1. EXTENSION STRATEGIC PLANNING: ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION PANEL DISCUSSANTS: KENNETH JONES, UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY DIANE CRAIG, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA STAN WINDHAM, ALABAMA COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SYSTEM MODERATORS: STACEY BOZEMAN AND CHRIS MCCLENDON, ALABAMA COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SYSTEM

2. BACKGROUND  University of Kentucky 4.4 M state pop.; 120 counties; 397 county agents; 129 state specialists Spring 2011 - June 30, 2012 Implementation Phase  University of Florida 19.1 state pop.; 67 counties; 313 county agents; 248 state specialists January 2011 through June 2012 (December 2012?) Creating issue-based teams and addressing organizational needs  Alabama Cooperative Extension System (Alabama A&M and Auburn) 4.8 M state pop.; 67 counties; 139 regional/county agents; 32 subject matter experts Began in early 2010 Second year of a 5-year rolling plan

3. Community Input Survey – Randomly polled attendees at state fair on their knowledge of Extension Surveyed Extension Council members, volunteers to assess their perceptions of Extension Held discussion forums at Extension district meetings Input survey – administered to Extension Faculty, Staff, Administration Feedback from specialists – reviewed priority issues generated from county/district discussions

4. Specialists coded issues into key themes  Developing Local Food Systems  Building Family Resiliency  Building Ag Capacity  Building Community Capacity Determined the big opportunities for addressing the issue Discussed programming ideas for each Success (what are the goals/what does success look like)

5. Faculty Input Survey – up to 5 issues to address over next decade Community Input Survey – 4,300 responses on public website Focus Groups – 6 conducted around the state County Listening Sessions – open to public, toolkit, dean’s video Regional Reporting – county faculty report to Extension admin. Academic Department Listening Sessions – advisory/industry groups Research and Education Center participation in listening sessions Extension administration engagement with county govt., industry

6. Steering committee, program leaders, district directors identified three organizational themes:  Maximize organizational efficiency and effectiveness  Invest in human capital  Increase visibility and demonstrated impact Seven programmatic areas Six “super issues” – cross-cutting and important to state economy (e.g., STEM opportunities for youth; financial mgmt.; resource conservation; ag awareness; healthy lifestyles) Summit held to discuss among all Extension faculty & finalize plan

7. Started with a Grasstops and Grassroots process. The Grasstops Group consisted of key state leaders charged with identifying key issues facing the citizens of Alabama. These issues were then presented to Grassroots Groups (Advisory Groups) in each of the 67 Alabama Counties – that rated these issues as to the relevance to their county. Face to face meetings were the method used to dialogue related to this effort.

8. Information collected from the Grasstops Groups was summarized into 14 key themes led by the Associate Directors, an Administrative Team, and Assistant Directors for Programs. The 14 key themes were discussed by Grassroots Groups in all 67 counties and each group identified what they felt were the top six. This effort was led by County Extension Coordinators. ACES Assistant Directors for Programs and Operations analyzed county data and developed from this data 6 key Strategic Program Initiatives to be used by ACES as guiding principles for programming.

9. Beginning of new Plan of Work for counties Involvement by stakeholders Diverse group of committee members Use of technology Agent buy-in

10. Wide range of opinions captured Very positive reaction from communities and participants Underscored the cost of recent cuts to IT and marketing to morale and productivity Highlighted the need to be more transdisciplinary – within our own organization and with other UF departments and colleges 1.5 day summit to discuss the draft strategic plan was first time all faculty together in 5 years

11. Key state leaders with a broad view of the State of Alabama were involved in identifying issues facing the citizenry. Local citizens in every Alabama County were consulted as to their views. All Alabama Cooperative Extension System employees with programmatic responsibilities were involved in this effort. The approach was not “top down”, but rather involved all levels of ACES & ACES clientele to formulate the plan. A spirit of TEAMWORK has permeated throughout the entire POW – SPI process.

12. Lack of participation from non-Extension audiences Involvement of stakeholders at the implementation stage Difficult questions to answer (Do we change our structure? Do we eliminate jobs?) Time

13. Lack of diversity (age, race, industry) in some county sessions Information overload from those analyzing the data Staying objective, thinking creatively Inability to make hard choices – “kitchen sink” syndrome Cut off the number of faculty attending Summit at 300 due to lack of money How to improve critical needs in IT, evaluation, marketing with smaller and smaller budget (but we did recently create new position and hired Aso VP for communication and IT)

14. The process has been overall very smooth. Two obstacles have been:  Accuracy of the Plan of Work documents within each programmatic discipline and each county  Linking PPT Teams to include CEC’s, REA’s, UREA’s and Specialists across the State of Alabama. Solution – Better organizing the POW to include more essential items related to Programmatic Teams and county Plans of Work.