Southern Region Program Leadership Network

November 30, 2006

Present:

Nina Boston, Information Technology, University of Arkansas
Mike Bratcher, Information Technology, North Carolina A&T State University
Gae Broadwater, Community Development, Kentucky State University
Paul Coreil, ASRED Advisor, Louisiana State University
Nelson Daniels, PLC Chair-Elect, Agriculture and Natural Resources, Prairie View A&M University
Frankie Gould, Communications, Louisiana State University
Beverly Howell, Family and Consumer Sciences, Mississippi State University
Lamar Nichols, 4-H Youth Development, Auburn University
Paul Mask, Ag and Natural Resources, Auburn University
Gloria Mosby, Communications, Prairie View A&M University
Jon Ort, ASRED Appointee, North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service
Mitch Owen, Program & Staff Dev., North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service
Thelma Sanders-Hunter, PLC Chair, Family & Consumer Sciences, Tennessee State University
Joe Schaefer, Middle Management, University of Florida
Ellen Smoak, Middle Managers, North Carolina A&T University
Dorothy Wilson, 4-H Youth Development, FCS, CRD, Langston University
Tony Windham, Community Development, University of Arkansas

Ex-Officio:

Ron Brown, ASRED
Kathy Ibendahl, SRDC
L Washington Lyons, AEA

Absent:

Gina Eubanks, AEA Advisor, Southern University Cooperative Extension
Ray McKinnie, AEA Appointee, North Carolina A&T State University

Welcome and Roll Call

Nina Boston welcomed everyone to the PLC Mid-Year Meeting that is being held for the first time on Centra. All have done wonderfully with the Centra practices. She gave some initial instructions. There have been a few technical problems, but they are being resolved.

Advisors' report

Paul Coriel, ASRED Advisor

He thanked everyone for being brave enough to use the Centra system. They've been using it at LSU. It can been intimidating, but he feels it is a good move for this group.

An exciting conference is taking place this week at LSU. The housing community of practice is meeting there for two days for NASCULC and eXtension.

We have up to over 20 communities of practice developing web-based information for the eXtension program.

LSU folks, internally, have launched Horse Quest and family financial management communities of practice recently. Great work is being done on these communities of practice. The contributor agreement (property agreement) has caused some concern within each institution. Dan Cotton is addressing concerns and questions via a Q & A and responding to memos of questions and concerns. Updates are coming almost daily. Please be patient with it.

We had an excellent meeting in Puerto Rico and he complimented the PLN committees on the hard work they've done and he appreciates the commitment to the work that needs to be done. It was difficult to function as usual with the news of Larry Turner's death, but Paul appreciated how everyone continued with their work.

Please stay close to the push to enhance urban extension programs around the country. There are some institutions that are pushing for the creation of an urban extension program approach. We want to make sure people understand that we are working in this area. The NC and Southern regions sent a letter to the president of NASCULC to communicate the urban innovative programs we've been doing and how we are set up to meet these needs.

Jon Ort, ASRED Appointee

A change has been made with regard to the Farm Foundation public policy training. The national public education conference was held in late September. Attendance has been declining. At that meeting, it was decided to discontinue the current structure of the National Policy Education Committee and the National Public Policy conference and organize a new public policies institute that would help revitalize the Extension system. An institute will be organized as a program of the Farm Foundation. There has been no better time to educate our faculty in public policy education and training and we should encourage our leaders and faculty to become more involved.

Ron Brown, ASRED

A couple of major activities above what Jon and Paul reported.ASRED is partnering with other organizations. This came out at our August meeting. Other organizations have heard that we've had budget cuts, but they may not know that we still can provide service to them. ASRED identified those organizations and faculty are planning to go visit with executives and enhance partnerships with those important organizations. Those visits will be made in early 2007.

ASRED has been working with CSREES to increase Extension's participation in the national research initiative integrated programs. ASRED is taking the 2007 RFA priorities and rewriting those to make them more open to Extension. The goal is to have integrated activities that Extension can lead rather than being a small a part of. We have their attention and we think it will be well received.

L. Washington Lyons, AEA

AEA held its fall meeting during NASULGC in Houston, TX. There, AEA recognized its outgoing chair, Dr. Noland Williams of Kentucky State University, and welcomed its new chair, Dr. Ray McKinney, who will serve for a minimum of two years. Dr. McKinney was unable to attend this meeting today; however, he will join us for future meetings.

The government is still under a continued resolution on the federal budget and we may go into a new year under this resolution. If we do not get a 2007 budget passed, we will lose the $100,000 EFNEP funding progress we have made and will have to start again to get the language in the appropriation bill. We are hoping we'll get a budget passed by Congress.

We continue to meet regarding CREATE21 and the farm bill committee. A conference call was held yesterday. Language is being developed for CREATE21 and questions are still being addressed.

At NASCULG, ECOP presented the first 1890 Excellence in Extension Award. Dr. Irene Lee of the University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff received this new annual award. This was exciting and he congratulated the other award winners as well.

1890 Extension had an opportunity to participate, along with 1890 teaching and research representatives, on a panel at the Secretary of Agriculture's National Agriculture Research and Extension (NARE) advisory board meeting in October. There they discussed concerns and challenges in training 1890 research and extension along with funding issues. This was a very good meeting and hopefully the secretary will give consideration to these requests.

AEA will hold its next meeting January 30 - Feb 2, 2007 in Las Vegas. Chairs and vice chairs of the 1890 program teams will be meeting with AEA. This is an annual event where the chairs and vice chairs have an opportunity to discuss challenges and opportunities that the administrators may help address.

AEA is working on its summer meeting hosted at Southern University. It will be held in June. Specific dates have yet to be announced.

PLN Annual August Meeting

Logistics

We have not had an opportunity for the planning committee to meet yet, but we will do so in the near future. Kathy reported that the August meeting will be held at the Marriott Downtown Louisville. The hotel contract has been signed. The room rates are $119 a night single and double. There are not as many taxes and fees as there were in Puerto Rico. The Marriott has a lot of meeting space and will be able to accommodate our group nicely. She has been in touch with Paul Warner at the University of Kentucky and Gae Broadwater at Kentucky State University and they are excited about "hosting" us in Kentucky, although we are no longer requiring states to "host" us per se. They are looking into possible pre-meeting tours. In terms of logistics, we are set to go.

Meeting Theme

Nina provided a list of topics that were brought up in the evaluations for the group to review and consider for meeting themes. We need to find a topic that will be applicable to all programs and as successful as our last topic.

1). CECP

2). Urban Programming

3). Environment - biofuels, global warming

4). Leadership training:

CREATE 21, cultivation of resources
Resource cultivation

Comments:

Gloria - Would like to see us continue the crisis management theme.

Frankie - Thought the crisis management issue made the meeting one of the best we've had in a long time and would like to see some continuation of it. LSU has been developing business continuity plans for parishes, counties, partnerships, etc. This has been a wonderful educational opportunity and she feels it's worth pursuing.

Paul Coriel - Topic idea: NRI grant focus to make help us gain grant dollars.

Ron Brown - There is an activity in the NC region that relates to what Paul said. The have picked some key areas and developed multi-institutional plans using a logical framework and gearing up to be more competitive in these integrated programs using the logical framework that CSREES is requesting.

Mitch - There may be a compliment of what we face in urban programming and how the rural climate is changing. For example, the change in 4-H programming to deal with h.s. graduation. How do we build strong, integrated programs?

The committee voted on theme ideas to open further discussion.

Programming Challenges. Urban and shifting rural programming (7 votes)
Crisis Communications Next Steps: Business Continuity (4 votes)
Exploring new funding opportunities for integrated programs (CREATE 21, NC Model, NRI grant generation) (7 votes)
CECP

The committee decided that this August's meeting theme will be "building new resource support and urban opportunities." Resource funding will be our priority and we will integrate urban programming under it.

Program Committee

Members of the program committee are Nina, Mitch, Gloria, Kathy, Ron, and L. Washington. Let us know if you would like to contribute. That would be wonderful.

Speaker

Any wonderful speaker ideas? Please send names of people with similar speaker abilities as Vincent Covello.

We will include a 15 - 20 minute update on CECP in our program. CECP has a meeting soon and has a draft with eXtension to join the eXtension infrastructure. This is a big step that will save us a lot of money. We'll have the server and all the support we need to operate CECP as an internal Community of Practice.

Committee Reports

ANR Paul Mask - Our committee has not met this quarter. Nelson Daniels - There are a couple of groups trying to decide what we can do as a community of practice that will work with CECP or eXtension. The Ag Quality Community of Practice will be meeting next week at Tuskeegee,.

COMM Frankie Gould - The Communications Committee met on October 11th. They reviewed the plan of work and the modules in progress. The copyright module has been reviewed. Ashley Wood is in the process of completing the Newsletter module. In PR, Communications worked on Rules for Writing and the training workshop is being reviewed. They focused heavily on crisis communication modules in PR and have a fairly good outline. Frankie and Ashley are working on that module.

The digital photography module is being developed as is the media relations module. The committees hopes that these modules will be complete in October 2007. Several meetings will be held before the August meeting.

The Extension directors, JCEP, ACE, and other organizations will be hearing about the ESOP marketing and communications task force that met in Chicago a couple of weeks ago. Frankie was a part of this group. They met for a day and a half and came up with goals, target audiences and next steps. A review of the results will be going to the Extension administrators and directors in February. They will meet again in March to continue the work on a nation-wide basis.
eXtension will be a part of this communications and marketing plan. Dan Cotton is on the committee.

CD Tony Windham - CRD has a conference call scheduled for tomorrow morning. Gae Broadwater - Several of us are here in Jacksonville this week working on the Entreprenuership community of practice. Some leaders are getting ready for NACDEP where they will be presenting a soft roll out of the community of practice.

A question arose about the eXtension copyright agreement that was sent to the institutions. Gae addressed this and said the date it is due has been changed to some time in January. There is a lot of heartburn about the agreement, but it basically allows the faculty member to retain the right to the material but allow it to be in the eXtension system.

Mitch said this will be a continual challenge to understand and explain the intellectual property issues. We need to be prepared to deal with it.
Frankie said that she and Dr. Coreil is having their university legal counsel and the wording could possibly be rewritten and made clearer. It is hoped that the eXtension people will make the agreement clearer to help people to understand copyright issues. Nina asked that those who are working on these issues keep the rest of us informed.

FCS Beverly Howell. About four members participated in the NASULGC meetings and provided a voice to the Human Sciences group. Dr. Irene Lee of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff was the 1890 Region Regional Award Recipient of the Excellence in Extension and Diversity Awards. The next FCS conference call will be held in January.

Thelma Sanders-Hunter - Reported on a recent call in which it was made clear that there is a need for people to be educated in home safety, finances, and obesity issues. FCS will have three conference calls prior to the August meeting.

4-H Lamar Nicols - 4-H had its quarterly conference call October 12^th. They discussed what happened at the PLN meeting in August and heard CECP updates, national level changes, a national council update from Susan Holder, and an update concerning communications. The 4-H Leadership Trust is no longer the communications link and the program committee is working to establish communications that are more effective. The committee set its 2007 meeting schedule.
Dorothy Wilson - In March, we will be having a 4-H national program leaders meeting.

IT Nina - IT has not met since October, but the committee is working with eXtension's Wiki to edit a survey that will be used to help people self-evaluate their technical skills. That information will help us know what training is needed to prepare people for disasters. They should have it ready before the August conference.

IT continues to work with its USDA contact to have more interaction at the next meeting.

MM Joe Schaefer - The Middle Managers are going to have a conference call in the near future.

PSD Mitch Owen - PSD will have its next teleconference on December 12^th and it will be a major planning meeting to plan what needs to be accomplished before Louisville.

Mike Lambert will be joining the eXtension team as the evaluator. He was our representative on the CECP steering committee and they are not sure if he will continue in this capacity.

Major Projects: 1) Evaluation of CECP approved by the directors in PR. We will be starting that process. 2) Integrate what we have been done at the SEAL conference. Merging those two for one conference.

Gae Broadwater added that the 1890 CRD program team will produce a series of quarterly briefs. The first one in will be out in January and will highlight 1890 programming and resources available on the topic of leadership.

Nina thanked everyone for giving Centra a try. Please give her your feedback and let her know if there is anything we can do to improve on this and if you want to continue hosting meetings this way. Mitch thanked Nina for hosting this via Centra and congratulated her on a fine job.

Submitted by Kathy Ibendahl, SRDC