March 16, 2021
Who’s Who in the Field Operations
Whenever there is transition in positions, it can be a good idea to revisit roles and duties. We work in a complex system which not only reaches into all 105 Kansas counties to provide education and support, but also works in partnership with the elected local leaders in each of those counties. To make this system work well, we need strong, capable, multi-talented administrators. We need them to have the vision to help build strategies that will lead us into the future and the organizational skills to coordinate our operations.
This week we will examine the field operations side of our extension system. With Dr. Chris Onstad transitioning to our associate director for field operations position, let’s take a look at the present administrative assignments that are field-operations oriented.
Regional directors are my representatives to local-unit agents, local-unit directors, boards and program development committees. They specialize in local-unit activities. Regional directors coach local-unit agents regarding programming and professional development, co-hire and co-supervise agents with the local extension board, and guide the local units with implementing administrative policies, procedures, districting, and other strategic and programmatic direction issues. Our regional directors are Mary Sullivan for the western region and Aliesa Woods for the central region. Dr. Onstad was our regional director for our eastern region. Inquiries from eastern region local units should continue to go to him until a new regional director for the east can be found.
Regional directors do not have regional-center management duties or supervisory duties of our regional extension specialists. They do, however, liais and collaborate with our eastern and western heads of our regional research and extension centers, Drs. Bob Weaber and Dan Devlin, respectively. Drs. Weaber and Devlin do not have direct authority regarding local-unit matters. They provide specialized administrative leadership to our regional centers. The heads of our regional centers will work with our regional directors to address local-unit and regional-center collaborative matters.
The leader of extension operations, Jennifer Wilson, leads our local-unit human resource endeavors. As such, she oversees our local-unit search, screen, and hiring efforts. She co-develops and implements our onboarding, board leadership, and professional development programs. She also leads our extension operations teams in all personnel administrative matters directly related to local unit agents. Additionally, she works with Stacey Warner regarding matters relating to agents and specialists who are in the federal retirement system.
The associate director for field operations, which is in transition from Dr. Jim Lindquist to Dr. Onstad, is our lead administrative officer regarding our local-units' business administrative activities. They provide leadership to and work with the regional directors and the leader of extension operations regarding developing and implementing policies and procedures regarding local unit personnel, fiscal, board, and districting matters. They also liais with campus business administrative units, such as our information technology, fiscal offices, and university general counsel, as well as state agencies, such as the state attorney general’s office, to address a variety of field operations administrative matters.
Of course, all of these individuals work with me to support and collaborate with the administrative leaders of the extension programs side of our organization in providing overall leadership and direction to our extension system. We will review the extension programs leadership roles and responsibilities next week.