From 1202 Symons for March 2013

I want to use this March 2013 edition of Newsline to write about the College’s recent interaction with the Provost. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to take every opportunity to help to build higher levels of understanding about UME with the administration of the University.

Dr. Mary Ann Rankin, Senior Vice President and Provost, was invited by Dean Wei and came to our monthly AGNR College “Chairs Meeting” held on February 20. The purpose was to provide a briefing on the breadth, relevance and forward look of the College. Each Department Chair and each Associate Dean had 3-5 minutes to present their most salient information. The Department Chairs went first; I have to say the Chairs presented such a high and intensive quality briefing that every faculty and staff member should have access to it. There was then a discussion borne from few questions posed by the Chairs to the Provost about the future of the College and University. During that discussion, Dr. Rankin spoke of her positions and career at the University of Texas and how that experience and her skills would help the University of Maryland prosper. She also spoke freely of her relationship with Texas A&M, in particular her admiration of Cooperative Extension and its outreach capacity to the people and communities of Texas. It was a perfect segue to my presentation about UME which was next on the agenda.

I began by saying that UME’s mission is undertaken by roughly 500 faculty and staff in Maryland “…providing accessible, unbiased expert knowledge that people can use to improve their economic stability, their quality of life and community, and the environment in which they live.” I showed the four UME Impact Areas and their seven Impact Teams. For each of the Impact Teams for 2012, I showed the cumulative number of presentations and the number of participants, e.g. AGNR Profitability with 8,850 presentations to 213,800 participants and Community Leadership and Civic Engagement with 3,552 presentations to 31,998 participants. While not perfect and in need of some refinement, these numbers express to the Provost the kind of client base and outreach network UME carries in true delivery of the quotation at beginning of this paragraph. The Provost has never seen outreach numbers like these; in fact the Department Chairs have not either. UME is the face of the University of Maryland across the state.

I closed by citing a few of the benchmarks of UME in transformation: fully moving into the AED structure, maturation of the Program Clusters, advancing UME Criteria for the APT process, continuing to build-out Impact Teams and Signature Programs, being full accountable to the public, focusing on fewer things and doing them better, and arriving at one universal branding and marketing application for the state. My last statement was that we want UME and the University of Maryland to “be the 21st Century Land Grant University.”