Southern Administrative Heads Winter Meeting

Omni Oklahoma City Hotel, Oklahoma City, OK
Monday, February 6, 2023, 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Minutes

Participants –

1. NIFA Update – Kevin Kephart
   • Kevin is the Southern Region liaison along with Steve Zang, Food Nutrition Division Director
   • Still Rebuilding NIFA, now over 340 employees with 98% of them working remotely
   • Awarded over 2500 grants in 2022 totaling $2.2 billion
   • Large portion of the grants were from recent special legislation which was over $5.5 million, including
     • Extension integration
     • Meat and poultry processing at community colleges
     • Centers of Excellence at 1890s and 1994s
     • $5 million competitive bioproduct pilot programs awarded to VT, U Ill, and IA State
   • New RFAs
     • Extensions Excite vaccine program
     • AFRI
       • Climate smart agriculture
       • Rapid response to extreme weather
       • New program on environmental justice
     • President’s executive order to develop climate adaptation plan for all federal agencies
       • NIFA started on theirs in 2021 to plan how to respond to weather events
       • Plan was published last year and is currently being implemented
     • USDA has exceeded $1 billion in grants per year, so now needs to offer Science Technology Transfer Research grants (STTR), as well as SBIR
       • Emphasis will be on meat and poultry
   • NIFA’s new strategic plan is now on their website and includes the grants modernization effort
   • Goal is for NIFA to be best science agency in the world
   • Listening session on poultry is coming up, but doesn’t include broiler’s due to Congressional directions
2. Update on Federal Budget, Advocacy Efforts, Farm Bill and other Legislation – Paul Patterson and Doug Steele
   • See budget and advocacy handout
   • New APLU President has settled in well
   • Congressional budget committees should be set by next week
   • There will be a new administration orientation in July in conjunction with the Joint COPS meeting in Kansas City
   • CARET appointments are due now
   • Advocacy
     • PBD has final say in everything related to budget and advocacy
     • BAC drives process and focuses on appropriations
     • Land-grant.org has all budget and advocacy information
     • Added advocacy effort for infrastructure and women & minorities funding
     • A one-pager will be developed by March with 7-11 priorities
     • Advocacy efforts should include your own institution’s needs and the LGU system’s requests
     • AFRI Coalition has agreed to support the BAA’s request of $500 million for AFRI
     • Also making a major request through the Research Facilities Act for $500 million
     • A new Farm Bill request will be for $8 billion in mandatory funding, $5 billion for infrastructure and $3 billion for other Title VII lines
     • USA has now dropped to #5 in world on Agriculture research spending per person
3. Issues from Sunday’s SAAS Board Meeting and other items for SAAS – Keith Belli
   • Only new business was that on association would like to explore the possibility of meeting in the Virgin Islands
     • Biggest problem with that is transportation for the students
     • SAAS Board will discuss this further at meeting tomorrow
   • Nick Place is now the SAAS President
4. Items from Administrative Heads Meeting in December – Scott Angle
   • Discussed infrastructure bill and need to put a request in next Farm Bill
   • AGS need to push commodity groups to more strongly support our priorities
   • CARET strategic plan’s main goal is to become more relevant
   • Currently look for a champion to support infrastructure request in Farm Bill
5. BAA- FANR Updates – Doug Steele
   • 2024 priorities are being set now
   • Climate Roadmap is being developed through a scan process lead by Horizon Institute, should be done by Fall
   • White House conference on Food/Ag/Nutrition/Wellness will establish a virtual center to push food and wellness connections through ASCEND
     • BAA is currently trying to decide how to be involved with this effort
   • Workforce Development is getting a lot of support from Secretary’s office, Wendy Fink is leading this effort for BAA
   • FANR is looking at the BAA structure and by-laws carefully to update and make any needed changed, it was last updated in 2008
   • CMC is redoing Ag is America and Land-grant.org websites
   • Assessments’ percent won’t increase, but dollar amount may if you have received more grant funds than last previous year
     • Assessment invoices will include an explanation of the formula and what funds are used for
   • Extension Foundation (previously eExtension) has been contracted to manage the Land-grants.org and Impacts Database websites
6. Mini Land-grant past and future meetings – Eric Young
   • See meeting evaluation results handout
   • Overall evaluations were very positive, large majority thought it was worth their time and wanted to have another one in two or three years
   • It was agreed that the possibility of holding another mini Land-grant in spring 2025 should be pursued
   • Eric will ask the other Southern EDs to discuss this with their groups and get comments and suggestions
   • A final decision to move forward with planning will be made at the summer S-AHS/CARET meeting
7. Salary Survey, New Metrics – Eric Young
   • See salary survey new metrics handout
   • Feedback was that it took a lot of work to pull out some of the new metrics, but that it should be easier next year
   • Some institutions could not provide peer reviewed publications numbers as early as January, it was decided to ask for previous year’s publication numbers
   • Scott will bring up the idea of all regions doing a similar salary survey during the March AHS meeting, Eric will prepare a one-pager on the Survey
8. Election of New S-AHS Secretary – Keith Belli
   • Deacue Fields (Univ Ark) was nominated as Secretary, nominations were closed and Deacue elected by acclamation
   • Nick Place (UGA) is now Chair and Keith Coble (MS State) is Chair-elect, both will be the Southern region’s representatives on the AHS Executive Committee
9. S-AHS Executive Director contract renewal – Keith Belli
   • Current contract will expire June 30
   • Unanimous agreement to renew contract for another two years, through June 2025, with same terms and compensation
   • Eric will notify appropriate people at University of Arkansas
10. 2023 Summer S-AHS/CARET meeting – Eric Young
    • Eric will discuss meeting plans with UTIA and confirm they are still able to host this summer
    • Conversations with Ashley Stokes, Extension Dean, confirmed that UTIA will host 2023 meeting on July 28-30 and planning is underway
11. Updates on home institutions – All
    • See institutional updates handout