NTAE 2022-23 Quarterly Reports - Quarter 1
Funding Opportunity Number: USDA-NIFA-OP-006747 Award Number: 2019-41595-30123 Awarded to Oklahoma State University Total Award: $3,408,000.00
Reporting Period: September 1, 2022 to November 30, 2022 (Year 4, Quarter 1) Date Submitted:
Prepared by: Extension Foundation (Dr. Beverly Coberly, Extension Foundation PI and Tira Adelman, Extension Foundation Grants and Program Manager) ℅ Bryan Cave LLP One Kansas City Place 1200 Main Street, Suite 3800
Submitted to:
Dr. Thomas Coon Dr. Damona Doye Oklahoma State University OSU Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources
139 Agricultural Hall Stillwater, OK 74708
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Project Narrative Summary
The NTAE project, under the leadership of Oklahoma State University, will continue to build upon the strengths and capacities of the Extension Foundation, including its experience providing technology tools for Cooperative Extension professionals and catalyzing professional development innovation in Year 4. NTAE funding allows OSU and its partners to advance the Strategic Goals and ECOP Program Priorities. Additionally, the NTAE project is designed to achieve the objectives of the New Technologies for Ag Extension initiative and to align with USDA FY22 Priorities which are: A. Addressing Climate Change via Climate Smart Agriculture & Forestry
B. Advancing Racial Justice, Equity and Opportunity C. Creating More and Better Market Opportunities D. Tackling Food and Nutrition Insecurity
Key Strategies: Technology Learning and Networking Platform NTAE Competitive and NIFA NTAE Preselected Projects
The key strategies for achieving project objectives and strategic goals include the following:
❖ Technology for CES : Partnering with Eduworks and North Carolina State University (NCSU) to enhance existing functionalities to increase the amount of content available and improve access to content. The most significant enhancement involves building Artificial Intelligence into Extension’s Ask Extension tool. The current version, Ask an Expert, is a searchable repository of more than 500,000 questions posed by the public and answers supplied by 2,600 Extension educators is now replaced by Ask Extension. In addition, image recognition capability for things like plants and insects will be available. A chatbot is being developed to increase the impact of human experts by directing users to answers for common questions in existing resources most applicable to their location, season, and conditions. ❖ National Program and Asset Registry: Another significant accomplishment is the National Registry of Cooperative Extension Programs and Assets launched to house searchable program information and resources such as presentations, information sheets and evaluation tools for CES. This tool was developed with a CDC/NIFA program called
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Extension Collaborative on Immunization Teaching and Engagement (EXCITE) and enables Cooperative Extension to create a dynamic geographic map about the work happening system-wide on immunization education and show the strength and value that Cooperative Extension brings to our communities. ❖ Learning and Networking Platform for CES: Connect Extension is a co-learning environment that expands professional development opportunities to all Land-Grant Universities, NTAE partners, and their constituents. Launched in response to Covid-19 in March 2020, the platform currently has 5,819 Land-grant University users participating in subgroups from Health, Urban Agriculture, Workforce to Climate. The accounts represent 5288 from 1862 institutions, 415 from 1890 institutions, 28 from 1994 institutions, 84 from federal agencies (USDA, HHS, EPA, NIH), and four from USDA-NIFA certified NLGCA's. From September 1, 2021 to August 30th, 2022, there were 668,620 users representing 853,857 sessions. 88.8% were new visitors to the platform. 56.2% were on mobile, 41.5% on Desktops and 2.3% were on tablets. They represented a total of 1,306,223 pageviews in that time frame. The Hubspot platform was added in Year 3 Quarter 1 to further enhance communication and connectedness with CES. ❖ USDA Related NTAE Projects: Project teams submitted an online application form. Projects that applied went through an application process where the projects were scored in a vetted rubric by outside reviewers. Final selection for projects rested on the scored rubrics and advice from catalysts about project readiness. All NTAE project topics related to the USDA Strategic Goals. Catalysts provide a lead mentor role with projects. Catalysts have many years of experience with programming and networks across the country. Catalysts are: Dr. Scott Reed, Dr. Fred Schlutt, Dr. Rick Klemme, Dr. Chuck Hibberd, Dr. Jimmy Henning, Dr. Dawn Mellion, and Dr. Dyremple Marsh. ➢ Communication and Marketing: Targeted communication and marketing strategies to ensure resources are available to CES professionals to create a national network of CES involved in a focused effort and provide greater visibility for CES. The Extension Foundation now uses HubSpot as the customer resource management tool and as a platform for communications and email. ➢ NTAE Competitive Project Information: These strategies are described in length in this report starting on page 12. ➢ Partnerships for Expansion and Sustainability: Leadership by individual stakeholders is necessary but not sufficient to drive transformational and systemic change. Collective action and collaboration is essential. It is needed among projects themselves, in specific sectors, around specific issues and locations. It is also needed on a cross-sector or multi-stakeholder basis between companies, governments and organizations like the Cooperative Extension System. Projects
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expand current partnerships and organizational networks for the CES system by connecting the fellows to various public, private and corporate partners.
Extension Key Informant Services Extension provides a menu of “key informant services” designed to accelerate innovative projects. The services and Extension lead staff are: ● Program Design and Educational Technology encourages all projects to share their processes and products via Connect.Extension.org. Professional development is about a learning process for the projects and CES. Fellows share their learning through social media and virtual Professional Development. This is led by Molly Immendorf, WI. ● Digital Publishing and Engagement support for digital learning and instruction used by the project is needed and also for Extension professionals to share the process and learnings which are expected to be shared digitally from each project. Publishing via Flipping Books of resources and processes used by the project are important for sharing content and processes. This publishing process allows the content and process of the project to be documented and researchable by others to support project expansion and project adoption. This is led by Ashley Griffin , KY and Rose Hayden-Smith, CA. ● Leadership and Leadership Development support and training for adaptation to a digital environment is provided (helping Fellows be leaders in a digital environment) as well as team building for each project is a part of this support system. Leadership learning is embedded in each project. This is led by Karl Bradley, CO. ● Marketing and Communication strategies are provided as needed for projects to better understand their audiences and increase participation in their program. Market research, media audits and strategic communications are a part of this accelerating strategy. This is led by Aaron Weibe, NC and Melanie Pugsley, TX. ● Partnership and Development works with fellows and projects by assisting with early partner development for co-creation of ideas and implementation where possible. This effort seeks to develop partners for early stage co-creation and long term support of the project. This is led by Megan Hirschman, MI and Hellina Tadesse, NY. ● Evaluation is embedded in each project to help ensure impact data is gathered about the outcomes of the project itself. Evaluation for understanding growth and development of a project is expected learning of each project. This is led by Ashley Griffin, KY, and Julie Halverson, WI. ● Grant Reporting and Administrative Support is provided by Tira Adelman, NC and Brenna Kotar, TX.
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Advancing Technology for CES Why is this important? Advancing technology for CES databases and for CES program delivery is critical for CES professionals to have access to newly developed information and to advance on critical issues and educational endeavors. ● Ask Extension and AI is redesigned to replace Ask An Expert. This redesign is built to use artificial intelligence to provide additional power for database searches and the ability to answer and respond to customer questions across the US. Ask Extension is a national initiative that leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to pull together data sources from the Extension ecosystem to answer questions directly and accurately and connect to local citizens with their local Extension professionals, products and services. ● Continued bug fixes and maintenance for Ask Extension. ● For AI work this period we worked on a version of the Chatbot we are calling Extension Bot (ExtBot) that has access to Ask Extension data as well as Oklahoma State and Oregon data sets. ○ Significant Results: ■ AI work and ExtBot has shown a viable chatbot and the ability to allow other land-grant universities to import their data into the chatbot.
○ Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period which is December 1 - February 28): ■ Production roll-out of ExtBot on Ask Extension, Oklahoma St. and Oregon websites. This will allow us to get real feedback on the chatbot; how effective it is and how well it performs under production load. ■ We will be working with new institutions so they can import their own data using the work we did with OK State and Oregon St as a model. ■ Develop group reporting from ExtBot to reveal analytics to those implementing the chatbot.
● Helpdesk
○ In the specified date range, we helped 349 clients and received an 89% satisfaction rating from those. ○ We resolved 49% of the requests in our first response and typically responded within 22 hours from the time a request was first submitted.
○ Significant Results:
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■ The average time to respond to clients was up from 16 to 22 hours. I am attributing this to Ben's absence.
○ Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period which is December 1 - February 28):
■ Continue to maintain high-quality service to help desk customers. No other major objectives or goals are needed at this time.
● Search.Extension.org ○ MindBreeze was utilized to build out the custom search engine and provided access. ○ Significant Results: ■ Two NTAE staff with North Carolina State, completed the introductory MindBreeze Connector course. ■ The Search tool has been embedded on Ask Extension and gathered feedback from users on the effectiveness. ■ After implementing Mindbreeze we came to the conclusion that the technology required too much engineering work to fully implement. However, valuable experience was gathered on implementing Natural Language Processing technology like Mindbreeze and we feel we can use that experience to make both Ask Extension and our developing chatbot technology better. ○ Anticipated work for the next reporting period December 1 - February 28): ■ Ask Extension - maintenance plus minor feature updates with user feedback ● The Artificial Intelligence work continues with the California Integrated Pest Management. Eduworks is working with California Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to triangulate questions/answers and images used to answer IPM questions, making sure the correct data tags are in place for machine learning. AI efforts are also underway with the University of Georgia Food Preservation NTAE Project. ○ California IPM Chatbot - ■ Migrating CA IPM site content to a home-grown CMS, along with JSON exports to add them to the chatbot. This covers updating UC IPM’s registry of resources.
■ Decision will be made at the end of the quarter whether to sunset this project after alpha is stood up for public use and feedback in the Fall.
● Website Hosting continues to be an important aspect of NTAE/Extension for managing
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access to content through technology. ○ We are currently hosting 94 sites. We hired a contractor through Belay who is responsible for upkeep and maintenance of websites under my supervision. All active sites have been updated to PHP version 8. We have deactivated and archived a dozen or so underperforming sites. ○ Significant Results: ■ All active sites have been updated to PHP version 8. We have deactivated and archived a dozen or so underperforming sites. ○ Anticipated work for the next reporting period (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period which is December 1 - February 28): ■ In the next reporting period, we plan on deleting the underperforming sites and doing a round of auditing for underperforming sites to be archived and deleted. ● Team Health Dashboard ○ The Leadership and Leadership Development Key Informant uses an online system for teams to track their leadership development progress. ○ Significant Results: ■ Development work is completed for version two of the system and it has been deployed to a production environment where teams are using it. ○ Anticipated work for the next reporting period (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period which is December 1 - February 28): ■ In December 2022 we will roll out version two of the Team Health
Dashboard app. This updated version of the app will allow team members to choose their team as well as automated reminders for team members to submit updated submissions each quarter. ■ Monitoring the new system for any bugs that might need to be addressed along with any enhancements we might want to add.
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Learning and Networking Platform for CES
Why are these important? A co-learning environment is needed for CES to be a system response for national issues that make impact at the local level. Networking, sharing information through educational offerings (webinars, blog posts) and learning in groups of similar interest advance the development of content, curriculum and processes for CES to utilize across the nation. ● Connect Extension Connect Extension is a closed social media network for Land-grant universities. At this time, we have been administering the platform while Land-grant university professionals deliver content for system- wide collaboration and public advertising. ○ Significant Results: ■ 286,425 Page Views ■ 5773 Users from 112 Land-grant Universities ■ 114 events advertised to the public ■ 3 new subgroups (Workforce Development, CADEN, and Clerk Connect). ● National Registry: ○ Identified new vendor to help realize the potential of the new Registry system, currently branded as Discover Extension. Existing system saw active usage by Workforce Development Fellows to acquire a listing of Workforce Development programs happening across the system. ○ Significant Results: ■ 90 programs registered in the reporting period. ○ Anticipated work for the next reporting period (Year 4, September 1, 2022 - November 30, 2022): ■ Coordinating with David Warren and Mark Locklear on the second version of National Registry. Currently demoing new software possibilities or a Wordpress custom-build. ● Social Media Presence: ○ ExF communication channels include a large social media presence. Here is social media data from September 1, 2022 through November 30, 2022: ■ 177 social media posts to three platforms ■ 388 interactions
■ 598 clicks ■ 91 shares ■ 13,837 impressions ■ 5244 sessions
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■ 10% increase in followers ■ Posting on Twitter was stopped as of October 31, 2022 and this metric will be removed from future reports
Social Media
Audience Published Posts
Interactions Clicks
Shares
Impressions
Facebook 3696
181
143
663
82
25344
2301
58
37
224
25
LinkedI
1653
61
295
203233
41
6801
Sessions total: 10,754
● Additional exploratory work underway: ○ Launch Discover Extension ○ Position Connect Extension as a safe and reliable alternative to publicly available social media platforms.
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NTAE Competitive Projects
Why are these important? NIFA funding allows various types of projects to be developed through teams to serve important local and national issues across the country. Projects are led by Fellows who lead educational efforts regarding the issue. Fellows demonstrate enhanced leadership and advanced project efforts to develop content, curriculum, delivery methods, partnerships and learn about additional methods to understand audiences. They fine tune their marketing strategies and extend the use of federal dollars applied to projects related to USDA and ECOP priorities brought to local issues. This leads to increased impacts of CES efforts across the country. These combined objectives and efforts represent the incubation, acceleration and expansion of NTAE projects. Projects may use some or all of the NTAE funded resources to accelerate their project. NTAE Projects include a total of 39 competitive projects that went through an application selection phase. Research and Extension Catalysts mobilize talent among networks within Extension and from private and public sector partners. The Catalysts consulted with Land Grant Institutions and their networks to identify topics related to the Strategic Goals, and located resources that address each topic to encourage applications for the competitive NTAE projects. Project teams submitted a nomination form, the application was reviewed by a team of outside scorers through the use of a rubric and once applications were selected by the outside team for the NTAE Project, the Catalysts provided insight as to project readiness. Year 4 Catalysts include: Dr. Scott Reed, Dr. Fred Schlutt, Dr. Rick Klemme, Dr. Dyremple Marsh, Dr. Jimmy Henning, Dr. Dawn Mellion and Dr. Chuck Hibberd. Catalysts assisted with the following:
1) Identifying topics for publishing. 2) Refining unique value statements and project roadmaps for project implementation
3) Providing support for expanding project networks 4) Providing input for selected Fellows for each topic 5) Working with Key Informants and projects:
Identifying key partners and building relationships with projects Conducting surveys and working with the evaluation of projects Advising the Audience Engagement Initiative and projects timing Connecting team building and leadership building strategies with teams Seeking to embed evaluation into projects
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Assisting with connecting with digital engagement and professional development strategies with project teams.
Selected projects work with the Extension Foundation “Key Informant Services” to enhance, expand, and accelerate the projects. Extension Foundation Key Informant Services include the following: ❏ Program Design and Educational Technology encourages projects to share their processes and products via Connect.Extension.org. Professional development is about a learning process for the projects and CES where Fellows work through digital and online methods to network and share their newly developed content and processes. If a team’s project calls for producing events such as a conference, we can also help with objective and agenda creation. If a team’s project is developing a curriculum (especially an online curriculum), we can also consult on adult learning theory and instructional design. ❏ Molly Immendorf, WI serves as lead. ❏ Digital Engagement and Publishing support for digital learning and instruction used by the project is needed and also for Extension professionals to share the process and learnings which are expected to be shared digitally from each project. Each project is expected to use Connect Extension. The Digital Engagement KI service helps teams use technology tools and strategies to engage, inform, deepen learning, and increase connections. Specific advice around successful ways to engage peers virtually may include developing engagement objectives and outcomes and then matching educational technology tools and techniques to achieve those outcomes. Example tools include Connect Extension Virtual Chats, using Zoom tools effectively, and using third-party engagement tools (Mentimeter, Quizizz, Google Suite, Mural, etc.) ❏ Ashley Griffin, KY; Rose Hayden-Smith, CA; and Heather Martin serve as leads. ❏ Leadership and Leadership Development support and training for adaptation to a digital environment is provided (helping Fellows be leaders in a digital environment) as well as team building for each project is a part of this support system. Leadership learning and team building are embedded in many of the NTAE projects. ❏ Helps combine the ability of self-awareness with social awareness to think and act strategically. ❏ Supports a healthy environment as it relates to interactions between individuals and teams inside the system in which they operate. ❏ Assists individuals and teams with challenging environments defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Develop agility for continuous observation, learning and adjusting. ❏ Balances experiential learning includes but is not limited to: ❏ Connection to purpose
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❏ Relating experiences in dialogue and reflection to elevate levels of thinking ❏ Work on values/beliefs to support authentic behavior change ❏ Leadership as a relationship ❏ Positive transformation with sustainable changes in attitudes, behaviors & performance should be the minimum expectation ❏ This is led by Karl Bradley, CO. ❏ Flipping Book/s or epub publishing of resources and processes used by the project are important for sharing content and processes. This publishing process allows the content and process of the project to be documented and researchable by others to support project expansion and project adoption. In year 3, publishing Key Informants, alongside team Catalysts, will identify Published NTAE projects from the recent past can be found on the Extension Foundation Bookshelf. This bookshelf is evolving so updates will be expected. All publications that make the bookshelf have been peer reviewed. Details in regard to contributor rights for author contributions are summarized from the foundation Terms of Use. A summary for Catalyst convenience and talking points has been compiled in the Extension Foundation Publication Contributor Terms of Use. ❏ This is led by Ashley Griffin, KY ❏ Market research, and/or strategic messaging strategies are provided as needed for projects to better understand their audiences and increase participation in their program. Market research, media audits and strategic communications are a part of this accelerating strategy. The marketing and communication Key Informant service works with projects to identify strategies for better connecting with your target audiences, assessing digital presence, assisting with creative projects, and helping equip teams with skills and tools needed for successful audience engagement and marketing and communication campaigns. ❏ This is led by Aaron Weibe, NC and Melanie Pugsley, TX. ❏ Partnership and Development Partnership and Development works with fellows and projects by assisting with early partner development for co-creation of ideas and implementation where possible. This effort seeks to develop partners for early stage co-creation and long term support of the project. Projects develop case statements during the year to be ready for partnership development beyond the NTAE Project year. Partnership and development strategies help strengthen teams effectiveness for fostering new partnerships and innovations ❏ Prepares teams to engage with key organizations, and successfully cultivate new funding opportunities. ❏ Empowers NTAE Teams to develop new program possibilities, new funding and new partnerships ❏ Identifies and shares funding opportunities through grant resources
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❏ Elevates projects at the national level through internal (to CES) and external organizational collaborations. ❏ This is led by Megan Hirschman, MI and Hellina Tadesse, NY. ❏ Evaluation and Evidence Based Programming is embedded in each project to help ensure impact data is gathered about the outcomes of the project itself. Evaluation for understanding growth and development of a project is expected learning of each project. NTAE Team projects/programs that are demonstrating Evidence-based Programming (EBP) to be shared with CES through an ePub publication. Publishing will also consider how integration of digital engagement strategies can enhance these publications, and to incorporate any digital content/assets created through work with the Marketing and Communications and Program Design and Educational Technology. A systematic approach guided the evaluation support for year 3 that began with each team’s Impacts Worksheet submitted during application. From a team’s initial worksheet, in combination with catalysts input and project evolution with Key Informants, the Impacts Worksheet will be updated to guide project evaluation. ❏ Support is provided to each team in developing their evaluation methods and instruments with input from evaluation specialists used as reviewers (ie: peer reviewers) to hone these methods and instruments for implementation. Key Informants work with teams in evaluation and bring in assistance and reviewers as needed, based on speciality, to fine tune instruments and methods for collection. The process of pairing teams with evaluation specialists with appropriate expertise may be expanded whereby assignments to specific teams may occur based on evaluation needs. ❏ This is led by Ashley Griffin, KY, and Julie Halverson, WI. ❏ Grant Reporting and Administrative Support is provided by Tira Adelman, NC and Brenna Kotar, TX.
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Incubation Projects
These projects are still in the idea stage and pre-planning stage. Work on these projects will take project leaders through an innovation process designed to help them think through their project ideas, audiences, outcomes, and plans. These projects will plan, test, and create a pilot. The Fellowship amount is $5000.
A Program Team for Multimedia IPM Outreach Fellow: Wayne Buhler, North Carolina State University
Fellow Report: We kept a busy schedule of virtual meetings that included a number of our team members and Extension Foundation (EF) NTAE supporters. Each meeting is listed below: 1. August 17. Tira Adelman announced that we received the NTAE grant and the benefits provided by EF through it. 2. October 12. Molly Soeby, our Coach, was introduced to the group and we had a Q&A session with her. 3. October 25-Nov 15 ISBE meetings and "homework sessions". Our team was well represented at each of the 4 ISBE sessions and follow-up (homework) sessions for each week. We made an elaborate Mural and presented a compelling 1-minute pitch. Significant Results: We will submit a grant proposal (indicated below and attached) that was the culmination of several meetings. The ISBE experience helped us to define the project and audience. A tremendous amount of work went into the writing of the proposal and our team is very enthusiastic about it! Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts, and/or Key Informants as applicable. Molly Soebe is an excellent Coach and participant. Her background and skills are a wonderful match for our team. It's a pleasure and honor to work with her! Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) ● On December 7 the team put finishing touches on a grant proposal submitted to the Western IPM Center for $30,000 on December 9. ● Follow up on our proposal with the Western IPM Center. Looking forward to the Impact Collaborative Summit.
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Please provide any supporting links that you would like to include with this report. ● Western IPM Center grant proposal for $30,000 Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? No Does your project work with diverse, under-served, and underrepresented audiences? Yes Please explain briefly how your project works with these audiences. We propose to work with collaborators in the American Pacific Islands if our proposal is funded. If not, we will still reach out to these colleagues.
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Box Elder Jr. Livestock Course Fellow: Ashley Longmore, Utah State University
Fellow Report: The software has been purchased to design the courses and the team is actively working on course content. Hoping to have our initial course released in January.
Significant Results: N/A
Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts, and/or Key Informants as applicable. Bekah has been incredible and has been so much help to get us rolling.
Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) We hope to have our first course developed and online. Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? No Please explain briefly how your project works with veterans or veteran farmers. N/A
Does your project work with diverse, under-served, and underrepresented audiences? No
Please explain briefly how your project works with these audiences N/A
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Building Capacity to Address Broadband Access and Digital Skills in NC Cooperative Extension Fellow: Kenneth Sherin, North Carolina State University Fellow Report: Our team has participated in the impact collaborative meetings. This has helped us define our project better. Significant Results: Working in parallel with this project, we were able to submit a funding proposal that would provide $2 Million to hire Digital Literacy and Skills Agents for about 15 counties in North Carolina. We expect to hear from the agency about funding before the end of December.
Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts and/or Key Informants as applicable: Trudy Rice has been great. She helps us process the tasks.
Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) Meet in person with the team, to more fully complete the impact collaborative process.
Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? No
Does your project work with diverse, under-served, and underrepresented audiences? No
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Climate Smart Landscaping Fellow: Hamutahl Cohen, University of Florida
Fellow Report: We have developed objectives for a state-wide program in Florida. We are still working on evaluation metrics to meet these objectives. These objectives were developed after analyzing statewide needs assessment results from a survey we conducted with >320 participants. We have also designed and developed 2 new powerpoint presentations that will work as our first outreach presentations. We conducted 1 workshop with the public and 2 workshops with green industry professionals. Significant Results: We reached 20 participants in our public workshop and 82 participants in our workshops for horticultural professionals. We are still developing evaluation metrics to determine if our outcomes are gained during workshops. Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts and/or Key Informants as applicable. We benefited from working with our coach and participating in the NTAE ISBE sessions, where we learned about different resources available to us to develop our program. Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) For our next reporting period, we plan to formally report/publish our needs assessment survey results. We plan to formalize our objectives and evaluation metrics, as well as create a data entry portal so that educators in our program can input results from anywhere and so that data is collected in a cohesive space. A subset of our group will be developing a research program around climate-resilient urban forests, and they will finalize experimental design for that project. Finally, we will participate in the January Impact Collaborative. Please provide any supporting links that you would like to include with this report. ● Climate Smart Landscaping meeting Powerpoint from Oct 18, 2022 ● Trees, Hurricanes and Climate Change presentation ● Program Goals and Objectives
Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? No
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Please explain briefly how your project works with veterans or veteran farmers. N/A
Does your project work with diverse, under-served or underrepresented audiences? Yes
Please explain briefly how your project works with these audiences. We plan to develop extension materials in both English and Spanish. Currently, we have just begun developing lectures in English, but have identified translation support (one of our team members can translate the presentations!)
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Creating a Multi-State Meat Consortium for Producers Fellow: Clarissa Harris, Tuskegee University
Fellow Report: The progress made during this time is on target. The goals were to write things out , put the ideas together, and figure out an execution plan. During the current period, developing the framework has been successful.
Significant Results: Short term outcomes- The team was able to develop a concrete plan.
Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts and/or Key Informants as applicable. My coach has been very helpful throughout this journey. I was able to quickly schedule meetings and take my time discussing every component. Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) The next goals of the program are to: ● Develop a strategic plan to present to the leadership team ● Create documents that can be dispersed
Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? Yes
Please explain briefly how your project works with veterans or veteran farmers. This project aims to work with all producers, including veterans. We would continue to make them aware of all the opportunities within this area. They will be exposed to several opportunities within the meat industry.
Does your project work with diverse, under-served, and underrepresented audiences? Yes
Does your project work with diverse, under-served, and underrepresented audiences? This project allows all producers to have the same resources. The learning experience is also for everyone. The crowds are very diverse and increasing the potential of a practice will help everyone. Also there will be job openings and training in the community that are beneficial to all.
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Cultural Competency for Municipalities Fellow: Tony Michael, West Virginia University
Fellow Report: We have been working on localized training in partnership with the state's second largest city that will significantly inform this project's development. Our coach has been very instructive and provided strong guidance to help us understand both the "forest and the trees." The help in developing and maintaining focus is important. We also were able to provide a presentation on 12/8 as part of a CRD national indicators webinar based on guidance received. Presentation is attached. Significant Results: N/A Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts and/or Key Informants as applicable. Exceptional and encouraging. Has helped us work through our vision and recognize the small successes we have already realized and consider those we can achieve. Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) ● Post-Impact Collaborative Summit actions (TBD) ● Updated guiding documentation ● Logic model development Please provide any supporting links you would like to include with this report. ● Media: Herald Dispatch story ○ Circulation between hard copy and online is more than 26,000 ● Huntington video (Facebook and YouTube): Diversity Training ○ Circulation more than 25,000 followers on two platforms ● WVU Extension video (DRAFT) “Building Awareness, Becoming an Ally: A Partnership to Embrace Diversity Across West Virginia”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYloOYgZPaM ● CRD National Indicators Presentations
Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? No
Please explain briefly how your project works with veterans or veteran farmers.
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N/A
Does your project work with diverse, under-served, and underrepresented audiences? No
Please explain briefly how your project works with these audiences. N/A
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Developing Climate Relevant Content for Extension Programs Fellow: Duane Friend, University of Illinois
Fellow Report: The group is working on developing climate relevant content for Extension Educators to get them to where they are comfortable incorporating climate change content into their programming. Some of this content would then be used to extend to others, based on Educator feedback. The course will have the following sections: ● Basic Climate Science ● Climate Terminology ● Climate Communication ● Subject/Discipline Specific Case Studies (how it is relevant to my programming, stakeholders, etc.)
Educators that are already trying to incorporate climate change programming into their programming will be interviewed to develop the case studies.
Some of the course content for climate change , in particular the basic science, could also serve as content for general public programming, and there may be potential for incorporating the content into the master gardener and master naturalist volunteer programs.Some programming may be accomplished by offering an advance course where volunteers such as master naturalists or master gardeners are trained to offer climate programming to others. We are continuing to ask how we can leverage the content being developed to other means and other audiences, and how it could be useful across audiences. Future audiences might be rural government officials and rural communities with a resilience focus.
Another audience - agricultural policymakers.
Significant Results: N/A
Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts and/or Key Informants as applicable. Work with Jessica has been pleasant and very productive. She does a nice job of facilitation.
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Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) In future discussions, we will be: ● Thinking about all potential audiences and what they need/how they might engage ● Getting feedback from group members ● Focusing on potential partners ● Focusing on Key Metrics (review draft of interview questions for case studies) ● Defining in detail why we need to empower people to take critical action toward this issue and show them how to take action/give them the tools to take action.
Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? No
Does your project work with diverse, under-served, and underrepresented audiences? Yes
Please explain briefly how your project works with these audiences. As this project progresses and as we start working with communities, underserved/underrepresented audiences will be included in the discussion.
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High Plains Alternative Crops Conference Fellow: Sumit Sharma, Oklahoma State University
Fellow Report: In the first quarter of this project, we have met many points of the checklist ISBE workbook. These include points on Community Issue, Motivation, Why, and Need; Project/program idea, Target Audience has been identified. Among these points we need to work on identifying partners to support our program beyond the duration of this grant i.e. iterations, and identifying short, medium and long-term goals. Besides, we have written Innovation, motivation, why, empathy and the UVP statement. On the planning side, our team has finalized the dates and reserved the venues for the conference. We also have had 3 meetings and identified the topics which will be presented at the two locations of the conference. At this point we are identifying and finalizing the panel group for the topics. Significant Results: ● We have identified venues for our conference, and have finalized the dates. February 21st in Altus Oklahoma, and February 28th in Stratford Texas. ● We have identified speakers for our conference and are working on finalizing their agenda. Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts, and/or Key Informants as applicable. My experience with Karin has been great! She has helped me with writing teh Innovation, Motivation, USP and Why statements. Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) We prepare to finalize the speakers and agenda. Hopefully, if everything goes well we will execute the conference.
Please provide any supporting links that you would like to include with this report. ● Project assignments
Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? Yes Please explain briefly how your project works with veterans or veteran farmers. Some of our audience has served in the forces. Also, our audience includes farmers of different sized farms, age group, and experience.
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Does your project work with diverse, under-served, and underrepresented audiences? No Please explain briefly how your project works with these audiences. N/A
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Home Internet Adoption: Digital Ambassador Program Fellow: Alison Copeland, University of Missouri
Fellow Report: The draft Digital Ambassador curriculum was completed December 2022 (see outline below). The next few months will be revisions with the final curriculum available by March 2023. ● Understanding the Digital Ambassador Process ● Objectives ● Points of Discussion ● The Resource Material ● Additional Support ● Techniques for Teaching Adult Learners Digital Skills as a Volunteer “Digital Ambassador” ● Using “Cloud-based” Resources and Ecosystems ● Selecting the Best Internet Search Engine ● Finding Accurate Information on the Internet ● Understanding and Managing Internet Tracking Programs (“cookie management”) ● Password Security ● Recognizing Phishing and Other Internet Scams ● Evaluating Bandwidth and Available Connection Options ● Accessing Internet Affordability Programs ● Establishing & Accessing Government & Financial Institutions Online
Significant Results:
● Curriculum draft completed ● Digital Ambassador program structure is in development with the completion goal of March 2023
Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts and/or Key Informants as applicable. Positive and supportive
Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) ● Finalize curriculum ● Finalize program structure and implementation model ● Apply for Digital Demonstration site grant to pilot Digital Ambassador program in two counties (rural and urban)
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Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? Yes
Please explain briefly how your project works with veterans or veteran farmers. The Digital Ambassador program is intended for a wide audience, particularly underserved and unserved individuals, including veterans.
Does your project work with diverse, under-served, or underrepresented audiences? Yes
Please explain briefly how your project works with these audiences. The Digital Ambassador program is intended for a wide audience, particularly underserved and unserved individuals, including veterans.
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Intergenerational Digital Support for Maryland Growers Fellow: Vernelle Mitchell-Hawkins, University of Maryland
Fellow Report: At this point in the project, we are in a reframing stage. We planned two sessions for FarmerTech offered in December. No one signed up for either workshop. The team met after the second failed date and discussed potential reasons for the lack of participation. Reasons for lack of participation could have been timing with respect to harvest, maintenance, discomfort with the subject area, lack of familiarity with the program (fear of something new), or lack of interest in
the workshop topics. Significant Results: N/A
Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts, and/or Key Informants as applicable. Our Coach was really helpful! I was really apprehensive about the process at the beginning and Maria was reassuring and helped our team frame out what the project could look like. Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) We have shifted from a model of stand-alone workshops to a "piggyback" model where the sessions will be offered as part of a larger, more widely known event for farmers. We have identified some meetings and conferences in the area that are marketed to farmers. It is the intention that more people may participate if it is tied to an event that they are already comfortable with. Also, we are thinking that offering equipment in the advertising will also help encourage participants especially if the farmers in the community do not already have tablets.
Please provide any supporting links that you would like to include with this report. ● Farm Tech class schedule flier
Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? No
Please explain briefly how your project works with veterans or veteran farmers. We have not specifically marketed to this group but it could be added since we are in the reframing stage. Does your project work with diverse, under-served, and underrepresented audiences? Yes
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Please explain briefly how your project works with these audiences. Our project works with farmers who are underserved in terms of technology classes. Many of the growers in our community are senior citizens which is another underserved group in terms of digital literacy.
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Interoperability Challenges in AgTech Fellow: John Marck, University of Illinois
Fellow Report: We formed an initial steering committee, spoke at an event in Dallas, TX and Tokyo, Japan, connected with industry stakeholders in advance of a working group kickoff meeting in December. We had planned on hosting an in-person workshop but attendance was far more sparse than we expected and we pivoted to a virtual format with a focus on recruiting more volunteers for our working group. Significant Results: We found that ag data standardization is a global problem and that we can best position for success by partnering with other organizations to help expand our efforts and build a broader coalition.
Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts, and/or Key Informants as applicable. We haven't directly connected yet.
Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) ● Complete our kickoff workshop on December 6
● Get on a regular cadence with the working group leadership ● Inventory current barriers to the formulation of ag standards
Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? No Please explain briefly how your project works with veterans or veteran farmers. N/A Does your project work with diverse, under-served, and underrepresented audiences? Yes
Please explain briefly how your project works with these audiences. We include a focus on smallholder farms in all of our strategic planning.
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Lincoln University Show Me How Resource Library Fellow: Anon Anderson and Callie Newsome, Lincoln University
Fellow Report: During this reporting period, the Lincoln University team completed the Innovative Skills Building Experience. Callie and I met weekly as co-leaders and met monthly with the rest of our team and coach. We have also received access from our Media Center to our college's resource portal which includes all the hard work and expertise our extension colleagues present to the public. We have also been working on a possible partnership with our Computer Science Department in assisting us with our App design. We have set ourselves up for great success as we prepare to move forward with our concept in the next quarter. Significant Results: N/A Experience(s) working with your Coach, Catalysts and/or Key Informants as applicable: For this reporting period, the experience working with our coach has been great. She was able to provide valuable resources to us and was able to answer all the questions we had and was quick to clear up any doubts and uncertainties that came along. We have also received a great deal of information from the Catalysis and key Informants from our time spent during the Innovative Skill Building Experience. Anticipated Work for Next Reporting Period: (Please list the objectives and goals for the next reporting period.) For the next reporting period, we anticipate increasing our partnership and will be working with our computer science department in order to begin the development of the mobile application. Additionally, we will begin working on gathering and organizing all the documents that we will be needing to add to the application when it is completed. We will have also completed the Impact collaborative summit which will be held in January of 2023. We plan to continue our regular meetings with our team members and check-ins with our coach.
Does your project work with veterans or veteran farmers? Yes
Please explain briefly how your project works with veterans or veteran farmers. The project works with veteran farmers because one of our team members works directly with this audience where they provide them with valuable resources and consultation. We plan to
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continue and improve this relationship and will be able to offer them more resources hopefully in the upcoming quarters.
Does your project work with diverse, under-served, or underrepresented audiences? Yes
Please explain briefly how your project works with these audiences. Yes, our project will work with diverse, underserved, and underrepresented audiences. All programs and projects must follow our Extension Mission and Vision Statement. Our Mission at Lincoln University Cooperative Extension provides equitable access to unbiased research-based information and facilitates dynamic learning opportunities in agriculture, environmental, and human sciences for diverse communities. While our Vision at Lincoln University Cooperative Extension aspires to be a national model of excellence, strengthening the well-being of low-income individuals, families, and communities who are underserved and unserved (the target audience).
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