 Boy, this is fun to be up here. It is. It is. I've got the bright lights. Actually, it's been, I thought it's been a great conference so far. On Monday afternoon, yeah. On Monday afternoon, we had some really neat history that was presented to us. And we think about the 150 years for the Morrill Act, the Land Grant University, and the importance of extension within the Land Grant University. I think it's great. It's great to be an extension, isn't it? It's a great day. We've got great people. We've got people that have a lot of passion for what you do. When you listen to Doug Steele talk about passion, and we have people that have a passion. And we also have great projects that we can work on, that we can work with our communities, we can work with our ranchers, we can work with the families and work with the youth all across the state. It's a great organization. We have a great legacy. And I think we have an opportunity to create our own legacy here in 2012 and moving forward. Several months ago, I asked Kurt if I could have a little bit of time on the program. And he said, yeah, we can carve out a little bit of time for you. And I had one little project that I wanted to do with the group. And then somebody else comes along and says, can you do this and can you do that? And so I've got a number of items that I'm going to be covering here. So we'll just move along. The first thing is just a welcome to all the new staff, the agents and specialists. We really appreciate what you're going to, what you are starting to contribute to our organization and to North Dakota and really appreciate it. If others, old people like myself, some people have commented on that Agweek article and it said how old I was in there. And I won't point that person out in here, but you know who you are. If you look on the wall, we've got a map that's been started with new staff and their pictures. And if you don't know the new staff in our organization, please introduce yourself, learn who all of our new staff are so that they can learn who you are as well. So with our new staff, just remember lead, don't follow, be relevant, be intentional and be transformational. I'm going to go back to be intentional. Like on Monday afternoon intentionally I found a table that had all sorts of iPads and smartphones because if you're intentional then maybe you have a chance at winning one of those games. Find partners for projects where the great part about North Dakota is, North Dakota is local. And there are all sorts of opportunities to partner with local groups, agencies, individuals. So take advantage of those partnerships. Especially for new staff ask questions. The strength of our organization is the network. And if I don't know the answer, I can call somebody else. Don't be afraid to ask. That's what we can do and provide information. Share your successes. There's always the comment that extension is a best kept secret. We can't afford to do that. So as you have that great project in your town, in your county, in your region, in your department, talk about it, share it so that other people know about it. We can't afford to be quiet about our successes. And finally just promote yourself and promote extension. If you're promoting yourself that, yeah, I did that. We had that great program and I'm with extension. You're promoting yourself and you're promoting our organization as well. So don't be shy. Switching topics. This is also part of promotion though as well. We're going to have the extreme off county extension office makeover the second edition. And there should be flyers on your tables that were just distributed with the details. And the deadline for this project is August 13th or August 30th, 2013. And this is just an opportunity to improve that first impression when somebody is coming into your office. So please take a look at this. I know we've had a lot of counties that participated in the first round and that's been fantastic. We've had some fantastic transformations in our counties. And here's another opportunity to do more with that. My next topic, I'm looking for my speaker. Dr. Brent Young is right back here. This is kind of like, what's the name of the game? Are they come on down? Price is right? Price is right? Yeah, there we go. Dr. Brent Young? That was a little more than what I was expecting there. Dr. Young is at the School of Education's responsibility for the agricultural education programs and wants to explain some of the opportunities that are available. Just turn the mic over to him. And you've got... Two seconds. No, you've got five seconds. Thanks, Drew. Oh, I mean Chris. It's a pleasure to be here and I really appreciate the time that Chris has afforded me on your very, very busy schedule. This is a group that's very close to my heart. Some of you probably know that I have spent nine years of my life as an extension agent in Colorado. And so I feel like I'm among friends and home as I speak to this group. I was really impressed with the number of people who are new to extension. I think the map is a great idea. And that really underscores my message to you this afternoon is that we need more of those folks and we actually have a program at the NDSU to help prepare them. And I also want to borrow from what Chris said earlier as well regarding a very well-kept secret. One of the best-kept secrets, I think, that we have at NDSU is that we have an extension education minor. We have an opportunity for students who have an interest in extension to be involved with a program that will provide training to prepare them for careers in extension. And many of you may not know that. Again, many people don't. So my message to you here today is, first of all, one of awareness to be aware that that minor is available. And then secondly, to ask your help in promoting it. In your local counties, in your areas, as you mingle and have dealings with young people who are either contemplating education and a program here at NDSU are currently in one of the programs here. Make them aware of the extension minor. So you've heard about it. You know it's there. You can contact the extension service on campus. You can contact me. But let's just try to get them in touch with us and let them know that we have a program out there that, again, I think can provide an opportunity for them to learn more about extension and also prepare for a career in extension. A colleague of mine, Dr. Mary Boer, and I conducted some research a few years back. Some of you may probably recall this because you were a big part of it. We're asked to complete an online survey instrument where we ask questions about your intentions for when you're looking to retirement, when you would be eligible to retire. And we found that there are a number of you that are close to that. And again, the number of new staff would indicate that we have an opportunity for more people to be employed in extension here in the state. One of the other questions we asked was for participants to identify someone who made a difference in their life or help them to look toward extension as a possible career and time and time again, people indicated that a local extension agent first made them aware of extension as a career. So we know that you have a very powerful voice for young people and an opportunity to encourage them to pursue the career that you've made a life of. So again, Chris, thanks for the opportunity. And again, I would encourage you to look for those young people in your communities that would make excellent extension agents and who could benefit from the extension minor that we have at INDSU. Thank you. Are there any questions for Dr. Young about his programs? And are you going to be around until the break? I'll be around for a few minutes after the session now and certainly answer questions. I've got business cards I could provide if you have young people that you know right now that might have an interest. We could pass a card to them. Okay. Thanks a lot, Brian. Okay. Next up, in terms of a little bit of a promotion, we had a great presentation talking about energy impacts on tribal lands. We know that we have many challenges in western North Dakota in regard to the oil development, oil industry, the impact on communities, impacts on farms, how it's impacting families, et cetera, et cetera. And I think we're still trying to put our arms around these impacts and how we might best respond to it. So this is just an informational item. This afternoon at 2.15, there is a breakout session on extension's role in energy education. And the leaders of this are Kathy Tweeden and Ken Halvang. And these are the questions that they had in the description for the breakout session. Apparently they've had a number of individuals that have signed up. And so I think that's great. For those individuals, please attend that session. And I think the plea really is for the individuals attending this session to really think about and provide, not just think about it, provide input on how we can best structure ourselves and which topics and issues that we as extension can contribute to some of these issues. Right now, energy isn't a formal team, but we have conference calls that are occurring in regard to some of these energy issues. And I think the question is how deliberate should we be, how formal should we be with the energy programming? So I just really ask if you don't have anything on your agenda in terms of a breakout session at 2.15, this would be a great session to go to. And all the individuals that are already indicated interest in attending, please contribute to that session. We do need direction and good ideas on how we can best address that area. Next, I'd like to provide a little bit of a legislative update on the next legislative session. And many of you are fully aware of the SBARE process, and maybe some of our newer staff aren't as familiar. But within North Dakota, there's a legislatively mandated board, the State Board of Agricultural Research and Education, that serves as a formal advisory and advisory board for the agricultural programs and extension programs at NDSU. And this is a fantastic organization that keeps agriculture and extension at the forefront at NDSU, and so that we don't get lost within all the other programs at NDSU. And if I look at NDSU compared to other universities that I've been at, this is just a blessing for NDSU to have this type of focus for us. The process is that they receive input from all sorts of stakeholders, and this started last fall through the winter. They're receiving this input, testimony, either written or oral testimony. They reviewed the needs of the state, and then they ranked the priority needs that they saw for extension and the experiment station. I'm only going to show the information for the extension if you're interested in the information for the egg experiment station that is on the SBARE website as well. This kind of ties into some of the comments that Brent was making too, talking about the number of new people that we're bringing into extension. We need to continue this pipeline of good new people. And the number one priority that SBARE identified for us in this year for the legislative session is the Agents and Training and Summer Intern Program for extension. We provide salary dollars for four additional agents and training and five summer interns that we'd be able to help start or develop this talent and recruit individuals into our organization. So that's, I think that's just great. The second item is in relation to livestock development, and this is intended to enhance the livestock opportunities in the state. Economically right now, livestock on a farm gate value is only contributing about 15 to 17 percent of our total agricultural value. The remainder is all crop productivity. And there should be an opportunity to increase the value of the livestock in North Dakota. So this livestock development initiative would add area livestock specialists at Central Grasslands, REC, and out at Hettinger, and also provide additional program funding for the agribusiness and applied economics department. The third initiative is a larger conglomeration of crop and resource protection items, some additional support for extension plant pathology to shore up some of the federal dollars that are less certain these days, a new extension entomologist to enhance our capabilities there, some technical support for a couple programs here on campus and at the North Central REC, and then also some additional salary support for our water quality program because our federal dollars actually have been cut in that area. And so this would kind of replace some of those funds. The fourth area is in terms of its titled community sustainability. The real focus here is on Western North Dakota for the oil impacted communities to try to help those communities deal with the pressures that they are facing. And then also as a part of this is some additional support for ag communications to increase our capabilities of delivering information. The fifth area has a number of items as well, gearing up for kindergarten and the funding for this is actually, even though it was originally prioritized within SBARE is a funding line now in DPI. And so that's good for us. The parent education is for the parent resource centers, some baseline salary, again to stabilize our funding for that program area. And the nutrition is actually nutrition and gerontology, an additional one FTE split between those two program areas. So if we go down this list in total, we have $3.4 million of new dollars that are being requested from this door that were ranked, I should say, by SBARE. One caveat to this is with the State Board of Higher Education, they only recommended the top three items for approval. And so with some of the politics that are happening, we've only presented the top three to OMB. All five priorities are known within the state that SBARE has ranked these as our extension priorities for the state. So we'll have to wait and see what the governor's budget has in December when that's released. Also, SBARE ranked or approved a capital project for the Western North Dakota 4-H camp. And this is to do renovation of the cabins and mess hall and also build a new multi-purpose building and fund some program amenities on top of that. The total project cost is $1.9 million and we're looking for half of the funds from the state. And our intent is to raise the other half of the fund through the 4-H foundation. And Miley LeVold and Dwayne Hawke have been working hard on a silent campaign in this regard. And we're about two-thirds of the way there. So it is going extremely well. It's a great day to be an extension, I've got to say again. There's a one-time request for replacing many of our Ivan systems that are truly just obsolete if they break, they're done. And so we're looking for funds for that. And then on our extension page at the bottom is an additional request for the Soil Conservation District Grant Program. And so that's occurred in the past as well. Maybe I should stop right there and ask if there are any quick questions about the S-Bear priorities or we could visit later. And these are all listed on the S-Bear site. You can get a printout of this and a little bit more detail as well. Since yesterday was election day, it makes me start thinking about federal items and federal budgets. There is some risk that we might go through a sequestration process if a federal budget isn't approved. And I don't know all the ins and outs of all of that detail, but on the federal side we may have some risk of losing some of our Smith-Lever dollars through sequestration. And that may be a cut of, I've heard anywhere from basically 8 to 10 percent. And so we need to stay at rest of that. And so I think if a full budget is not approved and the farm bill is not approved by January, we might be looking at the potential for some of those cuts. But we will be able to weather those. We'll be able to manage that. One other item that I want to bring up that I know is important for extension and also for our colleagues at RECs out in the western part of the North Dakota, we know that there are many challenges in terms of housing, housing costs, cost of living, competitive salaries, et cetera. We've been aware of this for quite some time and we've been trying to find ways to address it. We brought this issue to S-Bear and so that they are aware of this. There was a request from S-Bear basically to look at a process or what would it take to help address some of the needs out in western North Dakota because of these increasing costs. And so Vice President Grafton asked me to lead a group and come up with a proposal. I worked with the directors from the RECs and our district directors within extension to help look at what a cost of living adjustment policy budgeting might look like. And we looked at some of the other state agencies and federal agencies to see how they were handling this as well. And so we've pulled together a proposal in that regard. It's been presented back to S-Bear and S-Bear is meeting next week, Thursday and Friday of next week. And our request to S-Bear is for approval of this proposal. And then with S-Bear's approval then we can continue to push this at the state level to try to seek funding to have some cost of living adjustment for individuals in the western part of the state. So at this time we're working through the process. That's what I want to let you know about. We understand the pressures that are out there and the challenges and we're trying to move this. And I know it would be nice to move it a lot faster, but the wheels with the legislature are only going to move at a certain pace. Okay. I'm starting to stun everybody into silence. I can tell because you've eaten and it's that dreaded after lunch time period. So I'm going to change gears a little bit. This was my real intent for time. So on Monday afternoon when Doug Steele was up here, he told some really great stories I thought. And he was talking about Norman Borlaug. And I'm sure everybody might have little different connections with Norman Borlaug. My connection was going through the University of Minnesota. They built the Norman Borlaug Hall while I was in grad school there. And the last couple of years I was able to actually occupy one of the offices as a grad student there. And so that's my little slice of connection with Norman Borlaug. But the thing when Doug was talking about Norman Borlaug that really struck me, he gave out a figure on the number of people that Norman Borlaug was credited in saving from starvation. And what was that number? Two billion people or two billion. It's like, wow, that's an impact. You know, in extension we talk about impacts. Okay. So it's like, Carl, who's your two billion people that you're going to impact? You know? That's a pretty high bar to live up to. And it's like, I'm going to save two billion people. How do we do that? And I was talking earlier about North Dakota is so local. So I was trying to figure out how could I communicate something like that. And I thought of something fairly common. And Andy, sitting right in the middle of the room, you'll be able to recognize this. What is this? It's a potato. It's a potato. Good job. If you haven't met Andy yet, he's one of our new staff members, and he's our potato specialist. And good job. So I've got a potato here. So we're going from Norman Borlaug to a potato. Now, many of you might assume that, especially since I was picking a little bit on Andy here, is that we're going to talk about potato production. Because after all, I came through agriculture. And so it must be about, you know, how many acres of potatoes do we grow? But really my thought of potatoes and Norman Borlaug are how we make an impact. And I was at one of our legislative update sessions that were conducted this past winter. And somebody was telling the story. And I can't remember who. I'm getting old. I can't remember who it was. But they were talking about potatoes. And it was from the consumer standpoint. It was either an FNP or an FNEP agent that was telling a great story. That some individuals, some people don't know how to cook with a potato. You know, here's a great food source, a great staple. And what do you do with it? I see some heads nodding here, and you can relate to this. And so if we're working with people and we can help them be able to utilize a potato, that's a local connection, it's an impact. Extension makes these types of impacts every day in our system. There may be, you know, a youth, a child. There may be a young mother. There may be a rancher. It may be a community economic development specialist in a community. But we make those impacts. It doesn't necessarily have to be two billion people. So you can take that pressure off. But we've got to have these types of local impacts. And so our purpose, so this is going into a little bit of, maybe a little bit of soul searching for us. Our purpose is to create learning partnerships that help adults and youth enhance their lives in communities. This is a very noble profession that we have. It's where a number of us have great passion. So we are extension and we are relevant. And don't let anybody take that away from us. We make a difference. And it might be with that family. It might be with the grower. It might be with the resource. Many different ways. We all make a difference in this room. And that's the great part of being the director of extension to help support this type of organization. So if we dig deeper, what makes us special? Why are we unique? Why does North Dakota need us? Why do we make the decisions that we do? Something has to drive us. And this is coming down to what are our principles. And what we're going to do here is review our principles and think about our principles a little bit. We've talked, you know, it was probably in the past year about relevancy and what is relevancy, what makes us relevant. And I think talking about our principles is going one layer deeper of what makes us the organization that we have, that we can deliver on the promise that we have. And what I'd like to do is for us to go in and spend some time and review and potentially revise some of our principles. And I've gone to our website and we've got 10 principles that are listed on our website under the Who We Are section. And so I've got these up here. And maybe we haven't taken a lot of time to think about what our principles are, what drives us as an organization. And maybe I don't know if we, actually I don't know who authored these principles. And if when they were authoring these were they looking out, were they looking at who we're serving, our external audience? Or are these principles also talking about us internally and how we work and act as an organization? So maybe we need to look at these in both directions. So, extension believes in lifelong learning and maximizing research, resources through partnerships that all people have dignity and work. In informed decision making and promoting economic and environmental sustainability, that learners are responsible for their decisions and actions in encouraging and supporting creativity and innovation in integrating research-based knowledge with knowledge that is generated through experiences of our partners and clients. There's a principle that's stated in a little bit longer fashion. In teamwork and shared leadership that our university base along with our local, state and national network enhances our educational capabilities. So these are our current principles. What I'd like to do is ask a few questions about these principles and have you reflect upon it. Because if these are our principles, then we should think about it and do they really match what we're doing right now? Are we being kind of intentional with these? So on your tables there should be, actually there's a much bigger group here today than I thought was going to be here. On 20 of the tables there's a white envelope that contains a series of handouts. Yours is actually beige, two-sided. One set on the left-hand column is the guiding principles and then I've got columns to the left and the right. And at the top talking about it applies to our external audience and the right column applies to our internal organization. So what I'd like to ask you to do is first of all look around the table and find the person that looks the most guilty that might be willing to take notes. Okay? I can tell that that's happening right now. Okay? Okay. Okay, so I can tell that that's happened. What I would like at the end of this is that if the person that's kind of taking the notes, if you could write on the top of your sheet like master copy or something like that and at the end be sure that it goes back in that white envelope because then we can collect it. We can collect this in part. Okay? Also, we're going to try to move this along in an orderly fashion and on Monday they had a real fancy time clock on the screens as they were supposed to be finding the answers to those questions and we could never keep track of even how much time was on because we were having a tough time even getting down to the bottom of the sheet. I don't have that fancy of timer but I did steal something off the stove this morning. And so we're going to be timed here and so we have a certain amount of time for each slide and with the first set of instructions I've got two questions. So the first one is is this principle critical for how we provide our extension programming? And so that's that first column. If we look external, is this truly a principle? Because some of these may not apply, say, to an external audience. Maybe or maybe all of them apply to external audiences. The second question is this principle critical for our organizational success? So that's looking in internally. Does that fit what we have? So just talk in your tables, go down and mark off the delete of the principles that may not apply externally or internally and I'm going to give you five minutes to do that. Okay? Okay. Five minutes are up. Did any of the tables, did any of the groups identify from our current list of principles items that aren't applicable at this time for both internally or externally? Anybody? Nobody at all. They only got through five. Did you find any principles that you don't think are applicable that should be deleted? Well, okay. We kind of, in a number two in maximizing resources through partnerships, we were so-so on external of how they view that and how we view that. So we were so-so. We were no or yes. One of those undecided voters. Anyone else? Interesting. I know that there were probably more that were identified, but nobody's going to volunteer. Is that correct? Okay. So the next, oops, there we go. So the next question that I have, are any of these principles maybe just not quite on track for where we are today? Should the principle be refocused and rewritten? And so if so, if that's the case, then could you provide a alternate version in the box to the right of that principle? Or there may actually be a couple principles that really should be combined. What type of alterations might you be interested in that regard? So take a look at that, and I'm going to give you eight minutes for that. Okay. On question three, did anyone come up with items that you rewrote? Who said? Ken did. So we decided that we really thought number six was really included in number one, and they're kind of duplicate, and we could probably remove number six as a result of that. Oh, I'm sorry. Six is that learners are responsible for their decisions and actions, and of course one is in lifelong learning. So really they're kind of combined between the two, perhaps. Got Andrew. We decided to strike number 10. And the reason being is that that's just one of the things we do. That's not a guiding principle or anything. That's just a fact. I mean, that our university base along with our local, state, and national network enhances our educational capabilities. That's not a principle. No. It's something that we do instinctively, but it's not a principle. Thanks, Andrew. We've got any others? We're getting pointed at Angela here. We thought for that one that was just being discussed that it was important to maintain our county base, but we also looked at number eight, and we shortened it to just read a guiding principle as in integrating research-based and applied knowledge. Did I hear a disagreement with that one? Oh, you liked that. That's a thumbs up over there. We changed number eight up a little bit, too. We changed it to integrating research-based knowledge with the knowledge and experiences of our partners and members of our communities. Very nice. Oh, got another one over here. All right. We combined number two and number nine to say in maximizing resources through partnerships, teamwork, and shared leadership. We had number eight to read. Carla correct me if I'm wrong. In integrating research-based knowledge and with experiential learning. With experiential learning. Very good. We rewrote number four because we thought it was unclear, and we wrote it as we believe in acting on research-based objective information. We rewrote number eight, too, but the other ones were better. Some of them anyway. But we just rewrote it as we believe in our partners and clients. And delete 10. Okay. There we go. All right. So, let's see. Question number four. Are there critical principles that are missing? And some people were working ahead, apparently. Like this group up here. No. These guys are quick up here, yeah. So, did anyone actually jump ahead and do question four previously? Okay. You guys did too. We're going to take just four minutes. Question four. There's two boxes on the bottom. If we're missing something, please add that principle at the bottom. All done. Okay. Got time for two additions, but we are going to be collecting your recommendations, ideas. So, two tables. Any additions to the principles? We have extenders of new technology and then evolve with culture and relate to new generations in the future. Got to think about that. So, basically, we need to, it's the evolution aspect. And I pulled this away from Joel. We don't have exact wording, but we believe that something about the positive impact that we have and our work does should be added. So, that's for our internal organization side of things, right? The value of the work we do. Okay. External for marketing. Okay, one. It was Holly's idea, but she pointed at me. We used the six pillars of character and went through every one of them and saw if it matched. So, I want to thank everybody for their input. Let's go to the slides. So, these are our principles. They really define who we are and why we make the decisions that we do. We work in the programs that we do and how we act. So, I just want to wrap up with we are extension, we are relevant, and we make a difference. And my last question is, are we done? Is that enough? And I'd say no, it's not because we haven't marketed ourselves with that. So, we still need to work on marketing. We can't just do a good job and be satisfied with it. We also need to market. So, if you look at the far wall and these posters are going to stay up this afternoon and tomorrow morning. These aren't archival quality. The intent is to gather ideas that you have in regard to marketing. So, you can go put your graffiti up on there and write your comments. And there is questions over here and there are comments and some suggestions that are probably kind of off the wall even though they're taped to the wall. And there is also one of these has a section that if you have fire in your belly about marketing and marketing ideas and want to be involved in marketing put your name down up here because we want to know who you are and tap into your skills and your ideas. So, with that, Kurt, I believe it's 2 o'clock and my time is done. I want to thank everybody here for the good work that we're doing. Put your master copies back in the white envelopes and hold them up and we'll and ELT people will gather them up really quick. Thank you, Director Borboom. And make sure you hold those up so that they can collect those. The next thing on the agenda for you this afternoon is breakouts beginning at 2.15 and you can see the ones that are there and you can go find that room of your choice.