See You There

Last week, my daughter, Wren, and I moved out of the house we’d rented since last July into our new home. We are exhausted, but happy, and look forward to the rest of our family (and furniture!) joining us in July. Part of the exhaustion came from a day of cleaning the rental house. When Wren asked why we were making all the effort for a house we’d no longer be using, I quoted her the phrase my dad often quoted to me: “Try to leave things better than you found them.”

I heard this phrase again this week when I travelled to Spencer with President Steven Leath (and thanks to everyone in Spencer for the warm welcome). Over a service club luncheon, President Leath explained that his goal is to someday turn over this university to the next president better than he found it when he arrived in January. Central to that goal is his desire to not just be a student-focused institution, but to be a citizen-focused university. President Leath said he has a soft spot for Extension and Outreach — not just because he was an extension plant pathologist early in his career, but because of the role Extension and Outreach plays in a key metric he’s interested in for his presidency — being the university that best serves its state.

To meet this metric, our institution must not only educate our youth (and currently, more Iowans are educated at ISU than any other university), and focus our research on what is valuable to the state and region, but we also need to keep our priorities on target and be service-focused with communities and citizens throughout the state.

In Extension and Outreach, we’re gearing up to assist President Leath in meeting this important metric better than we ever have before. We intend to strengthen partnerships across campus to enhance connections with communities. We intend to leverage resources to invest more effectively in local programs. We intend to more rigorously monitor and demonstrate our impacts. Because just like President Leath’s intention for the university, those of us in Extension and Outreach intend to leave our state better than we found it. See you there.

– Cathann

Extension, impacts, Partnerships, priorities, Resources

Former NBA player Walter Bond gave the keynote address at the 2011 Farm Bureau annual meeting — and his message has been noodling around in my head ever since.

Walter talked about our tendency to focus on basketball superstars. However, he noted that it takes many people for the NBA to function. Superstars do not “make it” on their own. They need the other players, coaches, trainers, managers, and so on, to successfully compete. Together they are the whole team.

Walter really wasn’t talking about basketball; he’s a motivational speaker now, after all. He was talking about organizations and what organizations need to succeed. A few superstars aren’t going to cut it — a successful organization needs a team with the right combination of staff at all levels, doing the right things. All the members of the team have to be really good at what they do and provide exceptional service to their customers — so their customers will enjoy the experience and return for more.

We’re building for success in ISU Extension and Outreach — so we all can be really good at what we do and provide exceptional service. That’s why we are restructuring extension administration into teams for County Services and Outreach, Operations, Program Leadership, and Organizational Advancement. That’s why we’re working on a professional development plan for our organization, but in the meantime we’re training our players. For example, ANR staff gathered for in-service in March, our office professionals participated in their conference April 4, and Families and 4-H staff held in-service this week. 

As we continue to follow up on our Leadership Summit, carry out our Strategic Plan, and implement our Business Plan, we will continue to address how we work as well as what we do, so we can more effectively engage Iowans and create increased impact through both existing and new programs. See you there.

– Cathann

Extension, organization, organizational advancement, people, professional development, service, team

You know how easy it is for one project to grow into another … and another … and another?

Maybe you start by thinking you need to mow the lawn, then you notice the garden needs weeding, the roses need pruning, maybe you need a new plant for that empty space, and before you know it you’ve overhauled the backyard (or at least it feels like it).  Sometimes these chains of events lead to great things and that’s certainly the case when you combine Iowa State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences with the World Food Prize – you get the Iowa Youth Institute.

The first Iowa Youth Institute is set for April 30 at Iowa State University and gives Iowa high school youth the opportunity to take action in the global fight against hunger. Interested youth researched a global issue and wrote a five-page paper under the supervision of a teacher mentor.  Students with the top-ranked papers have been invited to participate in the institute. Once on campus, they will

• present their research and recommendations;
• share ideas with other Iowa students;
• interact with global leaders in science, industry, and policy;
• participate in educational sessions and interactive tours at Iowa State to explore current research and issues in international development and life sciences; and
• meet innovative researchers, professors, and college students working to end hunger and poverty and improve world food security.

During the Iowa Youth Institute, 80 exceptional students will be competitively selected to represent the state of Iowa as delegates at the Global Youth Institute in Des Moines on Oct. 18-20. They will join more than 250 other outstanding high school students and teachers from across the country and around the world to interact with Nobel and World Food Prize Laureates and global leaders from 75 countries attending the World Food Prize’s annual international symposium. By participating in the Global Youth Institute, the students are eligible to apply for a Borlaug-Ruan International Internship or USDA Wallace-Carver Internship.

All the students who will participate in the Iowa Youth Institute are demonstrating that with planning, hard work, and determination, one good thing will lead to another. First, they’ve done their homework and prepared for the institute. But further, what they gain from this experience just may put them on the path to ending world hunger.

One thing leads to another — in a positive sense — also is true for ISU Extension and Outreach. One thing leads to another when we anticipate emerging issues and trends— partnering and providing resources, research, and education to assist Iowans. The very much intended result is significant impact throughout the state. See you there.

– Cathann

action, Extension, impact, Leadership, youth

FYI re See You There – Who said it?
Regarding today’s message: there’s been a question about whether the opening quote really was from Ben Franklin. Several online quote sources attribute the quote to Ben, but it’s the Internet after all, so who knows.

No matter who said it, I like the quote. The right to pursue happiness doesn’t guarantee we all achieve it. Do you agree? Add your comments.

– Cathann

**********

“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
–Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was on to something. The right to pursue happiness doesn’t guarantee we all achieve it.   I was thinking about this recently while talking about needs assessments for our programs.  One of the problems with a needs assessment to determine program priorities is that conceptions of “need” may vary radically between different communities or even individuals within the same house. One person’s view of need may easily be seen as paternalistic by another, or totally unnecessary.

In a 2010 needs assessment, ISU Extension and Outreach was broadly perceived as serving youth and agricultural interests in the state. Once past this more general image, it was what people knew and how they knew Extension and Outreach that tended to dictate their perceptions. However, when given a list of 16 potential topic areas for programming, survey participants showed little discernment. Everything was important.

One of our goals in our new strategic plan is to refine our systems to collectively identify Iowans’ current and emerging needs. But if our clients feel that everything is important, what are we to do? Perhaps the first thing to do is realize the limitations on knowing how to catch what makes us happy.

In his book, “Stumbling on Happiness,” Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert says “happiness really is nothing more or less than a word that we word makers can use to indicate anything we please.” People use the word happiness to mean all sorts of things, including feeling happy (emotional happiness), feeling happy because (moral happiness), and feeling happy about (judgmental happiness).

Our needs assessment process assumes our clients know what they will need tomorrow and even what might make them happy. But Gilbert says we have a blind spot in our mind’s eye. We think we can picture what might make us happy, but we are actually not that good at deciding what will make us happy in the future. Research shows that we humans don’t have a good way of extrapolating from what we need today to what we need tomorrow.  We make errors by predicting the future will be too much like the present.

What implications does this human inability to know what makes us happy have for Extension and Outreach needs assessment? Can we compensate somehow or use our skills more wisely? Our techniques for needs assessment introduce errors because we can’t forecast the future. And, if we could improve our techniques, let’s not forget the lesson my first car taught me:  in the process of meeting our needs, we create new needs.

Maybe there are better ways to do it.

One of the assumptions on which we’ve based our strategic plan is that our educational programs must align the needs of Iowans with federal, land-grant system, and college and university priorities. That’s why our Program Leadership Team is leading a system-wide program development process, including a system to identify emerging and current needs. County councils, county staff, regional directors, program directors, and program specialists all have roles and responsibilities for needs assessment.  What else should we be doing?  What new ways could we be assessing?  Who else should we be listening to?

As Daniel Gilbert says, there’s no simple formula for finding – or catching – happiness. Needs assessment in ISU Extension and Outreach won’t be perfect or easy.  How do we hear from unserved audiences?  How do we help communities forecast a future that doesn’t look like today?

The systematic approach we are outlining, with support and participation from councils, partners, faculty, and staff, gives us a better chance of making sure our programs are relevant and create significant impact by expanding access to educational programs within our communities.  But it’s just the start of the kind of organization we need to become for the future.  See you there.

– Cathann

Extension, needs assessment, program development, strategic plan

For years, those of us working in Extension and Outreach have hung our hats on being able to tout our programs as “high quality.” We’ve typically defined that as research-based, unbiased, and relevant. Essentially, our programs do what they are supposed to do: provide research-based education and extend the resources of Iowa State University to our state.

What we haven’t kept up with is the proliferation of quality. Think about the last time your car broke down. It happens so seldom to most of us that we find it surprising, which is a lot different than my first car, a Chevy Vega that habitually left me stranded on the side of the road.

Why does this matter? Because the proliferation of quality across educational organizations, across private or nonprofit companies, across even the Internet means that our claim to quality is not so unique anymore. If I can get quality knowledge from here or there, how do I choose? Most of us would go with convenience, and let’s not forget — cheapest.

What this means is that we no longer get to sail along on quality, but have to dig deeper to understand what other criteria our constituents want and will seek out. We have to talk about convenience, cost, responsiveness, connectedness, and new — all while maintaining quality.

Our streamlining of Extension and Outreach Administration includes a functional unit for Program Leadership. This unit will guide our efforts in educational program development. A team, with John Lawrence as temporary lead, is developing plans to carry out what we began during our leadership summit. We’re going to be digging deeper.

This functional unit will

• Clarify and lead a system-wide program development process, including a system to identify emerging and current needs. 
• Focus citizens’ advisory efforts at the programmatic level.
• Create guidelines and criteria for successful program partnerships.
• Strengthen connections to campus units and departments to enhance the outreach function of ISU colleges.
• Increase cross-program interaction and coordination.
• Improve connections between researchers and ISU Extension and Outreach faculty and staff.
• Create and implement a professional development plan for ISU and county personnel on content and research associated with ISU Extension and Outreach educational programs. 
• Identify and monitor the impacts and quality of programs.

We have to spend some time reconsidering the components of our high quality programs and recognizing that the components might be different, depending on the program or the audience. In other words, we have to redefine quality. See you there.

– Cathann

education, Extension, programs, Quality, research

Saturday nights, when I was 13, meant the Skating Rink — the Wellman Skating Rink, located along Highway 22. Maple floor. Concessions. Big fuzzy pom-poms on your laces. And the games: “The Limbo” or “Mother, May I?” and best of all, “Crack the Whip.”

You remember Crack the Whip. Any number can play. Someone gets to be the leader. Other skaters form a line by the leader and hold tightly to the person next to them. The leader skates along and veers suddenly in a new direction, or speeds up or slows down. Sometimes the leader goes in circles and others try to hold on. Very small changes from the leader get amplified along the line, until the person at the end loses balance or is catapulted into the wall.  And we thought that was fun…

This happens in organizations too. We each think changes we make are small, hardly worth mentioning. What we’re really talking about is the interdependence and interconnections among all of us, and how we foster them. It’s easy to lose sight of the impact out at the end of our line. So it’s not so much the leader’s vision, but rather, how it plays out all along the way. 

This point came home to me this week as we hosted the Office Professionals Conference here on campus.  We listened carefully to the needs in the counties, and how changes we are making may be impacting them.  There were great suggestions on improving communications, training, and programs.  We appreciated the enthusiasm and dedication we heard, in spite of the challenges.

We are counting on the interdependence and interconnections among all of us as we forge our future. We have the results from our leadership summit, the Administrative Response, we’re developing a business plan, and we recently released our Strategic Plan. We have our map for where we go from here. Now, we all need to consider how this map informs our work and get familiar with where we are headed, so we move forward together. 

Thank you for the hard work and consistent efforts over the past several months. We are building on a firm foundation as we continue the work of ISU Extension and Outreach. See you there.

– Cathann

change, Extension, Leadership, vision

President Abraham Lincoln once said, “The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future.”  2012 marks the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act, which created the land grant university with its focus on making higher education accessible.  Extension and Outreach in partnership with the College of Design has been selected to have an exhibit on the National Mall as part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which will be celebrating the land grant university.

Iowa State University’s exhibit on transforming communities is inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 national call to “think anew, and act anew” to solve the monumental challenges of the era that spawned the Morrill Act. The exhibit showcases the leadership and unique partnership between the College of Design and Extension and Outreach in harnessing creativity, design and innovation to promote community development and provide entrepreneurial solutions to complex societal problems. It shows the ongoing relevance of land-grant universities to find innovative approaches to solve today’s challenges and anticipate tomorrow’s.

For those not in Washington, D.C. this July, the exhibit will also be brought back to Iowa for viewing in late summer.  Since Iowa was the first state to officially endorse the Morrill Act, we’re proud to be part of the national celebration.

2012 also begins celebrations of 100 years of organized county extension work in Iowa.  Starting in 1903, Sioux County farmers and Iowa State College established the basis for cooperative extension work. This continued in 1904 when Keokuk County Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs organized, continuing the movement begun in Page County in 1901—the beginnings of Iowa 4-H and extension youth work.  Extension began to form nationally starting in 1914, with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act for Cooperative Extension, and by 1918, Extension had a presence in every county in Iowa.

These types of milestones encourage us to look reverently upon the past, our history, the good old days. But is what we revere still relevant? Does anybody besides us really care about what happened 100 or 150 years ago? Maybe — but only if it still makes a difference today.

In his Extension and Outreach Week proclamation signed on Tuesday, Governor Branstad encourages Iowans to learn how our organization benefits the people of this state today. President Leath has said that he respects and understands Extension and Outreach, and is looking to us for innovation — to prepare Iowa for tomorrow.

Our presence in a county for 100 years demonstrates we have been an important part of what was. But the difference we make today will ensure we are a vibrant player in what will be. We can cherish our past, but we must live in our present and prepare for our future.

When President Lincoln issued that national call in 1862, our educational pioneers responded and created a world class institution with a robust extension program.  Think of the innovation this model represented at that time – and the risk it must have seemed to be.  I doubt whether the challenges seemed any less daunting in those days than ours do today.  As President Lincoln said, “think anew, and act anew.” See you there.

– Cathann

challenges, Extension, Land-grant mission, Morrill Act, Smithsonian Folklife Festival

A couple weeks ago while meeting with other extension directors, a few began complaining about budget cuts, changes in structure, and the end of the world as we know it. I was surprised they saw changes to structure as potentially signaling the end of the work. It reminded me of that saying about throwing out the baby with the bathwater – an expression my grandmother used when she thought something essential was being thrown out with something less important.

After that discussion, I found myself wondering about the adage itself. … How could anyone ever accidentally throw out a baby along with dirty bathwater?  Is it because the water was so dirty you simply lost sight of your baby?  Was the baby so small and the tub of water so large you lost it?  Have we ever lost the most important among the unimportant in Extension and Outreach?

It’s been three years since the 2009 restructuring and five months since our summit. So, what is it we do now in ISU Extension and Outreach? I’ve had a lot of people ask me that question, with the assumption that after budget cuts, competition from Google, and other changes whizzing past us, our work has changed dramatically. I agree — it has. Everyone in Extension and Outreach needs to learn and adapt, but how do any of us know what we’re doing next? It’s a challenging question — because what we do can change rather quickly, and so is who “we” are.

“We” isn’t just a group of field specialists or county educators or extension faculty anymore. County extension council members, county staff, faculty across all the colleges, deans … our tent is bigger and more inclusive than before. And just as our tent is expanding, so too are ideas about what we do. What makes this our tent? What brings us all together? What are we hoping to achieve? Of all the assumptions and ideas we’ve brought with us, we must decide which are the babies and which are the murky bathwater.

Our structure changed because the world is changing, but I’m convinced we can and should hang on to our mission. It seemed to me some of the other directors were more concerned with preservation of the current structure of their organizations rather than considering ways of effectively accomplishing our mission in the future. After all, in our long and rich history, the structure of our organization has undergone several changes. They may have forgotten those wise words of Liberty Hyde Bailey: “Whenever a piece of work comes to the point where maintenance of the organization is the principle aim, it begins then to lose its direction.”

At our summit last fall we clarified that our structure does not define us; our mission makes us who we are. ISU Extension and Outreach puts the land-grant mission to work by applying land-grant university research and evidence-based practices across the state. We are committed to healthy people, healthy environments, and healthy economies. The work of the summit and this commitment to Iowans and to Iowa’s future enriches our work and determined our new Strategic Plan. You can see the plan, hot off the press so to speak.

This past fall we took time to determine what is “baby” and what is “bathwater.”  It’s our mission that defines our work. Hang on to that baby.  See you there.

– Cathann

Land-grant mission, Mission, strategic plan, structure

Jiminy Cricket wished upon a star. Dorothy clicked the heels of her ruby red slippers. Many of us “make a wish” using wishbones, wishing wells, pennies “from heaven,” or birthday candles. Then we wait for our dreams to come true. Have you noticed that none of these methods work very well? That’s probably for the best — otherwise American Suburbia might be overrun with ponies.

According to the Rolling Stones, “you can’t always get what you want.” But the trouble is, we’re not very good at knowing what it is we really want anyway. There’s so much to choose from — the newest iPad vs. the not-quite-as-new iPad, the latest smart phone vs. the not-as-smart phone; not to mention all the choices online, at the movies, or in the jam aisle at the grocery store.

Columbia University Professor Sheena Iyengar offered selections of jams to demonstrate just how hard it can be to deal with making choices. In her book, “The Art of Choosing,” she states:

To choose means to turn ourselves to the future. It means to try to catch a glimpse of the next hour, the next year, or further still, and make a decision based on what we see. …

There is so much to consider, so much to bear responsibility for, it’s no surprise we sometimes long for an easier path. Choice draws power from its promise of almost infinite possibility, but what is possible is also what is unknown. …

Science can assist us in becoming more skillful choosers, but at its core, choice remains an art. To gain the most from it, we must embrace uncertainty and contradiction.

In ISU Extension and Outreach, our clients have to choose whether they wish to partake of our educational programs. We have to choose which educational programs to provide. But our choice becomes easier when we base our decisions on our fundamental principles and align with our key attributes — anticipating issues, acting in catalytic ways, and staying for the long haul. It’s both science, and art.

The rest of that Rolling Stones lyric goes like this: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” You can wish … and wait for your dreams to come true, or you can consider your priorities and choose to take action. See you there.

– Cathann

choices, decisions, Extension, fundamental principles, future, priorities

Many of us (especially in my generation) feel like we are constantly wandering through the midway at a large State Fair, with our senses assaulted by too much information. So many choices of what to read, what to listen to, where to go, what to do …

Maybe you’ve heard of the famous “jam study.” In 1995, Columbia University Professor Sheena Iyengar and her research assistants set up a booth with samples of jams in a California gourmet market. Every few hours, they switched from offering a selection of 24 jams to a group of six jams. On average, customers tasted two jams, regardless of the size of the assortment, and each one received a coupon good for $1 off one jar of jam.

Here’s the interesting part. Sixty percent of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40 percent stopped by the small one. But 30 percent of the people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to buy jam, while only 3 percent of those confronted with the two dozen jams purchased a jar.

That study “raised the hypothesis that the presence of choice might be appealing as a theory,” Professor Iyengar said last year, “but in reality, people might find more and more choice to actually be debilitating.” Iyengar should know. She has a joint appointment in the Columbia Business School and the Department of Psychology and is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on choice.

Research also shows that an excess of choices often leads us to be less, not more, satisfied once we actually decide. There’s often that nagging feeling we could have done better.

So what might this mean for our clients and the educational programs we provide in Extension and Outreach? How many choices do they really want from us? How many choices should we be prepared to give them? Do they know what they want? Do we know what they need?

Perhaps we’d all be better off if we set priorities first.

As we move forward from our summit, we know our educational programs must be appropriate within the scope of our educational mission, and provide knowledge, instruction, or information. We know they also must be based strongly in research evidence, and/or be connected to ongoing research at Iowa State. Finally, we know that our educational programs must align the needs of Iowans with federal, land-grant system, and college and university priorities.

Let’s use what we know to develop the best educational programs that we can provide, and offer the choices that will best engage Iowans. See you there.

– Cathann

choices, education, Extension, Mission, priorities