The Extension Faculty of the year award is presented annually to an
outstanding faculty nominated by his/her peers and selected by a committee
composed of the elected chair of the County Directors, the elected head of
department heads and school directors, and a former faculty award winner.
Sharon Hoelscher Day was announced as the 2004 Extension Faculty of the Year
at the 2004 Faculty Conference last Tuesday.
Sharon Hoelscher Day has performed at the highest level in her county
faculty position for more than 20 years. This year, however, has been truly
an exceptional year which few faculty in the entire country can ever hope to
achieve. The most obvious achievement is Sharon's election to the highest
office, President of the National Extension Association of Family and
Consumer Sciences, a cumulation of years of leadership and service to her
profession.
In the past, Sharon has served as President, Board Member and Legislative
Chair for the Arizona Association of Family and Consumer Sciences. Sharon
also served as Chair of the Joint Council of Extension Professionals which
represents all of Cooperative Extension's professional associations.
As impressive as Sharon's regional and national achievements are, it is even
more meaningful to consider her state and county contributions. Most
important, Sharon has consistently received the highest rating from her
peers on annual performances.
One of Sharon's strengths is demonstrated in the many statewide team efforts
which have benefitted from her leadership. Examples include the Arizona
Osteoporosis Coalition, Safe Food, Winning Sports Nutrition, DES-TANF Life
Skills, Bone Builders and Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program. She has
partnered with many state agencies to extend the outreach for her programs
including Arizona Department of Health Services, Arizona Nutrition Network
and Arizona Adolescent Health Coalition. A measure of the value of Sharon's
Extension programs is demonstrated in the list of gifts and grants
supporting her focused programs. A total of $980,000 has been awarded for
Sharon's programs over the last four years. She received more than $180,000
this year including the latest gift this year of $129,000 from the Virginia
Piper Foundation.
Sharon pioneered the use of Distance Learning Workshops using the NAU NET
for Food Safety Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) training
across five counties. She demonstrated effective outreach through Occasional
Quantity Cooks workshops across the state training over 450 people in food
safety. She has extended her programs through the development of the Master
Consumer Advisors who are volunteers who spend countless hours answering
phone calls from clientele. One of Sharon's Master Consumer Advisors was
Agriculture and Life Sciences this year.
Promoting Workforce Diversity has been an ongoing priority in Sharon's
programs. She concentrated on serving low-income families in the EFNEP
program by hiring a diverse staff that could best relate to the diverse
low-income audience.
In short, she is one of our best, hardworking talented individual that we
were honored to name Extension Faculty of the Year for 2004 at the Extension
Faculty Conference last week at Ventana Canyon Resort.
As many of you were aware, the 2004 CALS Faculty Conference was held last
week. Due to scheduling conflicts many faculty could not attend. In order to
enable faculty and colleagues the opportunity to view several of the
presentations, the website http://ag.arizona.edu/agnet/conf/ was updated for
your convenience. To view the presentation click on Agenda and then on the
name of the person who made the presentation. In addition, the Planning
Committee and I would like to thank everyone for participating in the
conference. We hope you take the opportunity to view the presentations.
Finally, we need to know if you want to have the Faculty Conferences
annually (yearly) or biannually (every other year). Please email me this
week. Reply to jenstapp@ag.arizona.edu. Do not reply to this list serve.