NIFA Application Status Dashboard

Stakeholders can use the NIFA Application Status Dashboard to check the status of their grant applications. NIFA created the dashboard to enhance NIFA stakeholder customer experience. To use the tool, applicants will need to input their Grants.gov tracking number.

EPA Office of Pesticide Programs Seeks PPDC Appointees

 The Office of Pesticide Programs is in the process of seeking nominations of qualified candidates to be considered for appointment to the Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee (PPDC). I am writing to seek your assistance with both nominating individuals and spreading the word about the open nominations to your relevant stakeholders.

The PPDC is chartered under the Federal Advisory Committee Act to provide policy advice, information and recommendations to the EPA on a wide variety of pesticide regulatory development and reform initiatives, evolving public policy and program implementation issues, and policy issues associated with evaluating and reducing risks from pesticide use.

For additional information about the PPDC, please visit the PPDC website here. Please note, a FederalRegister Notice announcing the request for nominations was published on August 17^th, which contains nominating instructions. Nominations are due on September 16th. If you have any questions, please contact Jeffrey Chang at chang.jeffrey@epa.gov.

Why Extension is the Right Partner for Health

The Extension Health Tiger Team identified five reasons that Cooperative Extension is the right partner for Health. Extension’s value in community health is not theoretical. It is demonstrated and durable:

• Unmatched national infrastructure. Extension operates in every state, U.S. territory, and nearly every county. It is the only educational system with geographic reach and local trust needed to deliver consistent, evidence-based health programming at the national scale, including in rural and other communities that federal programs and health systems often struggle to reach.
• Trust that drives lasting behavior change. Extension educators are embedded in communities for years — often decades. That depth of relationship produces the kind of sustained, longitudinal engagement that drives real behavior change at the individual and population level. No federal campaign, app, or episodic clinical program can replicate it.
• Proven federal partnerships at scale. Extension has partnered with CDC through EXCITE — reaching nearly 2.8 million individuals and forming 196 health partnerships — and has demonstrated effective, scalable delivery of the National Diabetes Prevention Program through PreventT2. These are not pilots. They are proof points.
• Lifespan reach and holistic, integrated programming. Extension’s health work spans prenatal nutrition to healthy aging. It integrates food systems, agriculture, community development, financial well-being, and youth development through 4-H — the kind of cross-sector, whole-person approach that produces durable community health outcomes that isolated health programs cannot offer.
• A research foundation that is second to none. Every program Extension delivers is evidence-based, continuously evaluated, and grounded in the latest science — from precision nutrition and food safety to mental health and chronic disease prevention.

The work of the Tiger Team will be one of three major topics discussed at the NEDAmeeting in Seattle. 

Hechinger Op-Ed on AI Workforce Readiness

While written from an academic programs perspective, the AI workforce readiness piece below is highly applicable to youth and adult education. 

OPINION: AI workforce readiness cannot remain a campus-by-campus experiment built around isolated pilot programs

ECOP Monday Minute 2.24.14

ACTION: Register for NEDA 2014 – Early registration deadline for NEDA, offered this year in conjunction with the National eXtension Conference March 24-27 in Sacramento, runs through March 3. See http://muconf.missouri.edu/NeXC-NEDA2014/ for details. This is the one opportunity each year for Cooperative Extension Directors and Administrators to engage in a dialogue about national opportunities affecting state and local programming. In addition to joint sessions with eXtension featuring keynote speakers, the NEDA and Cooperative Extension Business Meeting will consider such topics as improving health in America, building Extension’s human capacity, the new 4-H National Leadership Team, resource opportunities, and telling the impact story. The ECOP Executive Committee which plans NEDA under the direction of immediate past ECOP Chair, Daryl Buchholz, encourages representation from all institutions in the Cooperative Extension Section. Join us in Sacramento for Launching Cooperative Extension’s Next 100 Years: Celebrate, Innovate, Engage.

FCS Master Volunteer Program – Learn about the Master Family & Consumer Sciences (FCS) Volunteer Program during a webinar  2:00-3:00 p.m. ET, Wednesday, 2.26.14 targeted for FCS program leaders and county educators. See the newly developed website to help plan, implement and evaluate a successful volunteer program, plus preview a 13-lesson series on volunteer development. This program will help build FCS capacity, critical to Cooperative Extension programming nationwide, by using trained volunteers at the local level. The program was developed through a partnership of USDA-NIFA and  Montana State University Extension. Space is limited for the webinar. Pre-registration is required at

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/master-family-consumer-sciences-volunteer-program-webinar-tickets-3703112108.

“New” eXtension Planning Underway – Dennis Calvin, Pennsylvania State University, Chair of the eXtension Governing Committee, and Keith Smith, Ohio State University, Chair of the eXtension Strategic Planning Committee, announce work to set out a plan for the “new” eXtension. Thanks to all Cooperative Extension Directors and Administrators for expressing your views over the last year. The next step is to take action for change. Cascade Center for Community Governance has been contracted to lead the effort. The first meeting, which includes representation from all five Extension regions, is scheduled for March 4-5, 2014 in Washington, DC. An update will be provided at the 2014 NEDA meeting in Sacramento in late March.

ACTION: Impacts Database – Forty-four of 75 Land-grant institutions in the Cooperative Extension Section are represented in the Impacts Database. If your institution is not represented, the ECOP Program Subcommittee requests that you please consider doing so. The impacts are already being used to support funding requests and for various presentations to key influential groups. Go to https://excellence.tamu.edu/database to enter impacts so that your institution and your region can be appropriately recognized.

Celebrating 100 Years – Cooperative Extension was well represented at the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum February 20-21 in Arlington, VA. The forum kicked off with video http://www.usda.gov/oce/forum/friday.htm#celebrating, included an ongoing centennial exhibit, and featured a concurrent session moderated by Krysta Harden, USDA deputy secretary,  called Launching Cooperative Extension’s Next Century. ECOP Chair Jimmy Henning, University of Kentucky, and ECOP Centennial Task Force co-chairs, Doug Steele, Texas A&M University, and Frankie Gould, Louisiana State University, were speakers.