2008 PSD Highlights

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3. Briefly describe your program highlights for 2008

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Arkansas

Department Organization - In 2008, the Extension Program and Staff Development Department was in the process of merging with the UA-Fayetteville’s Department of Agricultural and Extension Education (AEE). After a number of interdepartmental meetings between PSD and AEE faculty and the hiring of a new AEE department head, an administrative decision was made to not merge the two departments. The Extension PSD Department will remain solely an Extension department.

Faculty Leadership Program - Since the 2007 PLN meeting, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service Faculty participated in seminars Four through Seven and a national study tour. Seminar Four in July was on the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville Campus focused on oral communication and teaching skills. Seminar Five at University of Arkansas Community College at Hope examined crisis and organizational communication, working effectively with advisory leaders, and ethical leadership. Seminar Six, held at the Lon Mann Cotton Research Station in Marianna, addressed grant writing and fund development. The final Seminar for the class was conducted at the U of A Winthrop Rockefeller Center on Petit Jean Mountain. The seminar dealt with program evaluation and effective personnel management. The national study tour to Washington, D.C. included site visits to CSREES, USDA, NASULGC, Farm Bureau, the University of Maryland Extension and legislative visits on Capitol Hill. In April 2008, 14 FLP class members concluded program with a special graduation event. This is the third class that has completed the program. The fourth Faculty Leadership Program class is currently being recruited. The selection process will begin in October and the new class will begin in January 2009.

Supervisor Training - In May, 25 County Extension Agents – Staff Chairs participated in a one day Supervisor Training. The training, conducted by Karen Ballard and Allisen Penn, was designed to help supervisors build their capacity for effectively dealing with conflict and staff relations and to provide them with alternative methods for team development and conflict management. Prior to the training, the staff chairs completed an online True Colors assessment and during the training the staff chairs were given an extensive True Colors report. Their True Colors results were used as a basis for understanding staff relations and managing.

New Employee Orientation - New Employee Orientation (NEO) was conducted in October 2007 and May 2008 for 57 Extension faculty and staff. The one day orientation includes an administrative welcome, an overview of all the program areas by upper level administrators, a tour of the state office and an overview of benefits with time for question and answers. As part of NEO, the Information Technology department has an online training module. Since NEO is limited in score, faculty and CEA’s are encouraged to register for the Filling Your Extension Toolbox In-Service, which focuses on process skills Extension professionals need to be successful educators.

Developing Leadership in Agricultural Organizations Course - Allisen Penn taught a graduate leadership course during the Fall 2007 semester, Developing Leadership in Agricultural Organizations, through the Agricultural and Extension Education Department at the UA-Fayetteville campus.

Extension Support Staff In-Service - Support Staff In-Service training was conducted in April, 2008. One hundred eighteen classified support staff participated in the two-day training. Classes included topics related to management, technical and personal development skills needed by classified support staff.

Small Group Mentoring - A group of three to four agents in each of the three Extension Districts is participating in small group mentoring sessions. The purpose of the mentoring sessions is to provide less experienced agents peer support, as well as support from an experience, non-administrative professional. Each group has identified three to four topics or areas in which they need the most help. These areas include working with advisory committees and key stakeholders, time management, program planning, program evaluation and reporting, working with volunteers and professional confidence (teaching, networking and image). The groups began meeting in June and Allisen Penn meets with each group about once a month.

Strengthening Extension Advisory Leaders (SEAL) - Allisen Penn serves on the SEAL planning committee, which is in the process of planning a conference in North Carolina, May 19 – 21, 2009. She is also on the Empowering Volunteers writing team, which is charged with developing three lessons for the 2008 SEAL curriculum and for presenting the lessons during the concurrent sessions.

“Effective Online Course Design” - A 3-day online course collaboratively designed, developed and taught by Lisa Ferris, University of Arkansas, and Susanna Coppernoll, Texas A&M. The course was taught via Centra and Moodle at pdc.extension.org. The class was taken by 12 participants from 6 Extension organizations and one from National 4-H Council.

“Presentation Skills for Extension Educators” - Lisa Ferris completed the development of this online course piloted with Arkansas county Extension agents and implemented through pdc.extension.org.

“Southern Extension History” - Lisa Ferris collaborated with Randol Waters, University of Tennessee, to develop this online course implemented through pdc.extension.org.

“Organizing 4-H Clubs” - Lisa Ferris and 4-H pecialists developed an online course that won the 2008 Silver Award (2nd place) for Educational, Non-Credit courses from the Association for Communication Excellence.

Educational Delivery Methods Lab - Lisa Ferris taught this laboratory section for UA AGED college students teaching them how to develop courses in Moodle, January 2008

Extension Educator Process Skills In-Service Training Course - In December, PSD faculty and staff developed and taught the second session of the Filling Your Extension Toolbox in-service training for new/relatively new Extension educators dealing with educational process skills. The in-service course was designed to incorporate both the week-long face-to-face learning experience and an additional eight hours of Web-based learning experiences utilizing Arkansas Extension’s “Educator” on-line learning platform. Nineteen Extension educators successfully completed the course.

Facilitation Skills In-Service Training - Planned and conducted a Group Facilitation Skills In-Service Training on facilitation theory, skills needed by facilitators and common group facilitation methods. Fifteen Extension educators completed the in-service.

UofA Division of Agriculture Biofuels Conference Facilitation - Organized and trained a team of faculty facilitators to facilitate small group discussion sessions at a conference addressing future directions for the Division related to biofuels.

Extension FCS Department Strategic Planning Process Facilitation - Provided facilitation services for a multi-session strategic planning process for the Extension FCS department.

Financial Security for All Community of Practice Evaluation - As a member of the Financial Security for All Evaluation Team, Rich Poling helped develop an evaluation plan and matrix for FSA materials offered through eXtension.

Extension Program Planning and Accountability System Revisions - Modified the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture program planning and accountability system to better parallel the CSREES planning and reporting system. The system went from 23 planned program areas in FY 2008 to 11 program areas for FY 2009. Efforts included training sessions for administrators and program team leaders. Assistance was provided to program teams and specialist contacts to merge programs and re-write plans of work.

Extension Continuing Education Credit Programs - Four new programs were certified to be eligible to award continuing education units (CEU) credits for participants in those programs.

Online Evaluation Resources - Karen Ballard developed web-based evaluation training modules and resource materials for CES faculty.

Southern Region Program and Staff Development Conference Session - University of Arkansas PSD faculty planned and coordinated a best practices sharing session, “Using Learning Technology to Train Extension Personnel” at the 2008 Southern Region PSD Conference in Atlanta.

Alabama

Continued to work on the online New Employee Orientation. The content is on the ACES Intranet and includes links to forms, information on topics such as development, policies and procedures, communications, information technology, and other basic content, and links to PowerPoint interviews with the administrative and program team members. Facilitated two 30-minute Connect sessions early in the year: one session provided employee benefits information and the other session highlighted Program Development resources. Conducted a two-day Leadership Challenge workshop.

Florida

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Georgia

Extension Training System,database for training proposals, registration, transcripts, etc., is now in a 2nd version including addition of an Extension calendar which posts training proposals entered in the system. There were 32 county agents hired during the last year.

A New faculty activity reporting system has been implemented at the University level which will impact the College and Extension reporting. Implementation plans are in the works for this transitioin.

Kentucky

Reporting – More Focused with “Featured Programs” Although we are still reporting workdays by subject matter, contacts by race, gender, adult and youth, as well as individual agent impact reports, we have initiated a more focused approach to reporting on Kentucky’s “Featured Programs”. The twelve Featured Programs are selected by the Program Directors for the four major program areas of ANR, FCS, 4-H and CED and are identified as programs which are offered in a significant number of counties and have a somewhat standardized curriculum. Topics include: Horse College, Weight the Reality Series, Grain Crops Academy, LEAP – Literacy, Eating and Activity for Preschool, Master Grazer, Small Steps to Health and Wealth, Innovative Tobacco Grower Program, Agritourism, 4-H GIS/GPS, Exploring My Pyramid With Professor Popcorn, 4-H Jump Into Foods and Fitness, 4-H Speeches and Demonstrations, A program can hold “featured program” status for two years. If the evaluation of a program’s impact is consistent over both years, we know the kind of outcomes that program generates and therefore, we only need to identify which counties are offering the program and the number of participants for future reporting. Agents played a role in determining the program impact questions they would respond to at the end of the program year which include both participation numbers as well as practices adopted or behavioral changes by participants. Values can be assigned to these practice changes by Extension Specialists. Since all counties participating in these featured programs will answer standardized questions, we now have a better opportunity to document statewide impact. Career Ladder - Kentucky’s four level Career Ladder is now fully funded and is paying dividends in terms of agents returning to school for advanced degrees and paying more attention to the time and quality of in-service trainings. The Career Ladder has put additional pressure on our organization to provide more opportunities for Masters Degrees which are Extension Agent appropriate and to put these classes and degree programs on-line in order to make them more available to agents. Compensation for completing a Master’s Degree, advancement up the career ladder and performance evaluation are still considered as separate achievements compensated separately. Even with no salary adjustments this year for UK faculty and staff, salary adjustments continue to be made for career ladder and completion of advanced degrees.

Louisiana

Faculty and Staff Development - The number of agents currently seeking advanced degrees, enrolling in the Specialization program and/or taking the required extension courses upon being hired increased dramatically since the fall of 2007. The goal of ODE's work in this area has been to continue to provide agents with the information they need to make sound professional development choices, primarily in the areas of advanced degrees and training, specialization and meeting educational requirements for promotion. We continue to send a "Welcome" letter to all new extension employees and schedule a time to visit with them one-on-one to discuss professional development opportunities available to them. During these individual consults, Extension's professional development requirements for promotion are explained in detail. We discuss the required courses, making application to graduate school, taking the GRE, career plans and degree options. Coordinating this effort this year has taken much more time due to the increase in numbers of new employees. In the fall of 2007 thirty-seven (37) individuals were enrolled in HRE 7122 (Extension Program Development taught by Dr. Richard) or HRE 7622 (Extension Program Evaluation taught by Dr. Machtmes), the two courses we require all new extension employees to take. By comparison, only 10 were enrolled in fall of 2006 and fifty (50) are already enrolled for fall of 2008. Class size is an issue and creative ways of handling the work load are being discussed among ODE faculty. The facilitation skills graduate class sylabus was revised, however due to lack of enrollment, the class did not make. However, application has been made to the LSU Courses and Curriculum Committee to assign a permanent number to the class. This application has been approved by SHREWD, the COA and is expected to be approved by the LSU Campus soon. It is anticipated that the course will have its own number in time to be entered into the course catalogue for spring 2009 courses. The course is again slated to be taught in the spring semester 2009. Four faculty members completed the specialization process this year--2 in youth development and 2 in nutrition, bringing the total completed to 105. Five (5) agents who recently completed masters degrees or new hires with masters degrees have been admitted to the the specialization program this year. Thus far, this program has resulted in an additional 1837 hours of advanced technical coursework for field faculty. One major challenge in this area continues to be working through issues with courses offered via distance education and getting people admitted into grad school and registered for classes in a timely manner. We are making some changes in the process for Distance Ed classes that should alleviate some of the challenges, but the coordination between LSU-BR, SHREWD and the AgCenter's DE unit still presents challenges.
In-service training - The large majority of the in-service training conducted this year has been on the topics of the LCES advisory leadership system, the Logic model, basic program development and personal accountability. Training has been conducted on an as-requested basis. As a result of this training, agents appear to have a better understanding of the importance of developing programs based on stakeholder input through advisory councils and a better understanding of the Extension program development process in general.
Program Development Significant time has been spent assisting parishes in developing an overall parish advisory council as it relates to the policy on extension advisory leadership councils in an attempt to strengthen local programming. ODE faculty members have been assigned as liasons to FCS and 4-H to provide support to statewide program development efforts. Debra Davis has spent significant time in the development, training and implementation of an FCS Client Database which will be used to record participants in FCS programs for the primary purpose of conducting statewide program evaluations. To date, nearly 4000 FCS clients have been entered in the database.
Other items of note:
• Developed, administered and analyzed numerous surveys for AgCenter faculty primarily using web-based software
• Planned, facilitated and evaluated various AgCenter meetings
• Members of the ODE faculty planned and conducted the 2007 AgCenter Annual Conference; serve on the CECP task force, on eXtension Institutional Team for AgCenter and as Administrative Advisor to Chi Epsilon Sigma (our support staff association); Davis serves as the Southern Region representative on the eXtension professional development community steering committee and as the state contact for the ECOP Excellence in Extension database project
Mississippi
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North Carolina
New Programs rolled out this year include:
• new Specialists Orientation Program
• Design and Facilitation of College Strategic Plan
• Media Training Team made up of Campus and Field Faculty

We also have partially rolled out a new One-Stop Information System that folds performance management, annual reporting, learning management, and promotion process together.

Oklahoma
Support and training of the professional staff, faculty, and clerical staff continues to be a top priority. In an effort to help support our newest, as well as our more seasoned members of the Extension family, the development and revisons of several areas have continued this year to include the following: A formal mentoring program where new educators are assigned a mentor for one year. A statewide New Extension Educator Orientation conference to meet and interact with administrators, specialists, support staff, and other new hires from across the state. We offer a variety of Professional Development in-service training opportunities including; state-wide County Extension Director training, state-wide county secretary training, state-wide OCES/DASNR conference, and a variety of subject matter and process skills for in-service training. The Career Ladder program and the Mentoring program are in the implementation and revision stage. A few revisions were made to the career ladder guidelines during the past year and the third round of portfolio submissions have been completed. This year mentors were assigned in a more expedient manner than in the initial year and more mentors were trained to accomodate the increasing number of new hires. A review committee of county educators and state specialists review the in-service training enrollment system annually with revisions made as appropriate. This year a select group of educators were utilized to review the in-service sessions in an effort to promote continued by-in and to identify areas that still needed subject matter and process skill training sesisons. The in-service enrollment process has been revamped to be more user-friendly and the in-service training management system will have a new look in 2009. Promotion efforts have been made to encourage state specialists and others to use alternative delivery methods for training such as Centra, CECP, conference calls, and video conference meetings, in an effort to reduce travel time and dollars.




Puerto Rico
Two major training meetings were held during this fiscal year. One of the training meetings was offered to the field personnel or agents on the electronic reporting system, in order to improve their reporting skills. The second training meeting was offered to the contact specialists on the guidelines for the preparation of the Federal Plan of Work and Annual Accomplishment Report.
South Carolina
New CUMIS Reporting System
• A new CUMIS reporting system was unveiled this year. All Extension employees were trained using Adobe Connect. As new employees are hired, they are trained using the Adobe Connect.
• WEAVE on-line is being used to collect information relevant for reports to the Governor and the Institutional Assessment Office. WEAVEonline® is a Web-base assessment management system that was developed by Virginia Commonwealth University and supports the SACS Standards for Accreditation. WEAVEonline® captures standard program-level assessment areas: mission, outcome/objectives, measures/findings, action plan and analysis. It has expanded capabilities in linking to larger institutional perspectives within each program’s outcomes/objectives.
• WEAVEonline® allows every department and unit at Clemson the opportunity to link to:General education competencies, Professional accreditation standards,
Institutional priorities (goals), Institutional and college strategic plans
• WEAVEonline® stands for Write expected outcomes/objectives, Establish criteria for success, Assess performance against criteria, View assessment results, Effect improvements through actions.
2008 PSA Conference
• The PSA Conference will be held December 8-12. A portion of that conference is planned for New Employee and Early Career Professional Development. There will be training to learn how to identify and build Extension’s public value. Dr. Laura Kalambokidis, University of Minnesota will be the guest presenter. Each program team will draft a statement of public value. In addition, faculty will report on exciting and relevant research that affects families and communities. Identifying available practical and relevant technology is also a focus of the conference. Extension Program Teams are coordinating subject matter training.
National Conferences
• The South Carolina Association of County Agricultural Agents received the bid to host the 2012 National Association Meeting in Charleston.
• Clemson University hosted the Extension Disaster Education Network Agro-security conference for 12 southern state extension services and supporting emergency response agencies.
Training
• New Agent Training is conducted as needed throughout the year. In addition, all other agents completed a web based assessment to identify training needs. Results were reported to Program Team Leaders for planning training.
Tennessee
Tennessee Extension has just completed the on-site portion of a federal Civil Rights Review. Among the positive findings cited in the exit review were the UT and TSU working relationship, and the portion of New Worker Orientation including the online Civil Rights Law Unit and face-to-face Diversity training.


Joseph Donaldson provides leadership for the USDA-CSREES Annual Accomplishment Report. The report received an excellent review, including these accolades:
• The number of recommendations for this report was at zero, down from one the previous year and five in 2002.
• The Extension program review process was viewed as “an excellent description of how the process was planned, criteria adopted, and program review implemented” by the USDA-CSREES review team.
• The review team stated “The described stakeholder input process is detailed, thorough, and achieves the desired high-quality results from the Federal and state perspective – a commendable process.” This work was based on Joseph Donaldson's management, analysis and interpretation of five data collections for statewide Extension strategic planning.
• A first for our state was the review team summary, “This is an excellent annual report and difficult to offer constructive criticism other then keep doing what you are doing.”
  

In addition Joseph Donaldson:

• worked with 12 state specialists in the review and rewrite of outcome indicators representing 15 topics.
• served as one of seven testers for USDA-CSREES One Solution software (Annual Plan and Plan of Work rollout).
• completed UT Extension Outreach Report and UT Extension Economic Development Report for UT Strategic Plan Scorecard. He served as a member of the University-wide committee on benchmarking and measuring the University's statewide outreach and economic development. See [1] for more information.
• mapped 80 data elements from SUPER to the UT Outreach and Engagement Measurement Instrument. John Toman uploaded the data successfully for this collection, a joint benchmarking project of the University of Tennessee and Michigan State University.
• provided 194 hours of statewide staff development reaching over 1,300 contacts with Extension professionals.
• served as a consultant on numerous county, multi-county and statewide projects for needs assessment, data analysis, instrumentation, evaluation and reporting. Activities included: (1) Statewide Fruit and Vegetable Integrated Research and Extension Initiative 2) Statewide "Before You Tie the Knot" Evaluation.
Texas
The Organizational Development Unit has had several significant accomplishments in the past year. Most notably was the re-design of our online accountability system. The focus of this effort was to make the system more user friendly and strengthen the reports and retrievals of data available through the system for accountability functions. Another major ongoing success is the redesign of our on-boarding process. Efforts are currently underway to provide a different experience for our new hires with less than three years of experience. A systematic process has also been developed and implemented in the area of emergency management. Texas is now better prepared to handle numerous kinds of emergency situations. Extension has been recognized as a key player in this process and now is a member of the Governor's Emergency Management Council. Finally, efforts are underway to develop an Executive Leadership Development Program with Extension. We also continue to move forward on our efforts in the use of volunteers and volunteer management.
Virginia
-Impact Reporting- The College of Ag and Life Sciences Dean and Extension Director continue to focus on the strong economic, environmental, and social impact reporting. Training and technical assistance continues with agents, specialists, district program leaders, and planned program teams. Specialists and teams have begun to develop impact report templates for statewide programs to aggregate data and streamline data collection and reporting. Guest lectures and presentations on impact reporting across the nation are frequently given by the unit’s faculty. -Program Evaluation- To improve program quality and impact reporting, faculty are searching for ways to improve program evaluation. Training and technical assistance continues with agents, specialists, district program leaders, planned program teams, and select volunteer groups. The goal is to build evaluation capacity and evaluative thinking in these audiences. Heather and Nancy also serve as officers of the Extension Education interest group of the American Evaluation Association and are presenting six sessions at AEA this year, including a pre-conference workshop on capacity building. -Programming Cycle- Work continues to phase in a consistent and systematic programming cycle for Extension programming at the state level across program areas. Nancy and Heather work with administration and program leaders to develop timelines, tasks, and tools for the internal audiences involved. -New Agent Professional Development Framework- Over 50% of VCE agents were hired in the last five years. A framework was developed and implemented to assist agents in gaining competencies for sustained and effective employment. A Scholar web site and related e-portfolio are being developed to help agents access resources and track personal progress. New faculty orientation is now held three times per year at VT and once per year at VSU, mentors are in place for new agents, and an orientation ring binder awaits each new agent on their start date. -Community DECISIONS- This interdisciplinary research, teaching, and Extension project focuses on community collaboration to plan watershed management. Heather serves as the program evaluator for the project. -How Farmers Learn Research- This Southern SARE research grant examined how farmers in Virginia prefer to learn and what that means for Extension work. Four focus groups were conducted with farmers and one with agents and specialists. An executive summary, long report, poster, logic model, and power point of first year results have been prepared. Tennessee and Louisiana will conduct focus groups this year and workshops about the results will be conducted in year three. -Camp Transformation Research- This project examined how young adult (18-28) 4-H camp staff are transformed by working at camp and what conditions in the camp environment catalyze transformation. Four focus groups and an electronic survey were conducted. Results are available as a one page summary, poster, and two journal articles. -AEE Department Activities- Nancy and Heather participate in all the usual great department functions – student advising, guest lecturing, committee leadership and membership, lead and attend seminars, etc.




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