Higher education resources are increasingly limited due to declining budget revenue and other challenges. Thus, it is vital for Cooperative Extension to synergize efforts of disseminating education to the public. Promoting public scholarship in and beyond Extension is a promising initiative that can foster collaborations by leveraging existing…

Greater engagement has been emphasized as a need for Cooperative Extension for decades. Today this emphasis is also seen in higher education. Accordingly, there is need for clarity regarding the definition and community implementation of engagement. In the study described, I sought to address this need by conducting semistructured interviews with…

Extension administrators discussed the competencies and characteristics of Extension professionals as they explored how Extension will need adapt to changing clientele, both in who they are and how they want to receive information. Extension education curriculum is not fully preparing future Extension employees in all required competencies,…

Selected 4-H youth participated in the Texas 4-H Livestock Ambassador program. Forty-five youth participated in the 3-day program delivered by university professors and staff, Texas AgriLife Extension faculty and industry representatives. An instrument was developed and administered to the Texas 4-H Livestock Ambassadors at the end of their first…

Strategies for building effective extension-community partnerships around food use the following principles: building on community assets, involving diverse stakeholder involvement, being guided by community interests, and integrating research with practice. Strategies encourage partners to develop common goals, clarify roles and responsibilities,…

Interviews with Cornell Cooperative Extension faculty, staff, and administrators (28 campus-based and 39 county staff) revealed both similarities and differences in views of engagement. County staff view their jobs as the critical link between community needs and university resources; campus staff view themselves as implementers of programs.…

In the early decades of the Extension system, agents' core work was to organize rural people in order to address practical problems and issues. This educational organizing fostered instrumental, communicative, and emancipatory learning. Understand the historical foundations and evolution of the educational organizing tradition can help Extension…

The Urban Planning Practicum is a capstone course engaging Michigan State students in urban outreach, working with community organizations on neighborhood revitalization. It facilitates the experiential learning needs of urban planning students while assisting Extension staff in capacity building. Faculty-extension agent partnerships make it…

A project placed health science interns in community-based education and outreach programs in partnership with Extension to provide community education in health behavior and decision making and build community capacity for health care. Evaluation of student reports and participant interviews showed that despite logistical challenges such as lack…

Michigan residents (n=950) rated the following topics of most interest: school violence, child abuse, drug abuse, and affordable health care. Their preferences for information sources, in priority order, were as follows: public schools, Internet, television, Michigan State University extension, and print materials. (SK)

"International Programming Issues for Extension Education" (Rosson, Sanders) describes a survey of extension personnel identifying global competition and agriculture as a key issue. "Expanding Our Horizons Internationally" (Richardson, Woods) discusses North Carolina Extension's staff development on global issues. In…