 we are recording. Good morning everyone and thank you for taking time and for those who couldn't make this time fit in your schedule that's great we have it recorded. I really am have been just waiting for for this meeting there's so many things that I'm ready to share with you and and excited about so I'm just going to dive right in and get started. The very first thing we wanted to do today was have Chris give you another legislative update but yesterday Chris got called out to the legislature so he will not be with us this morning and the update basically is that everything with the extension budget is still very much on hold. Most of you may have heard that the legislators were waiting until the March 18th outlook and once that financial outlook came out they were going to be able to proceed with better information. The unfortunate thing is that the outlook was less favorable so there would be less dollars available which means now that they are back at work and definitely not spending a lot of money and it doesn't look very promising for many new things but Chris is out there today and we hope that our priorities will be met to some degree and we'll see what happens but that's about the best update I can give you right now. Everything has been very interesting and very different from the previous session. It seems like they always are but yet at the same time I would say that it's been quite challenging to try to move forward with our priorities and Chris is out there doing his dangdust and I appreciate all he's doing and I'm sure you do too. So just a very brief little set of comments and he regrets that he couldn't be with you today but that's that's how that process works. Okay so since we last met just a couple of comments. First of all people turned in plans of work, QPRs and impact reports and especially for people who are newer with us I like to remind everybody of why we do them and how they are used and plans of work. There was some question as we went through the process about some of the timing and could we see them and so forth. We take the plans of work and that you do we ask that you look at the menus that are online for each of the subject matter areas, the program menus, signature programs, core programs, etc. Look at those and prioritize and develop your plan of work and so since you have helped to develop that menu our program teams have helped to develop that menu. The specialists are quite aware of your input and are able to visit with you more intently and see what are the priorities that's what goes on that menu and then they will develop what needs to be developed based on your input. So we used to have years ago we used to have a process where all of those were then sent to the specialist they reviewed them and then they produced some things. We've kind of changed that process up and I think some of the people who have been with us a little bit longer need to just be reminded that we've changed that process for how we do the planning. We've tried to have much more team involvement. We meet especially at fall conference where we try to wrap it up and pull together your best ideas. So plans of work were put in the process I guess we had very few hitches this year so glitches or hitches so that was good. QPRs we just realized yesterday Chris and I were talking that the first quarter of this year has now passed March 31st so you can put your QPR numbers in again. QPRs how are they used? Well all of those numbers are used and what we did is we created a chart that you may have seen in Chris's recent blog post. He takes those numbers and he uses them and during the legislative session to show the quantity of face-to-face contacts and of course they're used in our federal report too. It's required for us to report that and so that is a very important set of numbers and data that we use. And then finally impact reports. I've appreciated very much everyone's effort to continue to work on those impact reports and update them. I just counted this past week for myself and I think I had something like 12 or 13 individuals who called for some specific help with beefing up their evaluation tools and that's across AG and FCS and it was really encouraging to me to see whether it was field staff or whether it was specialists. More and more people who are calling to say okay how do I beef up this evaluation? How do I get this to be stronger? And we're going to constantly be focusing on that. That's not going to go away. In fact we've made some revisions to our four levels card that we use and our next training at orientation. We're going to add a little bit to the training and see if we can't find a way to do some training updates for all of you. The reason this is so important if I didn't think it was before I really know it is now. Some of you have heard me talk about the Battelle study. A study that's being done about the value of FCS extension across the 12 North Central States. It's been a year-long process and in fact the final product was just delivered yesterday and during that process if you're going to talk talk about the value of our programming people ask as did Battelle will show us the proof where's your proof how can you show how can you prove to us that there's value to this and if I simply say well I know it's good everybody liked it I have nothing to show and when I can tell you out of the 12 states there are some states that still have nothing and it's really unfortunate but North Dakota had some wonderful impact reports and I thank you for the work that you've been doing and we took our quality impact reports and those got used in that national study and that's what's going to help us to go to the federal government committee on ECOP committee who's tried to lobby to get the money for health extension efforts so they're very important and if you are feeling as though you've heard this a million times I hope that it's pretty soon you'll just say okay I've heard it a million times but I'm gonna keep listening and I'm going to keep trying to do what I can do to beef those up it's that important so why do we do them and how are they all used that's just a little bit of a review for you also the quality review two program leaders have started with all of the impact reports done by specialists and we have rated them as to did you turn in an impact report that's a level one two three four and we want to start to follow to see are we getting more level well they should all be at least a level two but are we getting more to level three and four and where do we need the most help and how what kind of additional education can we provide to our specialists so that's where we're going right now and once we have that accomplished we're gonna do the same thing with the county staff so just know that it's that important and we really value your willingness to keep working on this with us all right item number two job search for Abby Gold Abby Gold's position officially ends June 30th she has already moved into the new role that she has however she is on our books until June 30th let's say and the position is is still filled until June 30th and we do have a special arrangement that she is still providing minimal support to finishing up a couple of projects in the meantime we were ready a while ago to start the search and thought that we were going to search for a full-time North Dakota person but Minnesota came with another proposal for us to consider and after much deliberation and discussion we've decided to try this and what it is is that we will have another specialist to fill Abby's position that will be joined Minnesota and North Dakota share it specialist again however a much narrower focus so that they are doing the same work in both states for example health extension it's going to be taking place in both states and so this would be an opportunity for one person to focus in an area and still serve both states for and what we will get in addition to that is another area food nutrition specialist that will serve both states so it's going to be interesting and that person will serve this end of the state however remember in the legislature we have asked for an area specialist we're hoping to get the one area specialist and if we do that person would be in the western end of the state so if this is still an ongoing process we're waiting to see now what the legislature does before we completely move in that direction however we are ready to refill Abby's position and that committee has been formed and they meet next week for the first time to make sure that our job description is what it needs to be and then we will open it up so if any of you are familiar with people who are nutrition specialists that would like to pursue a job here at NDSU extension then you can start to get the word out that the job description should go up within the next couple weeks all right so that's the update on that position I'm just going to pause one minute in case anybody has any questions on those first two things you can either unmute and ask or type it in I don't see anyone typing so I think then we're ready to move on the next thing is your spring training which is coming up here shortly I regret that I won't be there and I wanted to make sure that you knew why I had agreed a long time ago to serve a chaperone for the 4-H kids going to Washington DC for their 4-H conference meeting and naturally it's happening right at the same time as your spring training so I won't be able to attend this year and I like I said I regret that I always enjoy having an opportunity to get together but that's where I'll be I had volunteered to do that before the state was set so if you do have I know you're in good hands seeing what they're up to seeing the agenda agenda and I know that you're gonna have a really good meeting and very excited for you for some of the things you're gonna get to see too if you have any questions or anything after the training takes place that you'd like to share with me you know I'm always open to a caller and email so please be sure to do that okay Molly Molly has typed in a question can you describe the dual role for Abby's position again okay Abby's position has always been joint position between Minnesota and North Dakota which means that she was only half time serving our state and we had another half position right because that was a full time one full FTE and we were unable to find another half-time person because I can't pay out benefits for a half-time position to fill that and so therefore we thought okay we're gonna go with a full position and we won't have that problem but instead Minnesota came along and said we'll give you that other half so you can have a half-time area person as long as we could have the half-time specialist person hoping this is making sense Molly so therefore we decided to stick with that and in the past Abby had some work that she was doing for Minnesota on a couple of grants that were different from the work she was doing in North Dakota and so it was more difficult I think for her as a specialist since she had different position descriptions almost in the two states and then of course just like trying to travel to our area and cover things in Minnesota it was pretty demanding what we have changed is we are going to try and make that as similar as possible in both states so for example as health extension rolls out and we have some needs for health extension that will be expected of a staff person it could be assigned to this new person who does that for both North Dakota and Minnesota so that's what we mean by dual role she'll be in two states but have hopefully one role does that help and if anyone has more questions about that please give me a call you are being represented on the search committee by Sue Milander and so we thank her for doing that if you have questions or comments as this gets rolling and we start interviewing and all that good stuff you know you can always share with her as well we have not set up the the the committee to go forward with the area position we're waiting till the legislature decides here so we have a little better idea of what's going on okay let's move down to the next thing which is the summer FCS in service now I'm hoping all of you are able to access your attachments let's just pause a minute and let's see if you can if you can all find your attachments one of them is called summer FCS teacher in service see how that's going for you when you are able to open your attachment would you just type yes into the box that you have the attachment in front of you okay oh good Chris is smiling right now too we have a little difficulty with the attachments this morning so it looks like most of you okay Maxine says no all right where are they okay Chris do you want to type into the box for those people who are not able to see the attachment how they can get it and what I'm going to do is I'm going to share my try to share my screen and try to show it to you and with someone let me know if you are now able to see the attachment I believe you are it tells me you can see it okay very good well what you're looking at is the agenda for the summer FCS teachers the fax teachers that come for an update some of you who were with us last year at this time know that we experimented last year for the first time we offered an in-service where FCS teachers could come to Fargo and basically they were getting information that was on your previous year's program list so we were not sharing the new information but we were going back one year and it went very well they were extremely pleased and happy to have participated so at that point they asked us to do it again and this year the emphasis will be the HDFS subject matter as you can see and a couple of things on here will be at your spring in service training to as far as the the tour of the NDI Pat the interagency program for assistive technology that we will be doing with your group as well and Jane has led that effort so we wanted you to see what was happening you'll notice that they'll get a tour of the lab which you had this past year we wanted you to see what was happening on that agenda it's not until June 24th 25th but at least now this time since we have it a little bit more together this time you're able to see what's happening before it happens instead of getting it after it happened but we're our second time around we're just a little bit more organized and and we have a system in place now so it's it's a little bit better so that's the FCS training that will be taking place for teachers in North Dakota this year and you'll have an idea of what's going on so I'm going to flip back over to my other screen now it's loading so hang in there everyone that's our summer in service and the next thing on the screen is the teen program list for 2015 so let me pull that up and it is an attachment so if y'all can go back to your attachments again you will see the what we have always called package programs we're trying to get into the terminology of calling them teen programs and you'll see that list hopefully you can all access that attachment again I will share my screen and hope that if you haven't been able to access it you'll be able to at least see it right now and