I hope everyone had a good weekend, enjoying Juneteenth, Father's Day, and the summer solstice.
Summer solstice – the end to increasing day length. It also marks the anniversary of my start date at UC ANR. I have now completed four years with UC ANR. No need to send lavish gifts; I'm sure Tu and Glenda have that covered. Likewise, keep any hate mail to yourselves. The anniversary represents a need to renew my required training and my annual review with myself.
In addition to training renewals, this year, I added the UC six-part implicit bias training to my learning management system (LMS) dashboard. I would recommend the training. Not only is it useful, but there is no penalty for reading quickly. During the first session, I found the Stroop test to be particularly insightful, irrespective of the fact that I did poorly on the Color-Word test. I knew that cows drank water, but I responded that the white part of the egg was the yolk. At least I didn't spell it 'yoke.' I consider the surface area question a trick because it was not specified that we only consider the tabletop. I'll get over that by the end of the week. In a later session, session 4, perhaps, I learned that I have a slight affinity for SoCal. The SoCal photos were more likely to include water, and water is my preference. Overall, I would recommend the training to everyone. It is three hours of learning that can help pave a different future if you choose to look at it from that perspective.
Last week ended with good news on the DACA decision and the Supreme Court LGBTQ ruling earlier in the week. We didn't gain much clarity on the UC ANR budget. What I do know is that when UC ANR's budget is not increased in step with campus increases, we can't treat UC ANR academics, including those CE Specialists that are campus-based, like campus academics. I continue to be amazed at how prestigious the UC system is, despite the class structure permeating throughout the system. I can't help but wonder how much stronger we could be if that class structure were absent.
Here are some other things I reflected on during my annual review with myself:
- We will have greater success by not relying on state and federal funding sources to pave our future. If we wait to have final budget numbers to plan this year and our future, we are behind. The past decades are evident that current support for higher education, including Cooperative Extension, is not what it was 40+ years ago.
- We have the power to control our future, and it takes work to put that power to use. Collectively and collaboratively, we can make this work.
- We have to be bold in our actions. We've laid the foundation in our efforts to augment our state funds. While earlier this year it appeared the work would pay off, life interfered. However, the foundation remains to act on a different game plan, one that jumps, not crawls, towards our future.
- Everyone has a role in bold change. Like implicit bias, leadership can't just say 'we won't tolerate,' and it suddenly disappears. It takes everyone, headed in the same direction, to make change happen and stick.
Imagine what we can accomplish together!
I participated in a Friday morning webinar about the future of our food system. I'll share more on the conversation in my next post. It, too, spoke to the need for change to redirect the charted course.