May 22, 2018
Our Final Two Strategic Emphases
I planned to present Strategic Emphasis 5, Expanding Our Programming Capacity, last week, and then present our final strategic emphasis, Securing and Increasing Our Base Budget Appropriations, this week. Nevertheless, the good state budget news, the bad university budget news, and the news about Director Floros being named President of New Mexico State University took priority last week. To make up for that “stop the presses” moment (the more “life experienced” Extension professionals may need to explain that phrase to those with less life experience), both Strategic Emphasis 5 and 6 will be presented today.
When I presented Strategic Emphasis 1, Understanding and Engaging the Peoples and Communities of Kansas, I encouraged us to reach out to and engage more Kansans. Simply put, there are a lot of people who are trying to address increasingly complex issues in their lives, livelihoods and communities. We need to help out as many people as we can by providing them Extension programs that enable them to make better informed decisions to improve their lives, livelihoods and communities.
While Strategic Emphasis 2, Enhancing Our Programs and Services, emphasizes the quality and delivery style of our Extension efforts, Strategic Emphasis 5, Expanding Our Programming Capacity, focuses on the word “more.” We need to increase our ability to deliver more of our high quality Extension programs and services to more people so they may address the increasingly complex issues in their lives. This emphasis concerns increasing specialization among our Extension professionals and developing more specialized Extension professionals. It also involves enhancing volunteer recruitment, management and development to better empower and engage our volunteers in the Extension education process. This emphasis also involves seeking out more resources through greater collaborative partnerships and non-appropriated funds to better enable us from a resource perspective to reach out and engage more Kansans.
While Strategic Emphasis 5 deals with non-appropriated funds, Strategic Emphasis 6, Securing and Increasing Our Base Budget Appropriations, focuses on our federal, state, university and local appropriations. It emphasizes exploring methods to increasing our appropriated budget and how to invest our appropriated budget in such a way as to maximize our impact to the people of Kansas.
This concludes our Tuesday Letter series presenting and explaining our six strategic emphases. The next phase of this strategic drive will be to explore how we will improve K-State Research and Extension in each of the six strategic emphases. This will not be done in administrative isolation. We will need to gather input from our local units, departments, centers, State Extension Advisory Council, and professional associations. There may be task forces, surveys, and focus groups.
To be a great system, we need great input from everybody that makes up that system. I ask that when you are asked in the months ahead to contribute input, please engage. The people of Kansas, our K-State Research and Extension system, and I are counting on you!