North Carolina

A few days ago Eli Sagor posted the photo below in his Flickr (TM) stream, captioning it, “Marshall Stewart talks about communicating Extension’s public value at #ANREP12.” So, apparently public value was being created at the recent conference of the Association of Natural Resource and Extension Professionals (ANREP)!

Thanks for posting the photo, Eli. I found it because it showed up in a Google (TM) alert I set up for “Extension’s Public Value.”

Looking at the ANREP conference agenda, the photo appears to be from a talk by Dr. Marshall Stewart of North Carolina State University on “Advocacy Makes a Powerful Difference.” Indeed it does!

So, were any readers at the ANREP conference and can share the gist of Dr. Stewart’s message? Eli?

Across the country, Cooperative Extension organizations are adopting a variety of strategies for training their staff in the public value approach. University of Missouri appointed an “MU Extension Public Value Education Team,” who subsequently offered “Building Extension’s Public Value” training to all of MU Extension. Some states introduced the training to a particular program area (Family and Consumer Sciences in North Carolina, and Community Resource Development in New York and Pennsylvania). Nevada, in contrast, introduced it in selected regions.

University of Georgia Extension has chosen to introduce public value training as part of a professional development program for the organization’s leaders–and future leaders. Last week I taught the BEPV workshop for Georgia’s “ExTEND” group: participants in an advanced program of the Extension Academy for Professional Excellence. I look forward to seeing how the ExTEND group chooses to use the training–how they plan to extend their organization’s public value.

What approach do you think will work best to build support for public funding for Extension programs? BEPV training for everyone? For Extension leadership? Rolling out the concepts by program area or region? Or another approach?