Katherine Soule was recently recognized for her work in San Luis Obispo as one of the county's Top 20 under 40! Always humble, Katherine says the award is truly a reflection of the hard work, creativity, and innovation of the amazing YFC team members and volunteers that she has the opportunity to work with every day. Congratulations Katherine and team for the difference they've made in the county!
Also making a difference is Ruth Dahlquist-Willard and colleagues. The team submitted comments to the State Water Resources Control Board in December regarding reporting requirements for small-scale diversified farms and socially disadvantaged farmers. Ruth indicates that the newly released revised draft of the order includes most of the revisions recommended by the team (pp 40-41).
The work by Ruth and her team provide a great example of how UC ANR academics contribute to policy across the state and the U.S. that changes lives. Lorrene Ritchie is part of a team that has developed a document that illustrates approaches to documenting how an individual's or team's efforts in the policy arena can be conveyed in merit and promotion packages. The document is still in draft form, but a quick read of it conveys something really valuable to our academics who may be struggling with how to demonstrate policy impacts as well as those who haven't thought about including them because the policies are the result of long-term programming and not an intentional conclusion of a project, as is often the case. It is important to share the policy impacts of our work, even if we never imagined contributing to policy. Equally important is to follow the change in conditions that result from policy implementation. The document isn't available yet but should be for next year's merit and promotion review.
Annual review and merit and promotion packages are due this week. I expect most are putting the finishing touches on their documents, though I suspect a few may have yet to begin. I haven't paid much attention to the Oakland timeline, though I should really look into that before too much longer. Perhaps I will start working on that intermittently with my taxes. This year, the annual review period brings with it a large number of 1-on-1 meetings. While I look forward to the conversations, it makes the calendar really tight throughout February and March. I must not be alone in that though, because it seems many were reading email throughout the weekend. Normally, I send emails and don't expect a response until the work week but this weekend the responses seemed to come right away.
This week is the deep dive into the cost of operation at Lindcove and West Side RECs. Then I'm in Davis at the end of the week for various meetings, including one with the new chair at UCD Plant Sciences. If you haven't met Dr. Taylor, you are missing out – she's quite impressive.
Hard to believe February is here. Time to get moving on my winter to-do list!