1. Welcome and introductions - Chris Sieverdes welcomed committee members. He announced that Ernie Hughes had resigned as CRD PL Chair and that we would have to elect new officers. The following were in attendance: Gae Broadwater, Jeff Alwang, Greg Taylor, Harry Strawn, Rick Maurer, Mike Woods, Chris Sieverdes, Dan McLemore, Clark Garland, Sandy Dooley, Bonnie Teater, Warren McCord, Joe McGilberry and Hank Cothran.

Jeff Alwang discussed programs and activities going on at Virginia Tech.

2. Minutes from the December conference call were approved. Gae corrected the spelling of Ed Jones last name. Harry Strawn moved approval. Clark Garland seconded. The minutes were approved as amended.
3. Chris Sieverdes suggested that in line with past practice, when replacing a committee chair, the vice chair move to chair, the secretary to chair and a new secretary be elected. That process would move Chris to Chair, Gae Broadwater to vice-chair. Hank Cothran had agreed to serve as secretary. Mike Woods moved nominations be closed, Greg Taylor seconded, and the named individuals were elected.
4. There were no mid-year advisor reports. Rick Maurer reported that there is an effort underway to hire a regional director at large. This position will support and facilitate multi-state programs and work to identify and seek extramural grant fund. This is a five-year program commitment by the southern directors.
5. Bonnie Teater gave an overview of the SRDC annual report.

See attached "Year in Review" power point presentation.

She also reported on the Strategic Planning process and outlined the new mission and goals and priorities of the SRDC. All of this can be found on the SRDC website.

SRDC has $20,000 to support a 6-month sabbatical that would focus on one of the five goals. In addition, funding has been made available from experiment station directors to fund a "senior follows" program.

1. Rick Maurer gave a report from the PLC. The August meeting has been scheduled for August 26 - 29, in Savannah. The meeting theme is "Building Quality Communities of Tomorrow, Today." He also reported on the ECOP PLC. One of the main purposes of ECOP PLC is to review base programs and national initiatives. The base teams will be meeting again in April. The CR & ED base team is collecting programs of excellence. There is a web site (www.cesprograms.org) where this material can be submitted. Currently 30 programs have been submitted and are going through a review and approval process.

Another general issue being discussed is the changing role of all the partners. A general discussion of base team membership ensued.

2. Margaret Hale reported that a concern of the SRDC Board of Directors: enhancing communication between SRDC and state directors. As curriculum is developed and training is offered, a "train the trainer" component needs to be incorporated so that when participants return from training, they can offer relevant training in their state. Where appropriate, some sort of "master volunteer" component needs to be incorporated. Look at existing curriculum to see what can be implemented on a timelier basis. Look at sharing curriculum and the availability of speakers to come to states.

In the general discussion that followed her presentation, the question was raised as to what curriculum we have that can/should be offered to other program areas for in-service training. It was generally agreed that much if not all of what we do in communities should be offered as in-service for all agents.

6. Review and refinement of the CD curriculum packages

Bonnie discussed generally the need to coordinate, integrate and distribute the variety of curriculums that are available in the southern region. Margaret Hale is on a committee to deal with this. One approach is to compile a list of curricula and identify the experts so that these folks can be brought into individual states rather than sending folks out of state to regional/national training.

1. Community Development Institute - Bonnie distributed the 2001 CDI brochure. The program will be held in New Braunfels, Texas, this year. They are still looking for instructors for two portions of the program, Building Civic Engagement and Engaging New Audiences. Enrollment is limited to 40. A discussion is being held with University of Georgia relative to an advanced community development institute program.
2. Sustainable Development - Bonnie distributed brochures from the October conference. Chris noted the need for research and curriculum in this area. Feedback from southern directors has been very positive.
3. Business Retention and Expansion - Mike Wood and Chris Sieverdes handed out material discussing both a BRE Visitation approach (Chris) and a comprehensive approach to economic development CARE for Health Communities (Mike). These two handouts were presented and discussed. Long term, we need to identify programs in each of the states, available curriculum and faculty in the states that are available to provide training. Where curriculum does not exist, we should seek to develop it.
4. Health Institute - Rick Maurer reports on the SERA Southern Rural Health Institute. Twenty-six people attended this program and another institute has been scheduled for this fall. It will be held in conjunction with the North Central Region. The audience for this training is county faculty, or new state specialists, that want to expand their expertise to include rural health issues.
5. Conflict Resolution/Public Issues Management - Bonnie reported Steve Smutko and Run Hustedde have developed that curriculum. It is in production.
6. Nonprofit Education - Chris reported that a notebook curriculum would be completed in February.
7. Citizen Engagement - Five faculty will be attending the Chicago meeting to explore this in February. This is a train the trainer workshop.
8. Entrepreneurship: Home and Micro Business Development - Curriculum is available on CD Rom.
9. Workforce Development - Curriculum needs to be developed.

 

7. Working Sessions on Community Development programs

Working sessions- the committee divided into three groups to identify curriculum availability/needs in the following areas:

Sustainable Development

BRE/Workforce Development

Non-profit Education

8. Report from working sessions - each work group reported back
1. Sustainable Development - see end of minutes
2. BRE - see end of minutes
3. Non-profit Education - see end of minutes

Follow-up for BRE and Non-profit education will be to "flesh-out" the outlines and then submit the curriculum list for distribution to states to seek to identify existing curriculum. Respondents will be asked to provide the following information about their curriculum:

Goal/purpose

Intended audience

Scope

Length of training

Any special considerations

Time frame - end of March for states/specialists to respond

From this we can identify curriculum gaps and solicit individuals to develop the needed curriculum.

The sustainable development outline needs to be submitted to the work-group for further review.

9. The next conference call is Friday, March 30, 2001 at 10:00 a.m. EST (9:00 a.m. CST). Calls are every other month on the last working day of the month. Calls will be in March, May and July and will discontinue during the summer.
10. The next joint Program Leaders' Conference report is August 26 - 29 in Savannah (see item 5b).
11. Joint 2002 Meeting with North Central Committee - If they are going to meet in our region, then some or all of us may want to attend. It was noted that the 2002 SAS meetings are in Orlando and that we might add our meeting to the end of that meeting just as we did this year. At this point, there is no consensus on holding a joint meeting, however if the meeting can be pared with something such as the SAS meeting, it is something to pursue.

 

Chris Sieverdes (SC), Bonnie Teater (SRDC), Greg Taylor (TX), Rick Maurer (KY), Joe McGilberry (MS), Hank Cothran (FL), Clark Garland (TN), Sandy Dooley (LA), Harry Strawn (AL), Jeff Alwang (VA), and Gae Broadwater (KY)

Chris reconvened the meeting at 8:00 a.m. and the conversation followed before the curriculum working groups resumed their work.

Curriculum Committees

The Sustainable Development Conference Committee will be holding a conference call next Monday. Rick will prepare notes from the Sustainable Development curriculum working group for this group as well as the conference committee.

Gae will work with Rick and the curriculum committee to identify resource persons throughout all the regions that can work on the Living Sustainably section.

Chris asked those present about the need to look for money. How do we want to address this? Greg noted that there is strong emphasis on multi-state programming.

Individuals then returned to their curriculum teams for 45 minutes.

The teams presented reports:

Sustainable Communities

(Reported by Rick)

• Identify existing curriculum resources and gaps
• Make this a PLC effort, not just CRD
• Have something available to present at August meeting including time on agenda
• Make action item from Dir/Adm regarding strategies for implementing, follow-up, and support for learning what has happened
• Move to web-based central point for this work
• Prepare brochure that would outline themes, web resources, purposes, etc. for every county office

BR&E / Workforce

(Reported by Jeff)

• Discussed how to proceed with BR&E
• Will send out outline presented day before for comments to the group then to a broader group
• Will pull Workforce out as a separate consideration
• Goal to have completed these steps by March 30 conference call
• Will inquire as to what is currently existing in system

Bonnie asked that if possible, offer as an agenda "action item" to the Southern Dir/Adm meeting.

Nonprofit & Volunteer Boards & Councils

(Reported by Chris)

• Marketing-promotional piece,
• Emphasis on quality of content
• CDI-like notebook / CD Rom--Fact Sheets, Web links, handouts, lecture notes, references
• Best Practices and Myths
• Will involve others and seek collaborators
• Work schedule-will initiate work in Feb and continue thru March-core information to be assembled by end of March
• Will look to other non-profits (Girl Scouts, Community Action, etc), Housing Authorities and other quasi-governmental agencies, and Land Grant/Extension programs for existing curricula
• Consider it as a certification program

 

State Reports

There is Livable Communities initiative in Kentucky. A CD program associate has been hired for several months to support this effort. Additionally, one county is preparing to hire a CRD agent.

Texas decided to have a shared county-district CRD position. This allows for flexibility in offering an attractive salary.

Mississippi hired an agent for CRD and lost him when he was offered double the salary.

NASA will likely be funding some GIS initiatives.

Virginia Tech also has a NASA project that involves engineering, ag econ, and urban affairs. This will simulate models of traffic corridors and ag, environmental, and economic impacts. Various community/age groups will be included in a participatory process to develop this effort.

For the first time in 25 years, Louisiana will have 5 parrish-area CRDs.

The Red River corridor will undergo economic and community development assessment.

Alabama has an intensive economic development course. Now they are working to get it certified as a basic course. They are working in partnership with the Auburn Economic Development Institute and are trying to get graduate credit for some enrolled in the course.

South Carolina is still doing community leadership programs and has reached 32 of 46 counties.

Resolution

Chris offered the following:

The Southern Extension Community Development Program Leaders extend to CLARK GARLAND of Tennessee, their appreciation and congratulations on his service to this committee. He has been the ultimate team contributor and reliable support of Extension Community and Economic Development in his state and in the Southern Region.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 9:50.

Addendums and Attachments

Defining Sustainable Development (Rick Maurer)

Kettering Foundation Issues Booklet, So. Growth Policies Board material

Specific/Basic/Core Tools

Conflict management - will be available from SRDC

Civic participation - NCRCRD workshop in February - Greg Taylor

will attend

Asset mapping/asset based development - Bo B. and SRDC material

Stakeholder analysis - Smutko power point from conference

Demographic analysis - SRDC web is start, census data,states getting ready for new census

Leadership development - Clemson and Auburn materials, others?

 

6 Themes:

1. Creating community - Citizen engagement (NCRCRD), Southern Community Development Institute workshop and materials

2. Growing a sustainable economy - Business retention and expansion, entrepreneurship projects, workforce development materials and programs from 4-H/YD and FCS?

3. Governing sustainably - Understanding our publics (old), community planning and citizen politics in states, region?, local government official training programs?, perhaps civic engagement again, collaboration programs?

4. Exploring smart growth - GIS, landscape architecture projects like at conference, spatial technology and remote sensing programs in states?, urban landscape and urban forestry programs?

5. Protecting natural resources - NREM base team web site and materials, Natural Resources Leadership Institute, youth natural resources programs?, water quality and 401 materials?

6. Living sustainably - So Health Institute, Rural health works program (Okla State), FCS/FDM/EFNEP approach?

We need to continue to identify other existing curriculum that helps fill in the gaps, and to identify other gaps for which additional material is needed.

We will present this outline as an action item to directors and administrators, as follow-up resources from the Nashville conference. We will also use the August So PLC meeting as a deadline to present this outline during a general session of the PLC meeting.

Please send comments and suggestions for revision.

Richard C. Maurer
Assistant Extension Director
Rural and Economic Development Programs
500 Garrigus Bldg.
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40546-0215
Phone: 859.257.7582
Fax: 859.257.1164
Email: rmaurer@ca.uky.edu