Now is a good time to check in on the status of preparing nominations for the three categories of National Cooperative Extension Awards offered by ECOP and USDA-NIFA. The deadline to submit nominations online is less than a month away, May 1, 2024. Letters from respective members of Section are required for the individual and team Excellence in Extension award nominations. The gateway to all of the details may be found at awards.extension.org. Questions about these awards may be directed to Sandy Ruble, Assistant Director, Cooperative Extension System/ECOP at sandyruble@extension.org. The value of the prizes exceed $38,000 annually.
Hales Returns to Serve ECOP Through 2027 - The Western Extension Directors Association has appointed Dr. Brent Hales (picture left) is Associate Vice President of the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR) to serve on ECOP. The required 4-year term ends in the fall of 2027. Brent returns to ECOP after serving for the Association of Northeast Extension Directors from 2020-2023 when he was Associate Dean, College of Agricultural Sciences and Director of Penn State Extension. In addition, Brent returns to the ECOP Program Committee which he chaired in his earlier term. More about Brent is found here. Thank you and welcome back to Dr. Brent Hales!
First Friday Event on Cooperative Extension’s Growing Health Infrastructure - Last Friday, the Extension Health Director Roger Rennekamp and researchers from the Center for Community Health and Evaluation (CCHE) at Kaiser Permanente in Seattle, reported that Cooperative Extension has made great strides in building its capacity for health-related work over the past five years. According to the fifty-one responding land-grant institutions, 81% indicated that they had increased external funding for health-related programming. The total amount of external funding received by these institutions was approximately $140 million (excluding EFNEP and SNAP-Ed). Elements from the presentation are available at the following links:
The video is available on ECOP's YouTube Channel -
EDEN Mini-Grant RFA Deadline is May 10 - The deadline for the EDEN Mini-Grants program RFA Advancing Disaster Education in America is set for May 10. The goal of the grants program is to fuel the development of creative educational resources and Extension initiatives. These resources will empower EDEN's mission and the broader land-grant and sea-grant systems to effectively address all phases of disaster management: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.
Partnering Opportunities with Cities - Land-grant University research and Extension professionals are invited to participate in a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) by Washington State University Extension's National Urban Research & Extension Center (NUREC) to determine where the opportunities lie for partnership and collaboration with the National League of Cities. NUREC will utilize RFEI data to assess interest and gather information to create projects, build project teams and/or craft responses to RFP’s. Learn more here.
