Kansas State University

A New Year and New Year Changes

Submitted by Gregg Hadley

In addition to the 4^th of July holiday, this week marks the first week of Fiscal 2019. With the new fiscal year, I wish you and our entire K-State Research and Extension system a banner year of meeting and exceeding our constituents’ educational needs, a year of unsurpassed personal fulfillment as an Extension professional or volunteer, and a year of budgetary calm. I know the latter is often outside of our control, but I wish that just the same. The first two are within our control, and, given the desire and passion of our Extension professionals and volunteers for our mission and calling, I am confident we will achieve those.

This week begins Dr. Ernie Minton’s tenure as our Interim Director of K-State Research and Extension and Interim Dean of the College of Agriculture. Additionally, Dr. Brian Niehoff begins his tenure as Acting Provost. We wish both of these individuals well in their new roles and thank them for their willingness to serve.

This week also marks the first official week of the new administrative structure. The changes include some title changes, position merging, and the official addition of three part-time positions. The new structure and the old are compared in the table below.

Now, let’s address some of the questions you may be asking about this structure.

Why was there a need for this change? With the past decade’s budget pressure, it became apparent that our administrative structure, which was already lean compared to Extension institutions of similar size, needed to be leaner. This structure offers the most potential to provide the leadership and necessary administrative oversight to our Extension system. It will save our Extension system approximately $105,000 per year and 0.60 to 0.65 full time equivalents.

Why were the assistant director and associate director position titles changed? These titles were changed to avoid past confusion. The former positions labelled as Associate Director and Assistant Directors titles were quite confusing to national, regional, and even internal stakeholders. As Associate Director, I would often be asked by national, regional and internal stakeholders if I had the authority to make certain decisions for K-State Research and Extension. The new titles better reflect the leadership, oversite and authority level of the positions.

Were the title changes associated with a salary increase? One affected person’s salary did increase, but this was due to a long overdue equity adjustment, not the title change.

Who will represent my program area now? The merger of the Assistant Director for Agriculture, Natural Resources and Community Development and the Assistant Director for Family and Consumer Sciences into the Associate Director for Extension Programs has caused concern that there would be a lack of advocacy for and a lack of coordination of those program areas. To address those concerns, we added the three part time administrative positions of Program Leader Coordinator for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Community Vitality, and Family and Consumer Sciences. Because Wade Weber is the Department Head and Program Leader for 4-H Youth Development, that program area will not have a Program Leader Coordinator position.

The specialists who earn these three 0.10 to 0.15 FTE appointments will assist the Associate Director for Extension Programs by sitting on their respective North Central Region program leader committees, helping communicate with and coordinating the efforts of their respective Extension State Leaders (the official departmental liaisons to Extension Administration) and other program area faculty, working with Program Focus Teams and their leaders, being an advocate for either Agriculture and Natural Resources, Community Development, or Family and Consumer Sciences, as well as some other duties.

A search and screen process will be announced and implemented for these positions this month.

Will the Program Leader Coordinator concept work? This model has unofficially been in effect with our Community Vitality program area for approximately five years. In my opinion, it has worked great in that program area. I believe it will be as successful for the Agriculture and Natural Resources and Family and Consumer Sciences program areas, too.

What about the changes at the Southeast Research and Extension Center? The future changes in the Southeast Research and Extension Center are not represented in the table as they have not taken affect yet. There will be one leadership position at the Center instead of two. The Head of the Southeast Research and Extension center will consolidate the Regional Director leadership responsibilities for our Extension specialists and local units with the leadership of our researchers located there. A search and screen process for this position has been conducted for this positions. I believe an announcement should be made in the upcoming weeks about this position.

Who should I contact if I have any questions or concerns about these changes? If you have any questions or concerns regarding any of these changes, please contact me at ghadley@ksu.edu.

With that, I think I will end this lengthy edition of the Tuesday Letter. As we now embark on Fiscal Year 2019, I wish you all the best as we work to improve the lives, livelihoods and communities of the people we serve through the power of our K-State Research and Extension programs.