Minutes of the Horticulture Issue Team Meeting, held at the ARLC in Casper on May 19, 2005.

Members Present: Administrative Liaison - Duane Williams, Jim Gill, Karen Panter, Kelli Belden, Raina Spence, Ron Kaufman, Wyoming State Weed & Pest Coordinator - Slade Franklin and Chair - Donna Cuin.

Guests Present: Glen Whipple and Susan James

After introductions we reviewed the Horticulture Strategic Plan and the original charge to the Issue Team form the Profitable & Sustainable Agriculture Systems Initiative Team under Old Business. “Develop a vision of scope for the horticulture program; determine the resources required; develop an implementation plan, including finances, required training, fees for programming, and services provided; impacts and outcomes expected; review the relationship to Weed & Pest offices; connect with small acreage issues and develop or recommend alternative crops for Wyoming producers.

Discussions of the points covered in the Strategic Plan, written and sent to Glen Whipple July 21, 2004, were held. The discussion started with statewide issues addressed by Dr. Whipple in his response back to the Team. Standardizing references available in each of the 26 county offices for use in diagnosing or addressing horticultural questions were of major importance. Karen Panter discussed the fact that each county had received copies of books in a set through a grant several years back. Each county should have these books to use at a bare minimum. There have been some additions to that list in the last few years and she and Raina Spence, along with suggestions from Kelli Belden will compile a list of the references that should be available in each county office.

The idea of having at least one horticulture representative on each Area Advisory Committee was discussed. Duane Williams said he would discuss the concept with Ruth Wilson and he and Glen felt that it was something that could be in place by the fall of 2005.

Items of County level importance were addressed. These included Weed and Pest support of Horticulture education. Jim Gill addressed the past concerns of Weed and Pest district staff members statewide. The lack or potential lack of horticulture education through Cooperative Extension Service offices would impact the Weed and Pest staff and they have, in the past, voiced a concern that horticulture education remains with the CES offices. Slade Franklin suggested some forms of education that might be beneficial to both his statewide Pest staff as well as CES staff. Discussion and clarification of the need for horticulture based agriculture statistics was discussed. Dr. Jim Green of the USDA in Washington D.C. had expressed the importance of this data for him at the federal level and the lack of it just continues to keep horticulture on a back burner in Agriculture because of the lack of true statistics, according to Donna Cuin who heard him speak at the National Master Gardener Coordinators conference last July in Fort Collins, Colorado. Slade Franklin, Karen Panter and Glen Whipple agreed to work together with Dick Coulter of the Ag Statistics Department in the State of Wyoming Government offices in Cheyenne.

The importance of having educators at the county level with degrees and horticulture backgrounds was discussed. Many of the horticulture educators are hired at the county level and there has been some inequities in the level of educational background necessary for hire in these positions. There is a need for some level of minimum education for hire in these situations. Due to the lack of horticulture training for county-based CES staff in the past several years, the need for training with our CES Specialists was covered. Karen had addressed this at the PSAS Initiative meeting in April. The concept of a Train the Trainer type seminar was in the works and hopefully to be developed for the fall of 2005 sometime in October or November. Karen will work with Susan to avoid other events already on the CES calendar and with the Horticulture connected Specialist on campus to plan the training. She will keep all Ag Educators and Program Associates as well as County based Horticulturists apprised of the development of a schedule.

Recognition of one on one-client contacts by Extension Educators in their annual evaluations and in the Tenure and Promotion process was discussed. Jim addressed the concerns of Educators on the Team to Duane and Glen. There is an inequity perceived by Educators in the value of the work done in the various counties across the state. Some feel that their one on one work is not valued or recognized to have value in the client educational process and other counties programs flourish with this type of work. Susan interjected the importance of reporting time spent one on one and the shear numbers of clients that contact the office for one on one assistance. If this is reported in UCESRAccess in a consistent method the total numbers are reportable in the annual summary at the end of each fiscal year. When numbers are reported in this manner recognition is much more feasible. If the numbers are not cumulatively reported it is hard to recognize the impact of all of these contacts. When educating others UEE’s should “protect themselves” in the manner that they make recommendations by keeping documentation of their recommendations as well. Instances of contacts that were misrepresented or mistreated after specific recommendations were given and the Educator was able to back up their recommendation with notes of the conversation were able to substantiate their version of the incident. Raina will work with Karen to develop a form for contact records to be used for each client who walks into or calls a county office for assistance with a horticulture problem. The idea of supervisors requiring all CES staff to use UCESRAccess reporting was discussed. Since last summer all but one of the counties has begun having county-based horticulturists use the reporting system to standardize horticulture reporting statewide. If an educator is working in Horticulture (140) the time should be reported as such, not lumped into Profitable and Sustainable Agriculture (100). As such the report should also show any specific time spent in Volunteer Management of Master Gardeners (150) as distinctly different than general Horticulture work or General Ag work. If it is not separated out it looks like statewide traditional Ag production work and as such is perceived to be beef production or traditional crop production. If horticulture is to be recognized as valuable those educators who work in the subject are going to have to recognize their own value before anyone else can too.

Susan James gave a short PowerPoint presentation on the UCESRAccess program and the importance of accurately reported information. She pointed out that there are specific program codes for Horticulture and for Volunteer Management of Master Gardeners. Then she went over the reports that can be printed out and some of the possibilities of how they are used. Duane interjected how he uses the reports as a supervisor. When hours are reported to Susan as horticulture or volunteer management of Master Gardeners then they are reported at the state and federal levels as horticulture and not lumped together as agriculture. She often receives requests for numbers of contacts in the various programs and will use horticulture contact numbers if she has them accurately reported. Susan did mention that media contact numbers should be used in the annual summaries and not reported as specific contacts, she used TV station viewer numbers as an example. If you know that someone from the community watched the segment because the tell you or because they call for further information, then you can count them as a contact. But in your annual summary you can say that the 23 segments that were broadcast had the potential to reach 70,000 households across the state. She suggested a grid to use with the new ET&P process to report Educational Programs presented when the annual summaries are completed at the end of the CES year. There was also a discussion of Impact statements that really do show impact and gave us a $12.96 dollar value for 2002 volunteer hours. Susan asked us to report a minimum list of data which included: Was there a MG program held, Number of MG trainees, number of MG graduates, number of volunteer hours, number of educator contact and MG contacts, number of active veteran MGs and veteran MG hours. Karen and Raina have worked together to develop a form that will be distributed to each of the counties with Master Gardener programs for ease in reporting this information. It covers the areas that Susan suggested and my help ease the frustration of variations in reporting from the various counties.

The Master Gardener programs were the next topic on the agenda. The idea for a half time Master Gardener coordinator has been on our minds since the first meeting in the fall of 2002. Due to some planning and funding on the part of Glen and the Plant Sciences Department, Raina Spence was introduced as our new half time State Master Gardener coordinator. Officially she will begin her duties on July 1, 2005. She will be working with Karen on this aspect of her duties and will continue to handle the samples sent in for diagnosis at the Plant Pathology Clinic on campus. Thanks were given to Glen for making this a reality and should be passed on to Steve Miller, the Plant Sciences Department head. The new Master Gardener handbook seems to be well received and is a solid addition to the reference materials available in each county office for horticulture questions. Thanks were again given to Glen for making copies of this available to each county office. Karen and Raina are still working on the indexes and test questions for each chapter.

Standardized forms for use in each county office were discussed. There had been interest in past meetings to have forms available to help document phone calls and office visits by clientele so that we can accurately track one on one client contacts. Karen and Raina will work on developing forms for phone call/office visits and another for follow-up surveys for use in impact statement development. These will eventually be available on the web.

Creating impact statements in horticulture was discussed next. We talked about the one on one contacts versus mass communications and traditional program teaching. There are locations around the state that have 1000’s of calls coming into their offices annually. They should be able to show community wide impact with the shear numbers of teachable moments they have. By reporting the number of programs taught, to a number of people in attendance. The number of press releases or article for local papers that are written or TV and radio segments done for the media should be included in annual summary reports. Then the number of potential households each of these reach should be reported at this level and not in the UCESRAccess. Use of statements like “I spoke with or had contact with _____ # of contacts with clientele.” would be appropriate. Then reporting numbers of contacts made by Master Gardeners in the county are important as well. Statements like “_________ County Master Gardeners contacted or spoke with _________ # of clientele.”

We discussed the use of a 1-800-number and financially it is prohibitive for the University of Wyoming or the Plant Sciences Department at this time and we decided not to pursue this concept any further at this time.

Contacts with nontraditional horticulture producer audeiences were broached. Glen and Duane suggested working with the Small Acreage Issue Team, and the NRCS to develop collaborative materials to benefit this audience. Along the same lines we discussed niche marketing and how CES can help. Coordinating with Milt Green and Gail Gordon of the Enhancing Wyoming Communities and Household Initiative Team would also be beneficial and appropriate. Contacts with the Department of Ag and the Small Business Development Centers would also be good partners for producers in this aspect of Profitable and Sustainable Ag Systems.

Under New Business we discussed the County based CES horticulture staff members and how to best include them in the decision making and planning processes. We decided to include them in the emails to the Horticulture Issue Team and encourage them to participate in future Team meetings. We also discussed the need for a Train the Trainer event to bring PSAS team members and CES horticulturists up to speed on the most current horticultural recommendations and how best to use the Specialist to get their training out to the counties and to the Master Gardeners. The lack of funding at the county level for county-based horticulturists was brought up but the need for standardized training for all horticulturists and UEEs working in horticulture is necessary for UW’s liability on recommendations. Weed and Pest agreed to be involved in the training. By encouraging this type of training and the inclusion of county horticulturists will raise the bar on our perception within our communities and within the University and then a standard can be set and used by County Coordinators and Associate Directors for evaluation that educators are keeping up with the latest research based information by participating in the Train the Trainer opportunities.

Another training subject that needs to be improved is the concept that Master Gardeners are a branch of or have an association with the University by their pure definition or function within CES. We need to encourage or enhance the idea that Master Gardeners understand and maintain their identity through a connection to the University. By including veteran Master Gardeners in the Train the Trainer sessions we can more fully develop the understanding of what it means to be a Master Gardener.

We went back over notes to discuss the action items and who had assignments to accomplish. Then discussed the time and place for the next team meeting. It was decided that the next meeting should be held during the Train the Trainer sessions in Laramie in the fall.