The Tuesday Letter
Agricultural Experiment Station & Cooperative Extension Service

  
Vol. 9, No. 46   September 30, 2003

IN THIS ISSUE...

...Information from Human Resources
...The Following Message Applies Only to Employees Eligible for Participation in the State of Kansas Health Insurance Plan:
...Community Food Systems Workshop Rescheduled
...Excellence in Extension Seminar - October 22
...Sharon Anderson to Give Book Review
...Long-Term Strategic Planning (continued)
...Feedback on the 4-H Strategic Plan
...Pegasus Mail Upgrade on October 8
...Specialists' Quarterly Reports
...Rural Policy Symposium - November 14
...The Farm Analyst Program
...Master Schedule

Questions should be addressed to Benefits Administration at 785-532-6277, or e-mail: BENADMIN@K-STATE.EDU .

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Health Insurance, KanElect, and KPERS Optional Group Life Insurance Open Enrollment Meetings
The Division of Human Resources will conduct two identical health insurance, KanElect, and KPERS Optional Group Life Insurance open enrollment meetings in conjunction with the 2003 KSU Benefits Fair on October 1, 2003, at 9 a.m. and again at 3 p.m. Each meeting will be conducted in Forum Hall, K-State Student Union. The meeting will outline changes to the State of Kansas health, dental, pharmaceutical and vision programs for plan year 2004 as well as changes to the KanElect Flexible Spending Account programs for 2004.

Also, a representative from Minnesota Life Insurance Company, the new carrier for our basic term life insurance and the KPERS Optional Group Life Insurance program, will make a presentation about program changes to be effective January 1, 2004.

Please remember that all three of these open enrollments will be conducted on-line, via the internet. 

Questions should be addressed to Benefits Administration at 785-532-6277, or e-mail: BENADMIN@K-STATE.EDU .

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Direct Deposit Prenoting
In an effort to streamline the direct deposit process, a policy decision has been made to discontinue the process of prenoting direct deposits. This change allows employees to receive the benefit of direct deposit immediately rather than receiving a check while waiting for the prenote process to complete. This change in policy is effective with all direct deposit information entered in HRIS with an effective date on or after September 14, 2003.

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Reminder - 2003 Discretionary Day
The last day an employee may use their 2003 Discretionary Day is Saturday, December 20, 2003. Please advise any eligible employees in your department who have not used their 2003 Discretionary Day of this provision.

Questions should be addressed to Benefits Administration, Division of Human Resources at 785-532-6277, or e-mail: BENADMIN@K-STATE.EDU .

--Division of Human Resources

THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE APPLIES ONLY TO EMPLOYEES ELIGIBLE FOR PARTICIPATION IN THE STATE OF KANSAS HEALTH INSURANCE PLAN:
October 1 - 31, 2003, is the annual open enrollment period for the State of Kansas health insurance plans and the KanElect Flexible Spending Accounts. Informational booklets and memorandums about both of these programs were mailed from this office on Monday, September 29, to your work address.

The State of Kansas Division of Personnel Services has posted to their web site the plan year 2004 open enrollment meeting schedule. The web site is: http://da.state.ks.us/ps/subject/oemtgs04.htm . You may review this web site to determine when an open enrollment meeting is scheduled for your location.

Questions should be addressed to the KSU Division of Human Resources at 785-532-6277 or e-mail: BENADMIN@KSU.EDU . --Joe Younger

COMMUNITY FOOD SYSTEMS WORKSHOP RESCHEDULED
The Community Food Systems Workshop scheduled in Salina October 6 and 7, 2003, has been rescheduled for November 17 and 18, 2003.

The agenda will be similar to the one already released. Enrollment information and sign up will be coming out again soon. If you have questions, contact Sherrie Mahoney, Saline County Extension Office, at 785-309-5850, or smahoney@oznet.ksu.edu .

The travel scholarships for lodging and registration will still be available. Contact Jana Beckman, KCSAAC office, for information at 785-532-1440, or beckman@oznet.ksu.edu . --Sherrie Mahoney

EXCELLENCE IN EXTENSION SEMINAR - OCTOBER 22
Sharon Anderson, North Dakota State University Extension Director, will be on campus to present an Excellence In Extension Seminar on Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 3:30 p.m., in 231 Waters Hall. Anderson's seminar is entitled "21st Century Extension Service: Mostly Opportunities with Some Challenges."

Sharon Anderson served on the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy from 1996 to 1999 and was chair in 1999. She was also a member of ECOP's Extension Vision for the 21st Century Committee that created the report, "The Extension System: Vision for the 21st Century." --George Ham gham@oznet.ksu.edu  and Randy Higgins rhiggins@oznet.ksu.edu 

SHARON ANDERSON TO GIVE BOOK REVIEW
In conjunction with North Dakota State University Extension Director Sharon Anderson's "Excellence in Extension Seminar," she will also provide an interesting, informal book review entitled "Leadership Literature that can Guide Extension Work" on Wednesday, October 22, 7 p.m., in the lobby area of the K-State Alumni Center.  This informal review will focus on Good to Great by Jim Collins, and other references she finds useful and interesting for Extension workers.

We hope you will take this opportunity to read Good to Great as a preparation for an interesting and fun evening reviewing and reflecting on contemporary books which are relevant and useful in guiding Extension work. --George Ham gham@oznet.ksu.edu and Randy Higgins rhiggins@oznet.ksu.edu 

LONG-TERM STRATEGIC PLANNING (continued)
Responses from members of our K-State Extension Advisory Council to a recent survey question follow:

What do you believe to be the four most critical issues for us to address in developing the K-State Extension strategic plan?

• Budget and finance
• Vision and focus: thinking outside the box
• Know your competition
• Strengthen Existing partnerships
• Formulate new alliances and partnerships
• Security of our food system
• Creating a need - or satisfying needs - with our services
• Make our information timely and fun. Use state of the art delivery methods
• A good marriage between the educator and the consumer (1/2 and 1/2 at all times)
• Fund generation and coordinating those efforts with needs
• Matching programming with audience expectations and needs
• Identifying program and research direction and/or priority
• Delivery of programs
• Improved effectiveness and efficiency of program delivery
• More broad-based dissemination to meet broader audiences
• Better utilization of modern technology to provide better services for especially hard-to-reach audiences
• Exchange of ideas from state to local levels
• Allow these individuals a short interval exchange from state to local level to personally understand needs and issues from one end to the other
• The type and size of production units continue to change.  These changes affect the number of units, the number and location of families, and the management and operation of these units.
• Many of the production units bypass the local supplier for large bulk suppliers.  These suppliers provide supervision, advice, monitoring and other services that once were provided by Extension. This change affects the population and the financial support from the counties for Extension.
• Help youth develop life skills
• Help parents develop life skills
• Communication, both horizontal and vertical, from researchers, K-State, extension agents and county citizens

These comments will help guide our long-term Extension strategic planning discussions that will take place over the next several months. Sharon Anderson (see related articles) will provide us with some thoughts as to how we might more effectively approach this process. Please forward suggestions to mhightow@oznet.ksu.edu  regarding this process and people/groups that you believe should be asked to share in these discussions. –Randy Higgins rhiggins@oznet.ksu.edu 

FEEDBACK ON THE 4-H STRATEGIC PLAN
A reminder that the 4-H Strategic Plan draft document was sent out to county offices in early September. We hope you are scheduling time to review the plan and discuss what your PDC, youth council, and other leaders would hope to see in the future for 4-H Youth Development. A county response to the draft plan is desired by October 15.

Additionally, you can point to the 4-H web site: http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/4h/strategicplan/stratplanHOME.htm . We will have the draft plan on that web site very soon with opportunity for feedback through that web site. Feedback through the web site should be by individuals and not by our employees.

If you have questions, please contact me. --Daryl Buchholz dbuchhol@oznet.ksu.edu 

PEGASUS MAIL UPGRADE ON OCTOBER 8
On Wednesday, October 8, IET will have upgraded all the on campus OzNet users who log into Netware to the newest version of Pegasus Mail version 4.12a.

The biggest feature in Pegasus Mail 4.12a is the Content Control or Spam Filtering. IET will be sending out instructions on how to use this feature once the upgrade has taken place.

Below is a short excerpt of the key new features from the Pegasus Mail 4.12a What's New document:

Content control - This powerful new feature allows you to apply rigorous testing to the content of the e-mail you receive. It is primarily aimed at trapping spam, but can be used for much more if you wish.

Rewritten POP3/SMTP code - Pegasus Mail's POP3 and SMTP mail routines have been totally rewritten for V4.1: you can now have multiple POP3 mailboxes active at any time, can apply Pegasus Mail's powerful filtering rules to messages on the server before they are downloaded, and there are several new and revised features for controlling how much mail is downloaded from the server at any given time. 

Grouped views - Pegasus Mail v4.1 provides you with a powerful new way of organizing the mail within your folders: grouped views create a hierarchy within your folders, allowing you to construct any of ten different organizations of mail. Of particular note is our active threads grouped view, which sorts messages into threads, then sorts active threads (those which have new mail) to the top of the list. To experiment with grouped views, look on the Messages menu if you use Pegasus Mail's preview mode, or on the Folder menu if you use Pegasus Mail's classic mode to browse your folders.

Attachment browser in preview mode - If you run Pegasus Mail in its three-pane "preview" mode, you can now view and manipulate the attachments to your messages simply by pressing the <F7> key to switch to attachment view. You can switch back to the message view at any time by pressing <F8>. There are also buttons on the preview window's ribbon bar to change views.

Template editor - Pegasus Mail's Template Support (mail construction from a pre-written script) is one of the most powerful features in the program, and prior to now has been one of the least-used, because of its complexity. Pegasus Mail v4.1 includes a powerful template editor that vastly simplifies the process of writing and maintaining templates. With full editing assistance, it allows you to build templates without having to worry about the details of the template scripting language. It is accompanied by extensive additions to the online help that describe the template scripting language.

Windows XP Look and Feel, improved status indicators - Pegasus Mail v4.1 will automatically use the Windows XP "Look and Feel" if you run it on Windows XP, and the folder and preview mode windows now have new, more intuitive status indicators to show what each message in the folder is.

Improved multi-folder searching - Searching through multiple folders has been considerably improved in v4.1, with options to limit the search to only messages falling within a particular age range, and to require all search terms to match. These changes can dramatically decrease the time it takes to search across all your folders for mail.

--Larry Havenstein lhavenst@oznet.ksu.edu 

SPECIALISTS' QUARTERLY REPORTS
The Specialists' Quarterly Report is online at http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/prev/ . Please submit your report to the database soon after the end of the reporting period in September. If you have questions or need assistance, please call the Planning and Reporting office at 785-532-6775. --Marie Blythe mblythe@oznet.ksu.edu 

RURAL POLICY SYMPOSIUM - NOVEMBER 14
"Crafting Our Own Bootstraps: Making the Regional Approach Work" is the theme of the 2003 Rural Policy Symposium. Information and on-line registration is available at http://www.ksu.edu/kcri/rps .

The program will feature comments on the federal New Homestead Act by Senator Sam Brownback (invited); reports from the regional prosperity summits; remarks from the Governor's Rural Life Task Force; comments from state legislators; and roundtable discussion to make recommendations to the Lieutenant Governor.

The program will be held in the K-State Union Hansen Little Theatre and videoconferenced by Polycom to the area offices in Colby, Garden City, and Chanute. Along with you, county commissioners and Extension board members are welcome and encouraged to register. –Daryl Buchholz dbuchhol@oznet.ksu.edu  and Ron Wilson rwilson@oznet.ksu.edu 

THE FARM ANALYST PROGRAM
For over 19 years, the department of Extension Agricultural Economics has provided a team of farm analysts to assist Kansas farm and ranch families with the tools to research their operations competitiveness and future direction. Working in the confidential setting of the producers home, analysts seek to empower families with the knowledge of where their operation has been and design a "roadmap" of where it can go.

Over 1500 families have utilized the analyst service. Many referrals come from county agents, KAMS (Kansas Ag Mediation Service), lenders, KSU Farm Management Associations, the Rural Family Helpline, and previously served farm families.

2003 has left many farms with limited production due to drought. Some farms are battling the 3rd consecutive year or poor income due to low yields on primarily fall harvested crops. Farm Analysts help provide a realistic picture of where financially the operation is and facilitate communication between the family and their lender.

The Farm Analyst Program provides the information necessary to mediate and facilitate solutions that keep personal and business goals intact and moving ahead in an ever changing economic environment. Program fees are nominal for the service provided. To learn more about the Farm Analyst Program, contact program coordinator Duane Hund, dhund@oznet.ksu.edu . --Duane Hund

VIEW THE MASTER SCHEDULE OR ADD NEW ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS . 

Submit corrections to previously submitted items to jzarger@oznet.ksu.edu .

DATES TAKEN FROM THE MASTER SCHEDULE FOR OCTOBER 8, 2003, THROUGH OCTOBER 14, 2003:

Wednesday, October 8
.... State Program Coordination, Manhattan (Rm 213 K-State Union), Statewide, 10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon, Marie Blythe mblythe@oznet.ksu.edu

Thursday, October 9
.... NE/SE Area Animal Science Agent Update, Emporia, 10:00 a.m., Joel DeRouchey jderouch@oznet.ksu.edu

Saturday, October 11
.... State 4-H Fall Shooting Sports Finals Match, Hutchinson, Statewide, Gary Gerhard ggerhard@oznet.ksu.edu

Saturday, October 11, through Sunday, October 12
.... Hunting, Fishing and Fur Harvesting School, Rock Springs, Statewide, Charlie Lee clee@oznet.ksu.edu

Monday, October 13, through Tuesday, October 14
.... KSU Fall Break

Tuesday, October 14, through Wednesday, October 15
.... KS Assn of Family & Community Education (KAFCE), Hays/EL, Statewide, Gayle Price gprice@oznet.ksu.edu

Tuesday, October 14, through Thursday, October 16
.... State and Area 4-H Staff Meeting, Manhattan, Statewide, Daryl Buchholz dbuchhol@oznet.ksu.edu

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