Members in attendance:

Chris Sieverdes
Alan Barefield
Hank Cothran
Harry Strawn
Bonnie Teater
Bo Beaulieu
Virgil Culver MSU
Mike Wood
Gregg Taylor
Sally Maggard

1. Meeting Called to order 10:05.

2. Minutes from May meeting were approved.

Bo
Harry second

3. SRDC Southern Institute for Rural Development - update by Bo.

• Program scheduled for November 5 - 8 in Athens. Primary focus is on ED and Community Engagement. Not as in-depth as hoped, but may serve as vehicle for future advanced CDIs
  • Ideal audience
  • Planning district staff
  • USDA Rural Development
  • State Rural Development
  • Extension
• CRED: Strengthening Communities - Conference next February in Orlando
  • Virgil - A planning meeting in Memphis to organize. Bonnie handled local details. Maximum of 200 participants. Request for proposals was sent across the country. Thirty proposals submitted thus far, none from the south. Need abstracts by August 31. Looking for curricula that folks can take back home with them. You can submit material that was done at CDI (just condensed). Opportunity to "reconnect" across regions and across the country.

• Call for sabbatical proposals. No takers. Senior fellows - 4 responses. Decision to be made soon.

• Bo reported on upcoming Southern rural health regional program scheduled for October 14-19 in Kentucky.

• Working on a Workforce Development Conference Sept 17-18 in Louisville.

• Oct 1-2 in Nashville - Beth Duncan will lead an eCommerce conference. This will be a "train the trainer" conference. States are encouraged to bring teams to the conference so that they can return and train agents.

• Several folks are working on a competitive grants program that will bring together the Ag and CRD folks to work on sustainable ag and community development. Looking for integrated community development activities. Chris suggested adding this item to the September meeting. Bo, this is going to be for "grass roots" people, not academics.

4. PLC Report

PLC chair and vice chairs meeting at 5 p.m. on Sunday. Ron Brown is going to meet with us at 1 p.m. at our first committee meeting. He is the new ASRED regional executive director. Margaret Hale will meet with us immediately after Ron. Margaret is coming to talk about multi-state train the trainer efforts. A proposal was sent to CRD leaders about a month ago. Chris - we want a meeting with the Ag Program leaders at the PLC meeting. We need to identify where CRD folks are collaborating with other program areas (i.e., CRD and Family/Youth. Bonnie - are there any CRD multi-state agreements? Chris, we are linking through SRDC. The Sunday meeting is on multi-state collaboration.

5. Sally Maggard - February meeting

We are looking for support from ECS to help us plan out what the future is going to look like for the base program. What comes out of Savannah needs to be incorporated/presented in Orlando (Chris).

6. Other

• Chris (in a shameless self promotion) reported that the Palmetto Leadership Program was presented with the Outstanding Leadership Program by the Association of Leadership Educators at its Minnesota meeting.
• Sally talked briefly about the status of the Federal budget. Currently there is a recommended increase for our programs.

7. Meeting adjourned at 10:50 p.m.