentiment as I make my way around the division, learning about the academic and non-academic talents of the UC ANR team. While I have completed my first review of this year's merit and promotion documents, I have 5 in my Inbox now from other institutions (2 advancement to full professor, 1 advancement to associate professor, and 2 CE Advisor advancements to full title). I won't get to those right away though they are a good opportunity to learn something.
I spoke to someone last week who shared with me that the perks of his position was that he 1) learned new things regularly, 2) often was challenged by something, and 3) was frequently able to help someone with their problem. The perfect day was one where all three of those scenarios occurred. As many of you know, I track how I use my time every day (just my work time). I've decided to add those three items to my daily routine. Now, in addition to recording what I did and how long I spent on various tasks, I will check a box if I learned something, if I was challenged by something, and if I helped someone. These are great metrics. It will be interesting to see how the time is categorized on those days when all three boxes are checked and compare that to how time is spent on days when no boxes are checked.
Don't forget about Big Dig Day! Normally in June I focus on The Longest Day. I've added Big Dig Day to my list of ‘dates to remember'. Here's hoping Riverside County counts us in for the Big Dig.