Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service Good morning. We want to spend a few...

Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Servicehttp://www.csrees.usda.gov

• Good morning. We want to spend a few moments this morning talking about Extension, Outreach, and Education from the perspective of the Department of Agriculture.

Extension, Outreach, and Educationfrom USDA


Disclaimers

Two disclaimers:• What follows is from the perspective

of the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES)

• For our purposes this morning, “Extension, Outreach, and Education” are equivalent to “non-formal adult education”


Smith-Lever Act

• 1914…United States Congress passes legislation to “to aid in diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information.”

• The means to accomplish this are the land-grant universities.


LGUs* and Extension

• 52 1862 land-grant institutions• 18 1890 land-grant institutions• 31 1994 land-grant institutions• 7 Land-grant institutions in

Districts, Commonwealths, or Territories

• (* LGU = Land Grant University)


The Cooperative Extension “System”

• Federal Partner = USDA

• State Partner = LGU’s

• Local Partner = Counties (~3,150)

• Ultimate Partner =American Citizens


Note on the Partnership

• CES is the largest, and arguably the best, non-formal adult education system in the world.

• Major reason for success: State and local governments decide which state and local issues to address.


Some Mechanics

• USDA MOU States• States MOU Counties• Matching Dollars


Counties and Citizens

• Counties Volunteers• Volunteers????


Anecdote Number 1A few years ago, USDA’s Forest

Service was battling a serious disease problem, “Sudden Oak Death (Phytophthora ramorum ).” They needed hundreds of additional trained “scouts,” but did not have the resources to get them. Solution? Extension Master Gardeners. 150,000 of them.


Anecdote Number 2

•4-H: utilizes more than 3 million adult person days of volunteer assistance each year. This is equivalent to adding another federal agency that employs 11,500 people.


What Gets Extended?

• Objective, unbiased, science-based information

• Formerly, most information came from State Agricultural Experiment Stations at LGUs

• Currently, information may come from SAES or from many other sources.


How does information get “extended?”

• Through the delivery of educational programs in one shape, form, or another

• CES (the Cooperative Extension System) does not provide technical assistance.


Types of Educational Delivery

• Courses: traditional and on-line• Brochures, fact sheets, and the

like: hard-copy and on-line• Demonstrations• 4-H, Master Gardeners, Master

Fishermen, etc., ongoing programs

• Phone-in Q and A service


More Educational Delivery

• Farm, home, business visits• Radio, newspaper, trade journal

items,• And,


Educational Delivery Systems

THE WEB!


eXtension

• Communities of Practice Beef Cattle, Consumer Horticulture,

Corn and Soybean Production, Cotton, DAIReXNET Diversity Across Higher Education,

Entrepreneurs and Their Communities,Extension Disaster Education Network, Family

Caregiving Financial Security for All, HorseQuest,

Imported Fire Ants,Just In Time Parenting,

Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Centers, Map@Syst, Pesticide Environmental Stewardship, Pork Information, Urban Integrated Pest ManagementWildlife Damage Management, Youth Literacy SET, eOrganic

Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service

http://www.csrees.usda.gov

EDENExtension Disaster Education Network

To assist Extension professionals in educational programming efforts, this site offers ready-to-use presentations, case studies, applied activities, and handouts for producer workshops and/or community awareness presentations. http://www.eden.lsu.edu/


Beyond eXtension

• USIs: Urban Serving Institutions• As the clientele of CES changes,

so must we. The current active dialogue on urban serving institutions characterizes this state of change.

• USIs also set the stage for the last ancecdotal information:


Final Anecdote

• 4-H: how are 4-H kids possibly related to Urban Serving Institutes? More than half the current 7 million-plus 4-Hers are suburban or urban dwellers.

• Remember the 3 million person days of adult volunteer assistance?


Final Anecdote, Part 2

• Those 7 million kids plus millions of adults should be suggestive of what Extension would call a community of interest, but what I call a political resource: there are more than 45 million living 4-H alumni in the U.S.

• That’s a voting bloc!


Final Words

• CES is alive and well, changing its shape and approach, but not its philosophy: educate, educate, educate.

• It constitutes a resource that would be prohibitively expensive to create if it did not already exist.

• Huge infrastructure, already in place, capable of reacting quickly to emergencies or emerging issues, in a very cost-effective manner.


CSREES and USDA…

Thank you.

Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service Good morning. We want to spend a few...

Documents

Transcript of Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service Good morning. We want to spend a few...