April 3, 2018
Setting the Stage
Welcome to April! While winter made an appearance again this weekend, I am sure that its influence is waning and that warm, sunny, and the much needed rainy days of spring will be here soon! Have faith.
A lot of things have happened over the past eight months, and I appreciate how we have responded in the positive manner that is characteristic of Extension professionals and volunteers. We dealt with and continue to deal with the five percent budget cut. We actively engaged in the Listening Sessions to identify issues affecting K-State Research and Extension. We also enthusiastically took part in the Partnership Meetings where we brainstormed ways to address those issues. Meanwhile, we have learned how to expand our fiscal options by attending our grant writing workshops. We have addressed retention issues at our Mentor Workshops by discussing how to become better mentors to both our new and experienced colleagues. In the same retention enhancing vein, enrollment in our upcoming “Teambuilding – Harmony at Work” workshops continues to grow. Programmatically, we are working together to successfully launch our Culture of Health initiative, and, as always, we have continued to make other needed programmatic improvements as we continue to better enable Kansans to address the five Grand Challenges.
I thank you and applaud your effort to date. Let’s keep it up! We have more to think about and do as we look to make a great organization even better. To help guide us in this process, your Extension Administration Leadership Team has organized all of those issues we identified at the Listening Sessions into six areas of strategic emphasis:
• Understanding and Engaging the Peoples and Communities of Kansas;
• Enhancing Our Programs and Services;
• Improving Our Marketing and Public Relations;
• Developing a Better Workplace;
• Expanding Our Programming Capacity; and,
• Securing and Increasing Our Base Budget Appropriations.
Over the next several weeks, my Tuesday Letter entries will be dedicated to a series discussing each of these strategic emphases and the hurdles we must overcome to make a great K-State Research and Extension even better.
Does making K-State Research and Extension better sound challenging? It is. Have faith. Together, we can do this!