ECOP Monday Minute 11.4.13

ACTION: Send Centennial Message with Every E-Mail – The ECOP Extension Centennial Celebration Task Force encourages you to celebrate Extension’s 100 years with every e-mail message you send. See www.extension100years.net for details on how to add the centennial logo on your e-mail signature line and connect to the toolkit. Also encourage Extension colleagues and others to engage in the Centennial discussion on social media: Twitter (twitter.com/ext100years), Facebook (facebook.com/Extension100Years), Pinterest (pinterest.com/ext100years/pins).

ACTION: Need Program Impacts – To date, 43 institutions have entered data in the Measuring Excellence system at www.excellenceinextension.org and 31 institutions have entered impact statements. Joe Zublena, North Carolina State University, chair of the ECOP Measuring Excellence in Extension Implementation Team, and Mary Jane Willis, Rutgers University, chair of the ECOP Program Subcommittee, encourage 100 percent participation in both systems in order to provide the most complete picture of the nationwide Cooperative Extension System. Impact statements are especially important now as Cooperative Extension gears up for advocacy related to federal budget deliberations. For assistance, contact Scott Cummings, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, at s-cummings@tamu.edu.

USDA Ag Outlook Forum Features Centennial – “Launching Cooperative Extension’s Next Century” is the theme of a session accepted for presentation at the 2014 USDA Ag Outlook Forum http://www.usda.gov/oce/forum/ February 20-21 near Washington, DC. Working with USDA-NIFA, the Cooperative Extension centennial also will be featured in the display area.

ESCOP Update – Steve Slack, Ohio State University, chair of the Experiment Station Committee on Organization and Policy (ESCOP), encourages Cooperative Extension colleagues to view presentations at http://escop.ncsu.edu/ from the recent Experiment Station System meeting in Columbus, Ohio. Amongst topics addressed are water quality, global climate change, and budget management strategies.

National Student Competition – Student team entries are due February 28, 2014 for the National Agricultural Innovation Prize. The competition encourages the development of real-world plans to address social and agricultural challenges within food systems to improve the standard of living and quality of life for the world’s population. For details, see http://agprize.com and http://www.40Chances.com.