Excellence in Collaboration and Partnerships Award
The Excellence in Collaboration and Partnerships Award recognizes individuals or teams for their efforts to build effective collaborations within Extension or with partner organizations throughout the state including with academic departments within the University System of New Hampshire. Recipients have leveraged partnerships to develop impactful programs and opportunities that engage the public and strengthen Extension’s outreach.
The 2024 recipient of the Excellence in Collaboration and Partnerships Award is economic development program team leader Charlie French.
Over this past year, French has worked tirelessly to provide leadership in development of a five-year plan to connect New Hampshire residents statewide with access to high-speed internet, digital devices, training and the services and resources made possible through digital technologies. French's leadership, relationships and collaborations enabled the community and economic development program to secure a $510,000 grant from the New Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs to lead this statewide effort.
Under his leadership, the Extension team worked in partnership with the National Collaborative for Digital Equity and METRO’s Digital Equity Research Center to engage stakeholders in providing input to drive development of the plan. Over 1,000 stakeholders representing digital equity partners and constituents of covered populations engaged with the project through 92 meetings such as focus groups, sector summits, statewide advisory council meetings, regional digital equity coalition meetings and key informant interviews.
A statewide survey was completed by over 3,500 individuals representing diverse populations to help the team understand stakeholder needs, challenges and opportunities. The goal of this plan is to ensure that individuals, regardless of their socioeconomic status, geographical location or other demographic factors, have access to and opportunities for meaningful participation in the digital world. This plan serves all individuals living in New Hampshire, as it seeks to foster economic, health, educational and civic equity, housing inclusion and access to a host of other essential services.
Charlie French and Jada Lindblom
Maynard and Audrey Heckel Extension Fellowship
The Maynard and Audrey Heckel Extension Fellowship recognizes Extension educators for exemplary program accomplishments achieved through innovative and creative approaches to meeting educational needs of New Hampshire citizens in a manner that engages faculty beyond traditional disciplines or demonstrates strong local leadership in support of Extension programs.
The recipient of the 2024 Maynard and Audrey Heckel Extension Fellowship is Jada Lindblom for her work in forming the “Developing Interconnections for Regional Trails” (DIRT) collaborative. This is a CoRE funded initiative, focuses on building regional capacity for trail development and stewardship through collaboration, partnerships and education. The group aims to generate understandings of the challenges and opportunities that community-based recreational trail organizations face in developing and improving trails and regional trail networks. The group has produced several blogs, webinars and workshops and has engaged with community leaders, UNH students and faculty, as well as 4-H high school youth.
Lindblom led this effort and has been joined by Michael Polizzotti, Shannon Rogers, Emma Tutein, Patricia Prescott and Rachel Carrow in supporting the collaborative.
Exceeding at Extension Award
The Exceeding at Extension Award recognizes individuals whose creative and innovative approaches spark admiration and inspire others — colleagues who have used creative approaches or piloted new frameworks that have made a difference in meeting key areas of need such as diversity/inclusion, program development, program support, addressing emerging issues and promoting academic engagement. Recipients of this award show a deep sense of commitment to the mission of Extension and are interested in promoting the organization through an excellent work ethic. The 2024 recipient of the Exceeding at Extension Award is youth and family resiliency state specialist Kendra Lewis.
Lewis joined UNH Extension just five years ago, and quickly became a leader within the organization. She stepped into leading one of Extension's newest areas of focus, mental health and wellness, during a time of incredible stress and emerging need — the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lewis leads Extension's Mental Health First Aid USA® program, which reaches over 1100 participants annually and shows impressive evaluation results. For example, in 2023, 89% of participants said they can have a supportive conversation with anyone about mental health or substance use. She has developed new and innovative programs that meet some of New Hampshire's most pressing and emerging needs: opioid misuse, chronic disease, mental health and aging well.
Not only does she lead the development and implementation of this work, but she also publishes research in these areas, successfully pursues grants, teaches UNH courses, serves as an AoE Chair, supervises multiple specialists, serves as the EEC chair and helps the 4-H program in New Hampshire and nationally with evaluation and mental health program development. She served on the UNH faculty senate and helped to lead the UNH Behavioral Health Initiative.
Lewis is currently working to tailor programming to the particular mental health needs of the Hispanic/Latino community and of older adults and is piloting a mindfulness program in Head Start classrooms.
Her programming addresses needs that are complex, growing and have a huge impact on communities. They can be daunting and overwhelming, but she has taken a hardworking, creative, detail-oriented, pragmatic approach to her team leadership and program development, resulting in real impact, and she does this all with a smile, a sense of humor, humility and grace.
Rebecca Dube (left) and Kendra Lewis (right)
Excellence in Support Award
The Excellence in Support Award recognizes individuals and teams for their outstanding performance and service to UNH Extension. Recipients of this award produce quality work and consistently display characteristics valued and appreciated by co-workers. Recipients' commitment to contributing to the Extension mission, purpose, vision and values are displayed through dedication to identifying and meeting needs of the organization, developing and implementing innovative solutions and producing high quality outputs, most often behind the scenes. The 2024 Excellence in Support Award recipient is Hillsborough County administrative assistant Rebecca Dube.
Dube is an integral part of many programs across Extension, but for this award she is recognized specifically for her work in going above and beyond for the Extension Women in Agriculture program.
Behind the scenes of this successful program, Dube provides thorough and careful support, lending to the overall branding, impression and success of not only the Women in Agriculture program, but Extension and the university as a whole. She compiles and distributes program newsletters and consistently creates attractive, easy-to-read materials that engage readers and generate interest in the program.
She has eagerly learned new skills such as audio editing to create the program’s podcast. The engaging podcast series, "Shared Soil," is the result of the hours of work she has put into learning a new editing program, running transcripts and fine-tuning each episode. She contributed greatly to creating the vision, outcomes and focus areas for the podcast and even stepped outside of her comfort zone to be a co-host featured in each episode.
Just as her role in the Women in Agriculture program has grown, she has also played a crucial role in the growth and success of the program. Her critical thinking and problem-solving skills have helped the team pivot in times of uncertainty or in the face of obstacles.
Dube’s dedication to supporting this program is characteristic of the service she provides across all the staff and programs she supports. She is prompt, patient, enthusiastic, eager to learn and brings positive energy and smiles to the job.
Special Recognition: Agricultural Disaster Response
At Extension's annual staff picnic, Amy Loader, interim director for Extension, recognized the outstanding efforts of Jeremy DeLisle who played a key role in identifying crop losses from disaster events and communicated those losses to state and federal agencies for relief funding. Extension's work contributed to the approval of Secretarial Disaster Declarations for impacted counties in the state, which unlocks low-interest emergency loans available through the Farm Service Agency.
Jeremy DeLisle
