The Tuesday Letter
Agricultural Experiment Station & Cooperative Extension Service
Tuesday, October 02, 2012
(Vol. 18 No. 48)
IN THIS ISSUE...
WORD FROM THE ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR - EXTENSION AND APPLIED RESEARCH
On Friday morning, September 28, President Kirk Schulz and Provost/Senior Vice President April Mason met with K-State Research and Extension / College of Agriculture faculty and staff to discuss important University issues, progress, and plans for the future. If you missed that forum, this link will take you to the website where you can view the archive. At the conclusion of that forum, Dr. Floros, Director/Dean, announced the movement of the Strategic Planning 2025 initiative for KSRE/COA and that committees will be forming to outline our priorities and metrics. Be aware of that process moving forward and ways in which you can include your voice, thoughts, and vision to be included in that process and the ultimate strategic plan. John Floros has emphasized the importance of our commitment to be top 5 as a College and as Research and Extension nationally, and the importance of identifying the appropriate metrics to track our progress towards that goal in the coming years. This strategic planning process will be vital to this overall goal and the goal of Kansas State University becoming a top 50 public research university.
Later that same afternoon, Dr. Schulz hosted the State of the University address to the faculty and staff. That presentation was also archived, and is available through this link. I encourage you to view this presentation for a more comprehensive look at the state of the University and where we are pointed for the future. Dr. Schulz clearly in the content and his comments values the Land-grant University mission, including Research and Extension! Congrats to those individuals and local Extension units he highlighted as examples of success for 2012! I've checked, and the archive of this video is not yet available, but have been told it should be posted at this site within 24 hours. The URL is http://www.k-state.edu/facsen/sou/2012.html.
Have a great week! --Daryl Buchholz dbuchhol@ksu.edu
COMM TIPS: WINDOWS 7 TIPS - OCTOBER 3
Want
to learn how to use Windows 7 to make your life easier? We’ll cover all
sorts of tips and tricks for using your Windows 7 PC to efficiently
perform many common tasks, saving you time.
Next Program: Windows 7 Tips - Wednesday, October 3, 9 a.m.
Presented by - Russ Feldhausen, K-State Research and Extension Computer Support Specialist
Please join us for Comm Tips. This weekly online series provides you helpful information with your communication and technology skills. Comm Tips is every Wednesday, October 3 to December 5, at 9 a.m. Each program is 20 minutes with 10 minutes for Q&A.
Fall 2012 Schedule:
October 3: Windows 7 TipsOctober 10: Photo/Image Editing No program October 17 (K-State Research and Extension Annual Conference) October 24: Check the Facts for Newsletters October 31: Join the Online Conversations
November 7: KSRE Image Library
November 14: iPads for Extension Educators
No program November 21 (Thanksgiving Break)
November 28: Trinkets and Treasures
December 5: Technology Purchasing and Vendors
This is a "live" online program. Simply log in to http://connect.ksre.ksu.edu/commtips as a guest with your name. These programs will be recorded in case you miss them.
For the Comm Tips schedule, program descriptions and previous programs, visit the Comm Tips webpage at http://www.communications.ksu.edu/p.aspx?tabid=1102. --Gerry Snyder gsnyder@ksu.edu
2012 FALL FORESTRY FIELD DAY
On Friday, October 19, Kansas Forest Service
is sponsoring a Fall Forestry Field Day at the Kickapoo Pow Wow Grounds in Horton. Since the 19,200 acre reservation sits on a rock formation that blocks access to groundwater, a large focus of the field day will be the important role trees play in sustaining water quality and quantity. Topics
include: Identifying Kansas trees, tree planting demonstration and tips, rehabilitating stream corridors, assessing wildlife habitat, tips on selling Kansas timber, and a sawmill demonstration.
Registration
is $12, and includes lunch. Registration is due October 15, and can be mailed to
Leslye Haller, Kansas Forest Service, 2610 Claflin Rd., Manhattan, KS 66502.
Call 785-532-3300, or email lahaller@ksu.edu if you have questions or need more information. Or you can visit our website to see a copy of the brochure at http://www.kansasforests.org/resources/news/calendar/FFD%20Brochure%202012.pdf. For a news release, visit http://www.kansasforests.org/resources/news/calendar/FFD%202012%20-%20News%20Release.pdf. Hope to see you all there! --Leslye Haller lahaller@ksu.edu
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY - 2013 SESQUICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION - NEXT STEPS
Several of your colleagues have been serving on the committees to organize K-State's upcoming celebration of its Sesquicentennial (150th birthday) in 2013. It will be an exciting year for K-State. The kickoff dates are February 14-17, 2013. The celebration will run into the fall of 2013 and end on Homecoming Weekend. For lots of information about what will happen, involvement, Notable WildCats, etc., go to www.k-state.edu/150 and check out the entire 150th website.
More specifically, what can you do this fall to prepare for next year?
Objective:
Engage faculty and staff as a college/unit to determine the most appropriate way to celebrate your accomplishments and heritage.
§ Consider holding a 150th open forum or small group discussion to answer the question:
How best can we showcase all that which we have accomplished and our heritage during the 9-month celebration?
Determine How You Can…
§ Integrate the 150th celebration into existing events and activities.
§ Educate your students about the past, present, and future.
§ Enhance Alumni connections using the 150th celebration as a marketing tool.
Media Toolkit—
Spread the word about the 150th by accessing the official logo, pre-made electronic newsletter ads and 150th literature to share with your constituents. Also—send the letterhead you already have to Printing Services and have them add the 150th logo.
As you plan events for 2013, think about adding the 150th logo to brochures, t-shirts, websites, publications, reports, etc. Co-brand everything you do next year with the special sesquicentennial logo. Again, to access the logo, go to www.k-state.edu/150 and look under Media Kit for the information.
Sign the Guest Book and See Who’s Coming—
Visit the 150th website at www.k-state.edu/150 and click “See Who’s Coming” to see who else has signed the guest book and who is coming to planned events.
Brown Bag Lunch & Lecture Series—
K-State will have a Brown Bag Lunch & Lecture event almost every other Wednesday during the 9-month celebration. A final schedule will be sent out and posted on the website. A few of the speakers will be COA/KSRE faculty.
Wildcat March Exhibition—
This will be an ongoing event that will showcase Kansas State University, its 150th celebration, and the Flint Hills with a community-wide art exhibition.
2013 will be an exciting year in the history of Kansas State University. Think about how you, your office/department/unit can make it special for our students, staff, faculty, and alumni. Use the 150th logo, co-brand, promote, and enjoy. Please let me or any of our COA/KSRE committee members know if you have ideas to pursue or questions to ask. Thanks. --Steven Graham sgraham@k-state.edu
COMMUNITY AND YOUTH LEADERS IN KANSAS, COLORADO, AND NEBRASKA
Will youth who attend your local schools be living in your community when they are adults? The answer really depends on our ability to engage youth now, in the present time. In 2012, Ogallala Commons, www.ogallalacommons.org, assisted our partners to create 46 Community Internships and 4 Youth Engagement Days in Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, and New Mexico. We have learned with our partners in the past five years that youth engagement and community internships create pathways to bring youth and adults back to our hometowns.
Ogallala Commons and Rawlins County HTC are hosting a Regional Youth Engagement Day on Wednesday, November 7, at Rawlins County High School in Atwood, Kansas from 9 a.m. - 1:15 p.m. Central Time (see attached agenda). During the morning and afternoon sections of the Youth E-Day, Ogallala Commons is also conducting a Community Partnering Training. While youth are working in small groups with their facilitators, Ogallala Commons invites leaders who are interested in creating Community Internships and learning about ways of engaging youth.
Who should attend to this meeting? Community leaders, Extension Agents, educators, agency personnel, nonprofit directors, pastors, as well as business owners or managers who could play a role in creating a successful Community Internship in your town or county. During these two sessions, Ogallala Commons will offer tools, information, and feedback to help our partners do the work of building successful Community Internships that mesh well with overall youth engagement. We hope you and others on your team will join us in Atwood, Kansas on Wednesday, November 7. Let me know if you have questions or need more information.
Those attending will receive a newly-updated, detailed Community Partners Guidebook. We have developed a great deal of information and tools, and we want to place these resources into your hands as early as possible. We have also attached pdf copies of your 2013 Community Internship brochures for candidates and for funding partners.
If you are interested in this community development event, please call:
Darryl Birkenfeld, Ph.D.
Director, Ogallala Commons
P.O. Box 346
Nazareth, TX 79063
806-945-2255
darrylb@amaonline.com
--Debra Bolton dbolton@ksu.edu
REGISTER NOW FOR DESIGN FOR LEARNING
To register for Design for Learning, January 18 - March 15, 2013, go to Employee Resources Registration and select Design for Learning. Registration is Due December 14 to Dorothy Ireland, direland@ksu.edu. There is also a detailed course description link on the registration site.
Design for Learning is a hands-on process to help Extension faculty
design creative and effective educational experiences. While it is
designed for adults, the principles may be applied to other audiences as
well. Faculty will learn at their own pace over a three month period.
They will also maintain a sense of connectedness, accountability and
closure. Design for Learning uses distance learning to maintain a sense
of connectedness between participants and facilitators of each session.
Kansas
participants in 2012 include Kristina Snyder, Tina Remig, Chris Petty,
Brandi Nelson, Amy Lorenzen, Denise Dias and Bruce Chladny.
North Dakota, South
Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas are cooperating to offer Design for Learning
to extension professionals in the four states. Five learning sessions
are conducted using Adobe Connect. The 2013 dates are January 18, February 1, February 15, March 1, and March 15.
Concepts reinforced in Design for Learning include: • Understanding adult learners • Organizing and designing content • Creating an effective learning environment • Selecting appropriate teaching tools • Teaching for transfer • Assessing learning outcomes
Sessions are 1 1/2 hours long and take place from 10 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. CST. --Margaret Phillips margaret@ksu.edu
IS THERE TIME: CAN CONGRESS FIX ESTATE TAX CHANGES BEFORE JANUARY 1?
Time is running out for Congress to fix the dramatic adjustment to estate tax rates set to take effect January 1. The changes could devastate Kansas families, especially those with farming operations. Good planning can save considerable wealth for your constituents’ beneficiaries.
Unless Congress acts, the estate tax exemption drops from $5.125 million to $1 million. Simultaneously, the estate tax rate jumps from 35 percent to 55 percent. While the estate tax is important legislation to Kansas landowners, Congress has a plate-full of pressing topics when they return from their campaign break.
Follow this simple scenario: a Kansas family owns 1,000 acres valued at $2,500 per acre. In land alone -- and most families have diversified assets -- that could create a $2.5 million estate. After January 1, this estate could be taxed at 55 percent and may face estate taxes of $1,029,000. By planning ahead, the family could have created a legacy with the dollars claimed by taxes.
If wealth is sent to the IRS as estate taxes, it cannot go to heirs, your community or your favorite charity. Strategic planning can help reduce the IRS bite, and estate planning can be a difficult topic to discuss. The alternative, though, might be a hefty check representing wealth that leaves your community forever. Encourage your constituents to make a plan.
If they are interested in creating a legacy at Kansas State, we would be happy to help them reach their goals by creating a charitable gift. --Gordon Dowell, Gift Planning Officer, KSU Foundation gordond@found.ksu.edu
K-STATE EMAIL CONTINUES TO BE BLOCKED BY HOTMAIL
Many of you are aware that Microsoft’s Hotmail (@MSN, @hotmail.com, @live.com, and @outlook.com) is blocking email to their clients from our K-State email servers. This means you cannot contact clients, students, board members, and others that have accounts with Hotmail using your work email account. K-State is not alone in being blocked by hotmail. Many other universities are experiencing the same issue. Unfortunately, this is not an issue we can control. We must wait for hotmail to lift the block on our email going to Hotmail users.
How do we get around the Hotmail block? We’ve looked at several ways we might do this, but the easiest way is for each office or department to create an account with a free email provider such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft or other free email provider that will allow your office to send emails to people with Hotmail accounts.
The reason this is happening is hotmail uses an email reputation score to decide if an email domain is trustworthy or not based on legitimate email to spam percentages, email volume, complaints, and unknown users. The lower your score, the greater the chance your email will be blocked when sent.
The scores for KSU started to drop during the beginning of the fall semester, not just because the students returned to campus, but at the same time, a series of phishing scams were sent out in an attempt to get people to give out their usernames and passwords which could allow their accounts to be used for spam. Also with new computers arriving on campus, there is always the opportunity for these computers to either already arrive with malware on them or to become infected which in some cases can allow them to be controlled for the purpose of spamming. Also many people forward their K-State email to their private accounts which increases our mail volume. All these things combined, lead to the scores for the K-State email servers to drop to the point where hotmail decided to block email from us to their clients.
We do apologize for the frustration this is causing and wish there were a more favorable solution, but at this time we can only wait for the mail reputation scores to go up and hotmail to lift the block and to use the work around to get to our clients and supporters.
You can find the most up to date information on this and other central IT issues by checking the K-State IT Status page at http://www.k-state.edu/its/status/ or following them on Twitter athttps://twitter.com/kstateitstatus.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your area or departmental support staff, or KSRE Tech Support at ksresupport@ksu.edu or by phone at 785-532-6270. --Joe Lear learj@ksu.edu
START USING K-PICS TODAY!
Start Using the
K-State Research and Extension Program Impacts Collection System (K-PICS)
Today!
The Office of Educational Innovation and Evaluation (OEIE)
is pleased to announce the launch of K-PICS. After months of gathering user
input, application development, and pilot testing, we are confident that this new
system will be a useful tool to you for collecting impact data, analyzing data,
and preparing reports. You can now log into K-PICS using your eID and eID password
at https://kpics.ksre.ksu.edu/.
K-PICS is also accessible through KSRE Online.
The primary purpose of K-PICS is to be a central repository for
K-State Research and Extension program and impact data. K-PICS features a user-friendly
and streamlined web-based interface that is accessible to all KSRE
professionals. Individuals can enter and track information about all programs
delivered, impact data collected through evaluation instruments, and success
stories of KSRE work. This up-to-date data can then be viewed and compiled
across programs, program areas, units, and the state. Designed to collect data
for all program areas, including the Family Nutrition Program, K-PICS is a tool
for you to manage and view the impact data you collect from your program
participants in a variety of ways. K-PICS runs on multiple browsers (e.g.,
Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari) and can be accessed via desktops, laptops, and
iPads.
K-PICS officially launched on October 1. To ensure
that all users will have the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of K-PICS,
OEIE is offering multiple training opportunities. The first will be at the
Annual Conference on October 18 at 8:30 a.m. in Forum Hall. OEIE will present an
overview of K-PICS, explain its capabilities, and provide a walk-through using
realistic examples. OEIE will also host
an open computer lab throughout the Annual Conference where staff members will
be on hand to answer questions and assist KSRE professionals as they experiment
with K-PICS.
After the Annual Conference, Adobe Connect webinars are
scheduled on Tuesday, October 23, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.; and Thursday, October 25,
from 2 to 4 p.m. Each webinar will have
a unique focus, but all users may participate in either. The October 23 webinar
focuses on users who will be entering data for more than one user (i.e., office
professionals and support staff), while the October 25 webinar will focus on
users who will be delivering programs (i.e., agents and specialists).
Additional training and support features available within
K-PICS include:
- Training videos
that demonstrate how to perform and complete various tasks.
- A user manual
downloadable as a PDF file that provides an overview of the system, as well as step
by step instructions. The glossary at
the end of the User Manual is an excellent resource for definitions of K-PICS
terminology.
- Answers to over twenty-five frequently asked questions that were commonly asked during our
pilot testing sessions.
If the support materials provided on the K-PICS website are
not providing you with the information you need, the K-PICS support team
invites you to email us at (kpics@ksu.edu)
or call our office, 785-532-5930.
Visit the Extension Evaluation
Resources website for more introductory
information about K-PICS and helpful information and materials regarding
evaluation in general. --Amy Hilgendorf aehilgen@k-state.edu
PART 11 FINNEY COUNTY HEALTH/WELL-BEING ASSESSMENT AND SOCIAL CAPITAL STUDY
Last week, I said I would discuss the social capital
indicators found in our study. I think
I’ll hold off on that for a few weeks.
As I present this data along with interpretation of results, more
questions are asked regarding details that affect outcomes of the data.
Let’s begin with the question, “If you have
mental health concerns, where do you go for help?” This was interesting. We found that the need for mental health
counseling, for example, was not affected by whether or not respondents had a
job, by educational level, or income. However,
non-Anglo respondents were twice as likely as Anglo to say that mental health
counseling would help them to live better lives. It was 6% of the population,
which does not appear to be that high.
When we ask how respondents dealt with their own mental health concerns,
we found that Anglo respondents were more likely to talk to friends, family
doctor, the mental health center, church leaders, or turn to prescription and
non-prescription drug use. It seemed interesting
that Anglo respondents were nearly twice as likely to talk to church
leaders. Qualitatively, we found that
non-Anglo respondents did not think it appropriate to “burden”, for example, the
priest with mental health issues, and “We’d never talk to the Pope about mental
health!” Without asking, we assumed that respondents were Catholic, but we did
not ask. If that were true, are church
leaders seen in a different light? Is
there a cultural difference in how respondents approached their church/spiritual
leaders? We also found that if
respondents had health insurance, they were more likely to talk to the family
doctor or go to the mental health center for mental health concerns.
Health insurance did play a role in whether or not families
were able to see a private doctor or use the services of a health care facility
for indigent clients. It was a surprise,
however, that 22% of respondents without health insurance did report that they
used a private doctor. Of those marking “none”
on the survey when asked about health insurance, 42% reported that they used
the community health care facility, and 20% said they use the county health
department as their primary care acquisition point. Having health insurance did not affect respondents’
use of the walk-in clinic (17%), use of the emergency room (14%), use of home
remedies (13%), use of alternative medicines (3%), and native healers (1%). Health Insurance also played a role in health
conditions of respondents and their families.
Diabetes was not affected by having health insurance or
not. This study showed that 24% of
respondents reported diabetes whether or not they had health insurance. Kansas
Health Matters reported that 8.5% of Finney County had diabetes. The director of the county’s indigent health
clinic said that each diabetes screening clinic reveals anywhere from 3 to 5
cases of untreated diabetes in participants.
Next week, we will explore how having health insurance
affects (statistically) other health conditions.--Debra Bolton dbolton@ksu.edu
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