A study examined the extent to which employees in one university extension organization oriented themselves to a vision of extension work that responded to nontraditional societal problems, nontraditional affected communities, and the expertise of nontraditional faculty. The state extension service organization (based at a large midwestern research and land-grant university) was chosen for study because of a desire by a new director to better understand her impact on the organization's culture of outreach work. Four agents were randomly selected for participant observation. Self-administered written questionnaires were distributed to all 859 employees of the extension organization, and 433 surveys were completed (for a response rate of 50%). Results suggest that overall, agents collaborate most often with community members, regularly with organizational co-workers, and least often with faculty. In identifying problems, agents follow this same pattern: they rely on constituents first, colleagues second, and faculty least of all. Agents perceived more benefits than drawbacks to working with constituents. University faculty, even those with extension appointments, appear to be "out of the informational loops" which extension agents and community members comprise as they work to apply knowledge to the solution of community problems. (Contains 23 references and two notes.) (Author/RS)