Southern Administrative Heads Winter Meeting

Westin Convention Center at Las Colinas, Irving, TX
Tuesday, February 4, 2025, 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Minutes

Participants:

1. Federal Budget, Farm Bill, and FANR Updates – Wendy Fink, APLU, FANR Associate Vice President
   • See presentation slides for more information
   • So much information coming out daily, it’s hard to keep up
   • DEI pages have all been removed from federal websites
   • Federal spending was stopped and then restarted, so lots of uncertainty
   • USAID future is unknown, will likely be mostly shut down
   • Department of Education will be reduced and reorganized
   • NIFA future is unknown at this point
   • New USDA Secretary nomination is moving ahead, she seems very supportive of LGU’s
   • Planning to fully automate all functions at the Treasury Dept
   • Farm Bill reconciliation will be difficult, likely will be cuts in the larger programs
   • Research Facilities Act still has good support in both Senate and House
   • Capacity funds will likely be flat
   • Decadal Vision document is being used internally to guide programs
   • Waded Cruzado is the new APLU President and will be a strong advocate for LGU’s
   • Marcus Glassmon is the new Government Affairs Director and CARET ED.
2. Issues from SAAS Board meeting –
   • 2026 meeting will be in Louisville, KY
   • 1200 registered this year, which is another increase, 60% were students
   • Current size is a good fit for SAAS
   • Mark is transitioning out as SAAS Executive Director and Marcy Fisher, LSU business officer, will be taking that role
   • AV costs have greatly increased, some groups are using their own equipment instead of renting from hotel, but logistics have to be worked out first
3. Administrative Heads Section Meeting in November, 2024 –
   • All items in this meeting were covered in Wendy’s presentation earlier
4. AgInnovation and Extension Strategic Plans – Gary Thompson and Rich Bonanno
   • AgInnovation
     • Started a couple years ago with the desire to be more strategic with planning and communications
     • Need to be thinking of impacts on society’s needs
     • Serious planning over the past year
     • Workshop in Chicago helped narrow down the plan to three pillars
       • Sustainable food systems
       • Climate solutions
       • Water resilience
     • Formed working groups around each pillar to develop outcomes and quantitative goals, plus the consequences of no action
     • Presented the plan at BAA Leadership Meeting (Joint COPS), which lead to discussion about integrating with Extension
     • May combine climate and water pillars into one, Resilient Lands
     • Document is still evolving
   • Extension
     • Plan is an outline of what we want to accomplish
     • Both documents will be useful for next push after RFA and for next Farm Bill in 2028-29
     • Extension pillars are:
       • Community and Workforce Development
       • 4H and Positive Youth Development
       • Nutrition and Health
     • Working to combine these with research
     • Working with Lewis-Burke on how to full it out and determine new resources needed.
5. Mini Land-grant Conference Update – Eric Young
   • See the overall conference schedule
   • We’ll have three two hour plenary sessions from 8:00 to 10:00 am each morning
   • The tour will be part of the conference on Wednesday afternoon and included in registration
   • The S-AHS will meet separately and in different joint sessions with CARET, SAAESD, and ASRED
   • One of our sessions with CARET will include some ag communicators
6. S-AHS Secretary Election –
   • Olga Bolden-Tiller (Tuskegee) has agreed to be nominated for Secretary.
   • No additional nominations from the floor, Dr. Bolden-Tiller was elected unanimously.
   • After this meeting, Deacue Fields will become Chair and Keith Carver Chair-elect; they will also be our representatives on the national AHS Executive Committee.
7. Other Agenda Items
   • Eric Young’s current 2-year contract as Executive Director with University of Arkansas ends June 30.
   • The 1862 AHS in attendance approved going ahead with another 2-year contract, although Eric indicated he may retire after one more year.
8. Institutional updates – All
   • Institutional updates that were submitted