Minutes of August 2009 phone conference
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NCERA 209 August conference call agenda
Attendees: Jason Ellis, Mark Tucker, Suzanne Steel, Virginia Morgan, Linda Benedict, Ruth Borger, Pat Melgares, Martha Filipic
Research Team Report – Dwayne Cartmell
(1) A review of literature on Issue Management and a collection of published Best Management Practices. – Mark Tucker will lead; Courtney Meyers assisting. Deadline, Oct. 1.
(2) Research project to determine high-priority issues facing LGUs. Survey producers and interest groups (NGOs) to determine what each of those groups thinks the biggest issues in agriculture are. Survey LGU field faculty (agents, educators, specialists) to gauge what they see the biggest issues are. Compare these results with the list of priority issues provided by APLU. Determine the commonalities and the gaps.
Faith has contacted several groups to get prices and options for completing these surveys.
Prices we have so far are: Gallup – Ballpark for national survey, $75K to $100K; or purchase add-on questions to nightly study of 1,000 consumers as part of the well being survey. Ad-on questions are $5,000-10,000K per question per night.
eXtension is unable to assist with the faculty survey. Must find another source. Perhaps NACAA?
Action needed: Faith will check the extension agent associations to see who the national presidents are and approach them for the possibility of partnering on surveys.
AFBF is unable to help with the producer survey, and suggested we go through the state Farm Bureaus or commodity groups.
Action needed: Jason suggested we also consider contacting a trade pub about renting a mailing list as an efficient way to do the producer survey. Mark will advise Frankie and Faith on the RFP.
Frankie, Faith, Mark – will develop an RFP for needed research data detailed above. Deadline, Aug. 1.
(3) A review of published data/media coverage on the identified issues: food safety, indirect land use, feeding the world and animal welfare. Fill in gaps with need content analysis/framing studies to see how the APLU-selected issues are being covered in traditional media now. We also need to look at non-traditional media – Web sites, blogs, social media – to see what is being said there about these issues. Then monitor during the issue campaigns and see if the amount of coverage/discussion and/or tone of the coverage/discussion changes. This will show if we are being effective in our approach.
Dwayne Cartmell or Jason Ellis lead. Courtney Meyers will join this group.
Deadline for lit/media coverage review – Oct. 1; deadlines for additional studies will be assigned as appropriate.
Update on Action Items – Faith Peppers
Action called for in May/June/July calls completed (Italic indicates result or further action needed):
Faith sent a note to Wendy Wintersteen at Iowa State who is spearheading the APLU AHS effort to give her links to our new project description, outline above of research needed and funding parameters. Done
Follow up: Developed an overarching outline that links APLU, NCERA 209 and National Impact Database projects together as one consolidated project. Frankie will present at the joint heads meeting at the end of July/first of August. Forwarded to W. Wintersteen for APLU consideration. SIMS Paper
Faith will contact the toolkit subcommittee to see what they are finding that is readily available and adaptable, and what is missing that we need in the way of materials. Done
Follow up: Get list to Elaine of givens that we know we need regardless of what the research shows.
Ask Frankie Gould to check with Copernicus Marketing and Consulting Research to see if they can help us with a national survey in item 2 that will include a sample from each state similar to what they did with the Extension Brand Value Survey and what the cost for that would be. Done.
Follow up: Agreed to develop RFP cited above in item 2.
Action needed by the end of July:
Check with Dwayne on the possibility to get an edition of the JAC dedicated to research and professional development on issue management. Done: response positive; need approval of the JAC Board and potential publication date so research timelines can be established.
Faith - Follow up questions for Gallup: how much you have to pay extra for variables?
Get definitive answers from AFBF and eXtension on options for surveys. Done: response negative.
Frankie – Get project outline to Joint Heads at annual meeting. Done: any response or feedback?
Faith, Frankie, Mark – develop RFP for surveys.
Further Action Taken:
- Faith, Frankie and Linda developed a proposal to the SAAS Board of Directors for a general session track on Issue Management in Land Grant Universities for their Feb. meeting in Orlando. This meeting will follow our annual meeting, and would give those involved in this project a chance to present our findings thus far, and layout our plans for the coming year.
New items for consideration – F. Peppers
Report from APLU Issue Group – Brian Meyers
Letter to Congress from Deans on indirect land use is going around for signature; Food Safety issue group has submitted their proposed communication plan.
Report from National Impact Group – Suzanne Steel
19 members of the new CoP; to develop a curriculum to help people learn to write better impact; promote better marketing and communication of impact; develop a new national impact gathering and reporting system; worked with T. Meisenbach to get input and estimates; One of the first steps is to get formal approval for the CoP; working with a group from the CoP for what the requirements for the national database will be, how it will function, and what elements need to be included in the database; Need about $20K to build the database; work with eXtension to see if they have enough capacity to serve our needs; populating the database will be the next step after that; reestablishing the process for states submitting content; quality control guidelines for content and function; how the information will be used, marketed and disseminated; do some fact finding in DC to find make sure we are including data on the issues they need data on; Suzanne is working on a Moodle course on writing better impact; Looking at face-to-face regional/national training; how can we include social media elements. End-user project – Ohio is doing some research on what legislative materials are most useful to their end-users; they are looking at should they open that research up to a larger area; need a connection to the potential audiences who will use the information;
Researchers recommend we do a lit review on existing research; begin survey collection with our university legislative offices; also ask states to survey their state legislators.
Post a set of standard questions on the NCERA wiki that will be common among all states, but states can then customize to gather whatever data they need for their state.
Review of pending deadlines – F. Peppers
Martha – Compared the NIMMS members and the collaboration site. There are a few people on the NIMMS site who aren't on the eXtension site. Martha will contact them to find out if they want to be involved, and if so, invite them to join the eXtension site.
Martha will post directions on how to post a PDF to the eXtension collaborate site so we can post data as it comes in.
We will meet again on Sept. 4 at 10 a.m.
