Please join me in welcoming Charlene Saltz, the new Assistant Agent in Water & Natural Resources. She will be located in our Maricopa County office and her first day was yesterday, June 12.
Ruth Carter recently received three grants to support her 4-H Youth Development work in Maricopa County. The Arizona Department of Health Service awarded $114,630 for the Teen Interactive Theater Education Program, the City of Phoenix Block Watch awarded $9,991 for the Safe & Smart After-School Program, and Communities in Schools awarded $1,000 for a summer learning program. Congratulations, Ruth!
Congratulations to George Frisvold and Anite Fonte (College of Education) for their successful proposal, "The Cost and Availability of Healthier Foods for the Pascua Yaqui Pueblo and the Old Nogales Highway Colonia: Community Baselines and Benefits of Mobile Markets." The $30,000 grant comes from the USDA-funded American Indian Small Grants Research Program administered by the University of Arizona American Indian Studies Program & The Native Peoples Technical Assistance Office. The project will estimate the costs of healthier food purchases in these two communities. Findings will be shared with those interested in the San Xavier District of the Tohono O'odham Nation. The project will also estimate how Tucson Community Food Bank's mobile markets reduce food costs, increase the availability of healthier items, or both near the two study sites.
In conjunction with the University of Arkansas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State University, the Southern Association of Agricultural Experiment Station Directors and CSREES, the WAAESD is pleased to announce the western-most Grantsmanship Workshop to be held in Grapevine TX (Dallas) on October 17-18. See http://aaes.uark.edu/csrees/ for more information.
The Arizona Pest Management Center Summit was held at the Maricopa Agricultural Center last week. This workshop brought together 35 CALS faculty and staff members with 74 diverse stakeholders from urban, agricultural and natural resource sectors, in a forum to identify pest management programming needs and priorities, and to discuss the role of the Arizona Pest Management Center (APMC) in helping to address these challenges. The meeting included breakout sessions focused on agricultural IPM, urban horticulture, noxious and invasive weeds and school IPM. The priorities identified in the focus sessions will be made available in a proceedings document to be posted on the Arizona Crop Information Site (ACIS) in the near future. The meeting was sponsored through a CALS Statewide Initiative grant for the Arizona Pest Management Center and by the Cross-Commodity Research and Outreach Program working group. For more information, contact Al Fournier .
Attention Extension Faculty: As part of this year's agenda there will be a section for Applied Research Reports. The subcommittee is soliciting your input. What are the latest research areas you want to know about in your day-to-day job? From your input, several fifteen minute research updates will be presented at the 2006 Faculty Conference in August. Please e-mail Everett Rhodes by June 21.
Upcoming Events & Reminders:
As most of you know, this year's CALS Faculty Conference, Fulfilling the Land Grant Vision, is scheduled from August 15-17 at the Westward Look Resort . You can submit poster and presentation proposals and register on-line at: http://cals.arizona.edu/registration/2006FC/ . Deadlines are: July 7 - Working Group Presentation Sessions/Applied Research Report Sessions (space is limited), July 14 - Conference Registration, and July 21 - Poster Exhibit. Dr. Robert Shelton, the University of Arizona's incoming President, will be our keynote speaker. There will be a panel discussion on changes in outreach at the University of Arizona, highlights of state working group activities, the latest research findings from faculty, as well as panel presentations and discussion on tailoring the Cooperative Extension message to your audiences. Other features include the annual poster session, working group meetings, awards luncheon, golf and fitness programs, and plenty of networking opportunities.
Public policy issues related to the 21st Century food system is the focus of the Farm Foundation's National Public Policy Education Conference, Sept. 17-19, 2006, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The conference, “Consequences of the 21st Century Food System,” will include sessions on ethics, economic development, community impacts, immigration and labor, food safety, nutrition issues and federal agricultural policies related to the vertical integration of our US food system. The audience includes university/extension educators, researchers, agriculture and family/consumer policy, public issues educators and many more. A call for a poster session is now online and is due July 14. Conference and poster session information is located at http://farmfoundation.org/nppecindex.htm .