The Tuesday Letter
Agricultural Experiment Station & Cooperative Extension Service
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
(Vol. 20 No. 31)
IN THIS ISSUE...
WORD FROM THE ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR - EXTENSION AND APPLIED RESEARCH
Following is the announcement you should have received this week by email from Dorothy Doan, on behalf of Dr. Floros, regarding the call for nominations for recognition awards presented at the KSRE Annual Conference:
To: K-State
Research and Extension Faculty and Staff
From: John Floros
Dean and
Director
One of the objectives of our K-State Research and Extension
Annual Conference is to recognize outstanding programs and contributions of
faculty and staff. I invite each of you to nominate your peers or yourself for
one of the awards that will be presented at the Awards Lunch on Thursday,
October 23. Award nominations are due Thursday, August 7.
We are pleased to announce four new awards this year:
Outstanding Local
Unit
Outstanding County
or District Extension Professional
Outstanding State
or Area Extension Professional
Outstanding
Program Focus Team
The above new awards will be in addition to the awards we
have presented in the past:
Builder
Diversity
Mentor
Team
Unclassified
Employee
Local Unit Office
Professional
Click here for the criteria for each award.
Nominations will be made via a Qualtrics survey. A maximum
of three pages in a pdf document can be uploaded into the survey.
I encourage you to help us recognize K-State Research and
Extension’s programming impact with your nominations.
Please take the initiative to discuss the opportunity to recognize some of the outstanding work taking place throughout the Research and Extension system and complete a nomination. Nominations are due by August 7. Have a great week! --Daryl Buchholz dbuchhol@ksu.edu
YOUR VALUES AND YOUR MONEY
On a recent Monday, I participated in a conference call on www.eXtension.org, where Dr. Lois Vitt, Chair and Founding Director of the Institute for Socio-Financial Studies in Charlottesville, VA, presented "Mental Health and Financial Management." That night, I read “7 To-Do’s between 55 and 65 for a Better Retirement” from MarketWatch in the Wall Street Journal, posted on the America’s Wealth Management Show’s Facebook page. Interestingly, (at least to me) both sources offered the concept of using personal life values to guide saving, spending, and decision making for life events. While this isn’t a new idea, it was remarkable to me that I would encounter the same guidance in a single day from two such dissimilar sources.
Our own life values are subjective personal choices and philosophies within the larger frame of our culture. However, when one is clear about one’s own values, then decisions to save for a goal or avoid spending on frivolous items become easier. Family harmony can be enhanced when a married couple identifies their individual personal life values and uses the information as a basis for negotiating goals for the family.
Dr. Vitt developed a LifeValues Profile Quiz to help people explore and identify their personal life values. You may examine your own personal life values, or use this concept in your teaching, by taking the Quiz. Go to http://smartaboutmoney.org/Tools-Resources/LifeValues-Quiz.aspx. Imagine the positive changes that could occur in your family, or among your constituents, when personal life values become the foundation for money management decisions. --Valeria Edwards valeria.edwards@jocogov.org for the Family Resource Management Program Focus Team
MARIE'S PICKS . . .
My picks this week are outcomes
and a success story from her Women in Ag programming submitted by Robin Reid,
River Valley District:
Seventeen
women attend the 6-week long program, held for 3 1/2 hours every Tuesday night at
various locations in Washington County. A follow-up meeting and “class reunion”
is planned to gather evidence from this first class and to also present additional
topics. A similar program is already being planned for next winter in Cloud
County.
Following
are quotes from the evaluations on what the participants learned, and how they
plan to use their knowledge:
I will feel more informed about our
financial decisions.
I will be more in control of farming
decisions made on my land.
I plan on being more involved with
our end of year meetings.
I will try to be active in the
decisions on marketing our products.
I have more of an idea of what's in
our tool box and know what we are comfortable at using as a family.
I will feel more informed to
participate in decision making.
This will allow me to keep my own
records on my land and help make choices of programs.
One
of the Women in Ag program participants was a lady who drove more than two
hours every week to attend. She was the widow of a farmer, but did not have
much involvement in the management of the operation prior to the death of her
husband. She currently leases the ground, but had difficulty with
the stipulations of the crop share lease and struggled with her relationship
with the tenant. She reported that the program was very beneficial toward
increasing her knowledge of agricultural practices and management. She also
found friendship in networking with the other participants and learning from
their stories. Robin believes this program made a huge impact on the woman’s
self-confidence and her skills to better manage her land. --Marie Blythe mblythe@ksu.edu
DIVERSITY PROGRAMS OFFICE SUMMER UPDATE
The start of June means that summer programs have officially begun in the Diversity Programs Office (DPO). We are excited and energized for what is to come both this month and in July. DPO would like to share some information about our summer programs:
• K-State Research & Extension (KSRE) Multicultural Undergraduate & Graduate Summer Research Fellowship program is officially underway! Thank you to our administrators and faculty who joined the orientation on June 2, 2014. The KSRE participants will be collaborating with faculty mentors to conduct research. At the end of the program the participants will be asked to create a presentation based on the research they conducted throughout the program.
• Transfer BRIDGE (Building Relationships to Internships and Diverse Group Experiences) Program has officially started! The participants will be working alongside their faculty mentors to conduct research in various departments on the KSU campus. At the end of the program the participants will be asked to create a presentation based on the research they conducted throughout the program. They will also be taking GenAg 200: Human and Cultural Diversity in the Food and Ag Industries during the program.
• Nicodemus Educational Camp, in partnership with KSU and the College of Agriculture, will give the campers, grades 5th – 10th, the opportunities to explore majors and careers in the Agriculture industry, as well as, learning about the historic town of Nicodemus. This is a week-long camp from June 16- June 20.
• Junior MANRRS (Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences) is a program for high-school and/or younger students to expose them to career pathways and educational possibilities in the food, agricultural, environmental and related sciences. This is co-sponsored by the K-State MANRRS Chapter. This summer they will be participating in the Nicodemus Educational Camp as well.
• MAPS: The Project Impact Summer Bridge Program gives students the opportunity to earn up to 6 credit hours over six weeks. This summer the College of Agriculture will be hosting 10 students for this program, from June 13- July 25. The students come to us from all over Kansas and many other states, such as Missouri, California, New Mexico, and Arizona.
Please continue to look for more diversity events as we continue to advertise. We appreciate your support. For more information about upcoming events or to collaborate with the DPO, please call 785-532-5793 or contact Dr. Zelia Wiley, Assistant Dean of Diversity, zwiley@ksu.edu. --Zelia Wiley
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