Southern Administrative Heads

Southern Mini Land-grant
TAMU, College Station, TX
May 16 – 19, 2022

Minutes

View overall Mini Land-grant schedule

Monday, May 16

1. Optional tour, PVAMU and TAMU Campuses (tour schedule)

Tuesday, May 17

S-AHS Separate Session – Keith Belli, Chair, Southern AHS

Participants –

1. Report from March AHS Meeting – Scott Angle, Chair, Administrative Heads Section
   1. Meeting was only ½ hour, need input on how long this meeting should be
   2. Putting together a small committee to review AHS By-laws for updates, corrections, and changes
   3. BAA vote to make Communications and Marketing Committee a standing committee of the Policy Board passed by a good majority
      1. CMC will be reconstituted to include more communicators and marketers
      2. Cost of the CMC will be rolled into the general BAA assessment
   4. How should BAA Sections communicate with Lewis-Burke Associates?
      1. Doug Steele is first and primary contact for LBA and for CGA
2. Regional Data Sharing Initiative, proposed metrics definitions – Keith Belli (handout)
   1. Salary survey has been done since 2002
   2. S-NAUFRP has done data sharing for a long time and only distributed results to participants
   3. Data already collected should be inserted in this survey
   4. Data will help with benchmarking and marketing
   5. Should include an org chart with the results to put data in context of college structure
   6. Include youth data in Extension contacts
   7. Include grants & contracts for Extension
   8. Total county support for Extension as % of budget
   9. Value of survey will be in seeing who is successful in certain areas so you can ask why
   10. Data will help defend the match for capacity funds
   11. Should split out allocations from state, county, federal, and private sources
   12. Hopefully the 1890’s will participate also, might help them get state match
   13. FTE’s for academics
   14. Total research expenditures under the AES and from college in general
   15. May want to include some metrics related to facilities; repair, renovation, and new expenditures
   16. Volunteer hours for Extension
   17. Royalties, licenses, sales of goods, etc should be included
   18. Goals of data sharing are primarily benchmarking and marketing
   19. Need to start simple, only most useful metrics
   20. Focus on budgets and expenditures
3. Cost management of input supplies (fuel, seed, feed, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, etc) in a time of inflation and supply chain disruptions, for our Agricultural Experiment Station operations and assisting our producers to do the same – Majed El-Dweik and Luke Laborde
   1. Fuel is big problem, can afford to buy it in bulk but can’t store it
   2. Big backlog on materials, parts, and IT equipment
   3. Another problem is increasing cost of construction during building
   4. Helps to build in phases so it’s easier to cut out later phases if needed
   5. VA Tech has a large poultry projects underway that is being done in 6 phases, 1-4 are funded and will go to state for 4 & 5
   6. Labor costs are also a problem and raising lowest wages causes salary compression
      1. Causes more turnover
      2. Helps to give preemptive raises and improve benefits
      3. Private industry is hiring our people
      4. Using contracts with promotion opportunities can help
      5. Starting to look at using flex and remote work time
      6. Have to start letting staff work remotely in certain positions
4. Nomination for Southern AHS Secretary – Keith Belli
   1. After winter meeting at SAAS, Nick Place will become Chair and Keith Coble Chair-elect
   2. Need to nominate a Secretary, who will be voted on at the winter meeting
   3. Majed El-Dweik, Lincoln University, agreed to be nominated for Secretary

S-AHS and S-CARET Joint Session – Keith Belli and Jim Handley, Chair, S-CARET

Participants –

1. NIFA Update – Kevin Kephart, USDA-NIFA (PowerPoint)
2. Budget and Advocacy Update – Bridget Krieger, Lewis-Burke Associates (Handout and PowerPoint)
   1. Part of budget request will be $365M for infrastructure
   2. Probably won’t get this funding, but have to start asking somewhere
   3. Staff do not want to add any new funding to the Farm Bill
3. APLU Update – Doug Steele, APLU-AFNR
   1. New APLU President is Mark Becker from GA State, a non-Land-grant
   2. ANRS staff have returned to office 3 days/week
   3. If visiting APLU, please give at least a one day notice
   4. Annual meeting will be in Denver in November
   5. BAA By-laws change to make CMC a standing committee passed
   6. Joint COPs sill be in person in DC July 19-21

S-AHS Separate Session – Keith Belli

Participants –

1. Follow up from CARET/AHS joint session – Keith Belli
   1. To what extent are we using our commodity and other stakeholder groups for advocacy
   2. We’ve done a support letter that had almost 400 signatures, so it’s possible to do this for the right issue or budget request
2. Artificial Intelligence; ex. machine Learning, robotics, unmanned systems, impacts on academia & industry, etc. – Binayak Mohanty, Biological & Agricultural Engineering, TAMU, and Scott Angle (PowerPoint)
   1. Need to educate students across disciplines so they understand interactions
   2. How can we ensure that the wealthy industry sectors aren’t the only ones with access to AI products?
   3. One problem is that the data is scattered in many different databases, many in the private sector that are not accessible
   4. How far are we from being able to generate a management plan with AI?
      1. Have to be able to translate output into language producers understand
   5. Ownership of data can be a problem but not if you use compiled data as the product
   6. UFL will require all students to take one AI course for graduation
3. Achieving an effective unified ask through Sections’ collaboration and coordination – Tom Coon
   1. BAA has 115 institutions that are very diverse
   2. Hard to pull everyone together
   3. This year BAC asked all interest groups for their top priority and used that to put together the budget request, but one was not happy with the outcome
   4. It doesn’t seem like anything we do has an impact on NIFA’s budget, except AFRI
   5. Maybe we should ask for an increase for a specific issue or problem, let NIFA decide which lines it should go to , and then report to Congress what we did with the funds
4. Multi institution partnerships that involve shared faculty, facilities, and/or programs – Nancy Cox (handout)
   1. UKY has a lot of collaborations with KY State through Extension, but not much in research
   2. AR has a poultry science academic program that’s a 3+1 with Pine Bluff
   3. MS and GA have a program similar to AR
   4. OK is looking at having more 5 year programs that end in Master’s, 3 + 2 or 4+ 1, at Langston then Oklahoma Sate
   5. TX has an Extension collaboration that evolved into Extension and Research
   6. Joint distance education collaborations should be easier to set up now
   7. Need a more directed effort to involve 1890 faculty in more multistate projects
   8. UAR and Pine Bluff are involved in “clean sweet potato” network with 1862 institutions
   9. Need more collaborations in academic area, but tuition is a barrier
   10. May be easier to share online courses
5. Challenges and successes of private fundraising; particularly for funding facilities – Nick Place
   1. Deferred maintenance inventory at University of Georgia lead to efforts to increase private funds
   2. Big Poultry industries are not giving
   3. Many ag industries are not used to doing philanthropy
   4. A lot of clienteles do not have very deep pockets
   5. Trying to create a culture of philanthropy by talking about it and encouraging giving
   6. Instituted a non-endowed scholarship program where contributors can give $1000, $4000, or $10,000 for 4 years
   7. One key is to find out what a potential donor is interested in supporting
   8. An extreme solution would be to sell all IP for 10 years from a program to a company.
6. Future Meetings
   1. 2023  Winter S-AHS meeting – during SAAS in Oklahoma City, Monday, Feb 6, 11:00 – 3:00
   2. 2023 Summer S-AHS/CARET meeting – UTK and TN State host, late July or early August
   3. 2024 Summer S-AHS/CARET meeting – UKY and KY State host, late July or early August
   4. 2025 Southern Mini Land-grant – UAK and Pine Bluff host, late spring or early summer

Wednesday, May 18

All Groups Joint Sessions (Agenda and PowerPoints)

Welcome to Texas – TAMU and PVAMU Video

Wednesday, 8:00 AM – Colleges of Agriculture Roles in Promoting Human Health

The human health and nutrition sector significantly impacts both the social and economic condition of individuals, families, communitites and states. This is borne out to even the casual observer when considering factors such as vaccine/no vaccine issues and costs to individuals, the health care system and to state budgets due to poor nutrition and chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes, as well as costs to personal quality of life.

This session includes a broad overview of the status and impacts of human health and nutrition and how Land-Grant university (LGU) food and agriculture programs in research, teaching and Extension can contribute more effectively to potential solutions.

Wednesday, 10:30 AM – Who is our Audience? How is it Changing? How Do we Adapt?

Agriculture faces the challenge and opportunity of adapting to population redistribution, shifts in the general population and population subgroups, including the changing demographics of farm operators in regard to women, race/ethnicity (Hispanic, Black, Asian, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander) and non-Hispanic White men. The food and agriculture system is viewed as a major contributor to community prosperity (economic, social and environmental). This dynamic is being influenced by population redistribution and changes in composition, including cultural diversity. However, this dynamic can be addressed by developing innovative, science-based and data-driven, innovative Extension and outreach programs. Emphasis will be placed on how these dynamics might influence how the Land-grant system addresses agrifood syste development needs across the rural-urban continuum.

To focus the efforts of the Southern region, this session will engage a panel of experts addressing a broad range of perspectives and implications related to population change. Further, this session will be just as focused on how we do business (best practices for providing the content) as it is on what we do (program content).

For example, some questions that will be addressed include, but are not limited to:

• How does population change, including shifts in population subgroups, affect the food and agriculture system?
• How do people consume information/education of the type that we put out from Land-grant universities?
• What changes are needed given the population changes, and the tools/techniques/technologies needed?

Wednesday, 1:00 PM – Recruitment & Retention of Diverse Faculty & Staff

This session will provide participants with demographic trends of student enrollment and degree completion in agriculture, human science, and natural resources disciplines in the Southern region; along with an overview of current faculty demographics in Southern college of agriculture. It will allow participants time to discuss how demographic changes may affect the future of each mission area and what collaborate actions might diversify disciplines or faculty/staff that are not currently racially, ethnically, or gender diverse.

Wednesday, 3:00 PM – Addressing the Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture & Forestry in the Southern Region

As we respond to the effects of climate change, the agricultural and forestry sectors in the South will face some of the biggest challenges, and these challenges will also affect rural and urban communities throughout the region. The diverse geographic and climatic characteristics of the southern region, coupled with its varied animal and crop production systems, vast coastal areas, and working forests, require innovatibe strategies to discover, adopt, and communicate solutions to the changing climate.

This session invites a panel of expert to dicuss some key issues in order to better understand the challenges we face as a region and how regional priorities affect the national agenda.

Challenge statements:

• How is climate change affecting agriculture and forestry in the Southern Region?
• What are effective strategies to successfully address climate change issues in the South?
• Can regional priorities influence the national agenda?

Thursday, May 19

S-AHS and S-CARET Joint Session – Jim Handley and Keith Belli

Participants –

1. Open discussion on S-AHS/S-CARET interactions and advocacy strategy – All
   1. A Briefing booklet from the AHS would be helpful to CARET to reference with some key
   2. Statistics & info about the institution
   3. But what’s most important is to understand what is needed and why
   4. Talk about problems not programs
   5. Politicians have only reelection in mind, so need to talk about their voters needs
   6.  Staffers need a list of experts in key programmatic areas
   7. Every institution that has a government affairs person and CARET delegates should interact with them as much as possible
   8. CARET can help connect with other key stakeholders
   9. Need to interact with urban stakeholders who still don’t know us
   10. When CARET is together, it would be helpful to have Lewis-Burke go through House and Senate and talk about most important people and what they are interested in
   11. Caron could also do this for CARET
   12. Still need to tell our story better to key audiences, but need help development common message and communicate it
   13. So far we haven’t been able to agree on one message
   14. With a new advocacy group, how do we insure each institution is heard
   15. If we can agree on one message, CARET will need to make it personal for their state or institution
   16. Now there are a lot of people who don’t believe in science, we need to work on changing that, particularly with Congress
   17. How do we keep everyone on board but still have different interest groups advocate for their funds
   18. It would be valuable to have this conversation at the Joint Cops Meeting
   19. Action Items
       1. CARET & LBA together
       2. Common Message conversation nationally
       3. CARET with CMC on strategic communication
   20. PVAMU has a legislative toolkit for agents when they interest with legislators, primarily targeted at communicating impacts
   21. Marketing is not just putting out stories about accomplishments, need to have a targeted purpose, know the audience and have a consistent message
   22. Number one website visited at Clemson is the home and garden site
   23. Need to include youth audience in marketing since they are future decision makers
   24. Need a variety of marketing channels
   25. CMC and APLU marketing specialist are starting to work on an action plan for marketing system
   26. Need to use message that we are the “people’s” university system

Adjourned at 10:00 am