Extension Update: August 2003 Archives

Gov. Craig Benson recently appointed Bruce Clement to the state's 15-member Connecticut River Valley Resource Commission. Bruce and his wife Ellen own a grass-based sheep farm in Westmoreland, where they produce and sell lamb, wool blankets, and sheep milk. He is a trustee of the Eastern States Exposition, past member and chair of the Westmoreland Zoning Board of Adjustment, and past member and secretary of the Cheshire County Conservation District. He served as director and officer of numerous organizations, including NOFA, the Cheshire Fair Association, the New England Sheep and Wool Growers Association, and national president of the Continental Dorset Club (a livestock breed registry).

Bruce states, "The Connecticut River and its watershed are very important natural resources for New Hampshire. The Joint Commission has a long and impressive record of providing leadership to strengthen the integrity of the watershed. I am honored to have been named to serve on the Commission and look forward to helping to accomplish its goals." Congratulations Bruce!

A letter will soon be going out to all County and State Advisory Council members updating them on the overall budget situation for UNH Cooperative Extension. The letter refers to the Deficit Reduction Strategies as outlined in the March 21 Biweekly Update at http://www.ceinfo.unh.edu/cragin/common/documents/bw32103.htm

If you have any concerns or questions from Advisory Council members, please direct them to Paul Bonaparte-Krogh or other members of the leadership team.

The inservice sign-up deadline is today, so take time to register at http://cecf1.unh.edu/inserv2/signup/inserv_signup_home.cfm.

Based on the results of the ITDE Training Needs Assessment Survey, ITDE classes aren't scheduled through the Inservice Calendar this year. Training classes are available, as needed, to groups of staff members with a common need. Details of the plan are found at http://ceinfo.unh.edu/cragin/common/documents/ITDEN703.htm#TO_One .

If you have any questions or concerns about Inservice sign-up, contact Bob Edmonds or Deb Russell.

This Biweekly Update feature describes resources available through the UNH Library including a wide variety of databases and electronic journals directly related to our programs. You can access the online resources featured below:

http://www.library.unh.edu/tools/ (master list of all databases)
http://www.library.unh.edu/onlinejournals/ (master list of online journals)
http://grinnell.unh.edu/digibio.html (list of COLSA oriented resources)
http://library.unh.edu/ (online catalog for UNH Dimond Library and branches)

This final installment focuses, by request, on steps to take in finding full text articles in electronic journals. First, search for the journal title in the online library catalog (address above) by title. Look for a listing that has "online" after the title: Nature online, for example. In the record for that entry, click on the underlined blue link to the publisher's or vendor's website. Follow the directions from there.

Each journal publisher seems to be at a different stage in the evolution of electronic journals. Many require the Library sign a site license setting the price of online access to full text and stating the arrangements made by the Library to limit access to authorized users. The availability of electronic journals changes every day.

Since the library only subscribes to a limited number of electronic journals and, sometimes, has access as part of a large database, or collection, of full text from a vendor, you can also check the journal title in the "master list" given above. A third option includes searching for the title using Google to find the publisher's or learned society's website. In some cases, full text is available free, or as part of the open source movement. Please send questions, comments and suggestions to David Lane, Biological Sciences Librarian, Biological Sciences Library, Kendall Hall, UNH or send email to david.lane@unh.edu.

Everyone knows the benefits of eating fresh vegetables, but for some, fresh vegetables are a costly extravagance. Carroll County Master Gardener Jory Sivin and Extension Agricultural Resources Educator Tina Savage came up with a plan to supply surplus seasonal vegetables to people who may not otherwise have access to them.

The Veggie Volunteer Program (VVP) began after a visit to the Sherman Farm in East Conway. The Sherman's' operate a large, year-round farm stand, where they market milk from their 80 cow dairy, home-raised beef and pork, and 50 acres of vegetables. With 50 acres, there's bound to be some extra, more lettuce than the farm stand can sell, summer squash a bit beyond its prime, and tomatoes that would spoil on the vine unless picked.

Sherman Farm generously offered this nutritious surplus to food pantries, senior centers and other organizations in the past, but the people who run these organizations had no way to harvest, transport or store the produce. That's where UNH Master Gardener Jory Sivin comes in.

Sivin has organized a system where volunteers from youth groups, schools, church groups and the private sector get together at the Sherman farm, harvest, wash, package and transport the vegetables to food pantries, senior centers and a local hospital. The goal of the VVP is "to create and sustain a community based program whereby surplus garden produce is picked and collected directly from the farm and then distributed to local food pantries and kitchens."

Everybody wins with VVP. The farmers finally realized their long-time goal of getting excess produce from their land to people who couldn't afford it otherwise. The VVP volunteers get to serve their community, learn about agriculture with a hands-on approach, meet new people, make new friends, have fun outdoors and earn credit toward club badges and community service requirements. Because organizations receive the farm-fresh vegetables free, they can redirect scarce funds to other needs. In one week, organizations that received the free produce reported serving fresh, local vegetables to more than 1,300 people!

Planning for this season's Veggie Volunteer Program began late last fall, when Sivin and Savage, with help from Extension Program Associate, Food and Nutrition, Joanne Knowlton, contacted food pantries to see if they could accept fresh produce and developed a plan for recruiting volunteers. Depending on the success of this year's program, the project may expand next year to include other farms.

Legislators will vote on the budget on September 4. See the following link for an article regarding today's meeting http://www4.fosters.com/News2003/August2003/August_07/News/reg_nh_0807n.asp. The House and Senate Joint Budget Advisory Group continue to move in the direction of level funding for USNH. If the University receives level funding, the projected budget deficit for Cooperative Extension will be $780,000. This deficit takes into account a reduction in revenues as well as an increase in fixed expenses. The fringe benefit rate in FY 04 has risen to 40% of salary and projected salary increases are budgeted at 3.5%. UNH traditionally covered these increases through the general fund. With cuts to the University, these costs cannot be sustained. On a positive note, UNH has extended tuition reallocation to Cooperative Extension. This will be the first time a non-academic department receives direct tuition support due to the proposed 6.8% student tuition increase. Without this additional funding, our deficit would exceed one million dollars.

In addition to the above, Federal Smith-Lever appropriations have been level funded for ten years. Counties have also not been asked to increase their level of county educator salary support since 1988. As 70% of our total budget is personnel related, with minimal flexibility in support budgets, we have begun the process of offering early retirements for employees in Civil Service Retirement, as well as separation incentives. It is our hope that we begin to offer early retirements by October 1, 2003. If you have questions regarding early retirement or salary separation incentives please get in touch with Jim immediately.

We will be communicating the financial situation to all our County Advisory Councils and will share that letter with all of you in the August 22 Biweekly Update.

External funding is an increasingly important revenue source for Cooperative Extension (CE). As traditional sources of funding become less available, we must seek more diverse funding such as grants, contracts and private gifts. I encourage all Extension Educators to seek these new sources of revenue to support programs of high organizational priority. Please note the attached UNH Cooperative Extension procedures for securing grants, contracts and gifts.

This Biweekly Update feature describes resources available through the UNH Library including a wide variety of databases and electronic journals directly related to our programs. You can access the on-line resources featured below:

http://www.library.unh.edu/tools/ (master list of all databases)
http://www.library.unh.edu/onlinejournals/ (master list of online journals)
http://grinnell.unh.edu/digibio.html (list of COLSA oriented resources)
http://library.unh.edu/ (online catalog for UNH Dimond Library and branches)

This installment focuses on other databases you might be interested in that don't cover the specific subjects of agriculture and the sciences. Examples are ERIC, which covers the educational literature at all grade levels, PsycINFO (formerly PsycLit,) which covers the literature of psychology, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature,) which covers management of health services organizations and nursing, Clinical Pharmacology, which covers prescription drugs and various supplements, and Sociological Abstracts (formerly Sociofile,) which covers sociology. All these databases and several others are in a collection with some full text articles provided by EBSCO, a vendor of online services, and called collectively EBSCOHost. You'll find them listed individually and collectively. In the next and final installment, by request I will list the steps to take in finding full text articles in electronic journals.

Please send questions, comments and suggestions to David Lane, Biological Sciences Librarian, Biological Sciences Library, Kendall Hall, UNH or send email to david.lane@unh.edu .

Have Community Profiles reached their saturation point? Is there a need for a new initiative that helps communities address emerging needs and issues? The answer is both yes and no. While the demand for traditional Community Profiles has declined somewhat, it remains a high-impact program with widespread support. Communities, however, are increasingly seeking help with public dialogues around specific issues. To accommodate these requests, the Strengthening New Hampshire Communities Initiative (SNHC) is launching a new wave of community facilitations called Thematic Profiles.

Over the past few years, the mainstay of the Strengthening New Hampshire Communities Initiative (SNHC) was the Community Profiles program. The Community Profile is a process that helps communities take stock of where they are today and develop an action plan for how they want to operate in the future. The two-day process draws on the collective wisdom of community participants to affirm strengths, meet challenges through collaboration, and manage change. To date, nearly one-third of New Hampshire communities have undergone the Community Profiles process. Though there are still requests from new communities, there is an increasing demand for community-level public dialogues around focused issues, such as recreation, land use, tourism development, natural resources, youth-at-risk, economic development, health and well-being, and arts and culture

To address these demands, Thematic Profiles is a new initiative of SNHC to assist communities and organizations to develop, organize, and facilitate public dialogues around a variety of topic areas. These public dialogues are tailored to the specific needs of the community or organization. So far, Thematic Profiles' requests are coming directly from community leaders or from Extension County staff working with particular organizations or communities.

Examples of Thematic Profiles the SNHC staff and other Extension staff helped to organize and facilitate include:

* Public forums for the Office of State Planning to collect input for the State Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP)
* Londonderry Recreation Plan Forum
* Community forums for the Belknap County Council on Youth and Families
* Community Forest Planning Forum
* Londonderry Master Plan Public Input Forum
* Healthy Kids Forum, Carroll County (upcoming)
* Community Planning Forums around Homeland Security (upcoming)
* Center for Integrative Regional Problem Solving Symposium (upcoming)