Teleconference of Southern Region FCS-PL's started shortly after 9:00 am on January 4 with Chair Kathy Volanty presiding. Others present were:

	Alabama
	Arkansas	Sarah Anderson
	Florida	Nayda Torres
	Georgia
	Kentucky	Bonnie Tanner
	Louisiana
	Mississippi	Beverly Howell
	North Carolina
	Oklahoma	Linda Harriman
	Puerto Rico
	South Carolina	Diane Smathers
	Tennessee	Shirley Hastings
	Texas	Kathy Volanty, Carolyn Nobles
	Virgin Islands
	Virginia
	West Virginia

Carolyn Nobles and Sarah Anderson reported from PLC. They reported a productive meeting in Nashville. The August Southern Region Meeting will be in Nashville August 25-28, 2002 at the Embassy Suites - Airport. Theme will be on Electronic Technology and Extension. Suggestions to cut down general session times and increase committee meeting times has been achieved. Each state will be asked to participate in a resource fair to exhibit how technology is being used to reach target audiences. A reception will be held in conjunction with exhibits in lieu of State's Night Out.

Sarah Anderson requested Kathy Volanty to contact Ron Brown about why the minutes were not posted. She said Dr. Foster and Dr. Brown were assuming that the FCS PL's were not doing anything because they were not posted. She indicated that she and Carolyn did not know what to tell them.

Shirley Hastings reported on the National Association of Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. A big topic of informal conversation seemed to be budgets, as a lot of budgets were being cut. Formal session were focused on the new Farm Bill. Attendance seemed a little lower than usual.

Linda Harriman asked Shirley if she had heard about Ellen Fitzsimmons making overtures to Health and Human Service for possible available funding. Linda related that the Board of Human Sciences Extension Outreach Committee made recommendations to ECOP was to implement a task force to determine ways to increase funding for the EFNEP program. The Task Force has just been appointed. Nancy Bull (Connecticut) and Mary Gray (Colorado) will co-chair the task force.

Sarah indicated that a group was functioning to increase funding for diabetes education. The group is approaching Directors to solicit their help.

Linda Harriman related that the National 4-H Council has secured $400,000 from the J.C. Penny Foundation in a partnership to support 4-H after school programs. The first year's money will be used to fund a committee that will develop an after-school 4-H curriculum. The second year funds will be used to fund pilot sites throughout the country. Kentucky 4-H received an after-school program grant from the Department of Education. 21^st Century money for parenting education, nutrition education, life skills education, will be block granted through state departments of education. A meeting was held in Florida in December for state departments of education to learn how much is available and how it was to be used.

Bonnie Tanner reported FNS working in summer feeding programs. After school programs can get money for feeding youth when school is not in session. "Summer" is now any time that school is not in session.

Carolyn Nobles reported that a task force has been appointed by Dr. David Foster to look at PLC to determine if PLC was still accomplishing it's mission. The task force will be meeting in March. Carolyn will be reporting back to us. Groups will also meet in March to start planning the August Conference. It may be recommend that the Committee Chairs also attend the planning meeting.

It is still the wish of the FCS Committee to invite Ron Brown to visit our committee during the August meeting. We would like for him to address the interest in developing competency based training for the Southern Region. It was recommend that the FCS PL's bring a report of any state activity in competency based education to share at the August Conference.

Kathy reminded the committee that a small task force of FCS PL's had been appointed at the Savannah Conference (Linda Harriman, Shirley Hastings, Sandy Zaslow, Kathy Volanty) to look at how we would develop FCS competencies, particularly after accountability indicators had been identified. A phone conference for the committee was recommended. Kathy will email Linda, Shirley and Sandy for conference call dates.

Linda Harriman reported on the Plan of Work Analysis Committee (chaired by Mary Gray) that has been divided into six topical subcommittees. Gina Eubanks and Linda Harriman have chaired the subcommittee on child care. The subcommittees are coming up with a national set of outcome indicators for the six areas - food safety, nutrition, parenting, child care, environment, and . The child care sub-committee will be sharing their work with specialists at the national meeting of family life educators (March). Linda's group is also working on an instrument. Judy Myers Waldon (Indiana) is providing leadership. States will be asked to pilot instrument. The instrument will be consistent with National Child Care Initiative's instrument. Hopefully it will be coming out to state leaders this year. ECOP is aware and supportive.

Employment: Arkansas is about to announce a new gerontology position. They have experienced a large number of retirements as a result of an early out. Mississippi reports that design team has submitted a final report. Report will be reviewed. Mississippi experience a 14% budget cut last year, and preliminary budget projections are not good. They report that 50% of their workforce has less than seven years experience. Texas Legislature has also projected a shortfall. Arkansas is anticipating cuts during the second year of the biennium. Kentucky has experienced a 2% shortfall, but have not yet had to deal with it in their budget.

Bonnie posed the question as to how are we to prepare new specialists to do their jobs? How to put together an educational program, the skills of teaching. She suggested orientation training by the Southern Rural Development Center on how to teach a specialist to be a specialist. This would be a good topic for August Conference.

Florida has a mentoring program for specialists as well as a roles and responsibilities publication for specialists. She will share her publication with other program leaders. Specialists and county faculty will be required to attend orientation training and do inservice training.

Arkansas has implemented a new employee orientation for secretaries, agents, specialists and administration. All will attend the same orientation. Kentucky is getting ready to announce a new training opportunity.

Specialist training/orientation will be a topic for future discussion and possible inclusion in August Southern Region Meeting.

Announcements of Upcoming Meetings/Activities:

• Diane Smathers reminded everyone about the roll-out conference for the Financial Security in Later Life initiative. March 20-22, 2002 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Dr. Nancy Porter will be providing leadership. Several people from Washington, national speaker to kick off conference. Break-out sessions to discuss implementation. States have been requested to bring teams. Preliminary has been sent. Registration has not been mailed at this time, but the CSREES website is up with registration information.
• Nayda Torres reminded everyone of the CYFAR 2002 Conference in New Orleans at the Hilton Riverside. May 29-31, 2002.
• Texas Cooperative Extension reported getting a signed contract and proposal approval in December for the FSNEP program. Arkansas 1862 reported withdrawing their proposal for the current year, but 1890 did get an approved contract and is continuing with the FFNEWS program. Prairie View did not submit a proposal to FNS, but did get funding from Texas Coordinating Board Minority Health Outreach Program.

Notes:

Linda Harriman was congratulated for receiving the Distinguished Service Award from American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Next teleconference: April 5, 2002 9:00am CST
Recommended that we get a briefing from Tennessee on the Pharmacy Project. Shirley Hastings will lead the discussion.

Adjournment at 10:00am CST