| 1 |
Stop trying to be all things to all people. We are trying to deliver programs in too many program areas. ANR and 4-H bring in most of our support base and money. The other programs do not contribute their fair share and burden and weaken our department.
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| 2 |
-address current issues that impact Ohio. This includes the economy, education, environment and health. Be focused and show actual outcomes or impacts. Use available technology to leverage our delivery and organizational structure.
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| 3 |
More visionary leadership and improved communication among county Extension employees.
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| 4 |
more support to all employees like support staff not just Educators and Program Assistants
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| 5 |
Marketing through inner and outer ring suburbs in populated urban areas.
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| 6 |
Our work is relevant to the clients we serve. Every county is different. If Extension is to survive the University needs to recognize this and help us develop a strong presence in our own communities. Once I was looking for an "OSU Extension Logo" sign at an OSU Store at the University. It wasn't available and no one working there had ever heard of OSU Extension.
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| 7 |
Having competent staff and enough people to do the workload.
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| 8 |
We need to reexamine who are making the decisions in relation to the direction of extension. The successes of the past were gained by the direct contact our administrators had with the people who get things done. Now we seem to see that our direction comes from D.C. instead of the people. Also we need to cut the duplication of efforts that are provided by other agencies. Surly the powers to be could sit down with each other and get this figured out. Next get rid of the class system that has been developed by administration. Rank by degree sure doesn't reflect the ability to teach and serve. Last of all this is not a 4H club so don't run it as such. There is so much potential to team with other area's of service in Ohio that we can be much more effective and efficient if we drop the turf protection and county borders and serve the people not the politicians. The people contacts are our political power.
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| 9 |
Equity
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| 10 |
We need to continue to assess the emerging needs of Ohio citizens and emphasize program development and delivery of key programs statewide.
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| 11 |
Better needs assessment; more effort to break away from traditional programming and delivery systems to invest time, talent, and energy in more relevant programming and delivery.
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| 12 |
marketing to the non-Extension community
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| 13 |
New performance standards.
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| 14 |
We are chasing grant money now more that in the past. That is OK if we are working on issues that are important to clientele and finding grants to move client relevant programs forward.
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| 15 |
In our rush for new audience/stakeholders we are leaving traditional stakeholders.
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| 16 |
We need to make sure that our programs are reaching all the public in our counties so that they may take advantage of the services and programs that we offer.
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| 17 |
Methods of delivering information to the public needs to be revamped. Fact sheets are going to be seen as outdated by individuals under 30 or even 40 years old. Blogs, e-mails, podcasts, educational DVD's are more relevant in today's society. The presentation of our information also needs to be considered - individuals are more likely to take the time to look at something if it is aesthetically appealing to them. Black and white copies with cartoon clip art sometimes does not get the job done in this respect.
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| 18 |
(1) Stick with a plan for more than a few months. The last thing we need is another worthless "re-organization".
(2) Look back at Extension's vision and mission statements; maybe putting science as the central focal point of our mission would be useful. Perhaps re-establishing some visibility to agriculture being our fundamental reason for existence (the hill worth dying for) would be a step in the right direction.
It seems to me that OSU-Extension acts like an organization in search of a clientele - any clientele - and in the process behaves at times like the ladies working in the oldest profession, standing on a corner in downtown Columbus... In the end, we seem to be willing to do anything for a dollar, even things that we shouldn’t even be considering. Maybe we would be much more successful as a small organization doing the right things, as opposed to the current large, half-broken organization doing things we are just not very good at.
Extension was NOT created to establish a large parallel system of "educators". At its core, Extension was created to be an integrator of scientific knowledge in agriculture – a knowledge transfer arm for all the agricultural research that was being conducted by the State Agricultural Experiment Stations. How we drifted so far from this core mission is shocking to me. The fact that one question in the survey read (from strongly disagree to strongly agree) “The non-agriculture public is aware of OSU’s Extension potential” is very symptomatic if the ill-conceived assumptions that (1) we should care about that, and (2) that in fact we do have potential (something) for this segment of the population. Likewise, the fact that OSUE’s strategic plan was developed in its own parallel universe without any significant dovetailing with the strategic plans of the college’s three other divisions (research, teaching, international) is also very telling of the depth and seriousness of the disease. I don’t know whether the cancer is curable or whether we should just kill the beast and move on.
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| 19 |
better promotions
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| 20 |
funding support, secretarial support,
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| 21 |
more funding
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| 22 |
Continual updates from Specialists in a variety of areas.
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| 23 |
People
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| 24 |
Needs assesment to explore how we can more effectively meet the changing needs of a 21st century audience.
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| 25 |
we need to be more focused on all levels. The state and counties have a very different idea of what our work is all about. get on the same page.
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