PSC ED OVAE
Moderator: Sherene Donaldson
05-13-14/1:00 pm CT
Confirmation # 3990361
Page 1
PSC ED OVAE
Moderator:Sherene Donaldson
May13, 2014
1:00 pm CT
Coordinator:Welcome and thank youall for standing by.
Participants will be having an open line throughout the duration of today’s conference call.
This call is being recorded.If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this point.
Now I’ll turn the meeting over to your host, Sherene Donaldson.
Ma’am, you may begin.
Sherene Donaldson:Thank you very much.
And again, welcome.This is a May 13th State Agriculture Education Leaders conference call.As we mentioned before, we offer these calls three times during the year.
This call is being recorded.We will post the recording as well as the presentation on our PCRN Web site.
So we will move quickly because we do have a lot of information and I want to make sure that we get through it today ina timely fashion.
So our first presentation is going to be provided by Mr. (Mike Hunica) from the council.
So I’m going to turn it over to Mr. (Hunica).
(Mike Hunica):Thank you, Sherene.
From dark Indianapolis, we’regettingdarker here, as weather is setting in upon us, so - but nothing too severe coming our way today.But anyway.
I wanted to do a quick update here from the council.First, talk about a few major items that came out of our face-to-face board meeting which was held March 31st through April 2nd here in Indianapolis.First major announcement is that we selected (Jason Davis) from North Carolina as president-elect.That means (Jason) will be next in line to serve as president in 2015 and will serve as president in 2016.So congratulations to Mr. (Davis) on being selected as our next president.
Also I want to let you know that the council board looked over some funding that came our way through the efforts of the National FFA Foundation to decide how to allocate those funds here in this next calendar year.And so their decision was to split that funding between a standard revision project, so including natural resources standards and national quality program standards, as well as our SA renewal activities, which is tremendous because we were needing a little bit of support to get some things done there and looks like we’ll have some support for that here in the next year.
Also, during that meeting, we received a presentation from Dr. Richard Joerger from, I think it’s, Northwestern College in the St. Paul area that most of you all know Dr. Joerger is a - from his time as a teacher educator at the University of Minnesota and also as a farm business management instructor inMinnesota.
And so he, along with a group that includes a lot of people who work in farm business management education up in the North Central United States, also some familiar faces he’s worked with, the National FFA, Farm Business Management CDE in the past, have come forward with an idea to create an online curriculum for farm business management education, seeing the need that secondary instructors need resource to fix that as well as secondary instructors, beginning farmers and ranchers are needing more education in that area, as well as folks and professional industry who need to brush up on their farm business management skills.
They’re looking to put that together in an online format and ask the councils for support.And that’s not financial support but just the ability to use the council’s name as they present it to potential funders as they move forward.So the board did agree to support the development of that and for them to pursue and ability to useour names, they pursue funding for that initiative.Hopefully thatwill lead to a good online tool in that area for all office ag education to use hopefully sometime in the near future.
Next, just some major activities and upcoming events.So we have - we did participate in the USA Science and Engineering Festival that’s held at Washington DC at the end of April.There were, I would say, close to 100,000 people, maybe more, who attended that event.And we had a (unintelligible) along withthe National FFA organizationrepresenting agricultural education.So I had a great opportunity to talk to folks about what we’re doing in agriculture education, how it relates to stem the need for stem graduates in agriculture and also to highlight the case curriculum and some other things, as I say, we’re doing and also national if they have that opportunity to highlight their program as well.
I got a chance to talk to a lot of home school parents, surprisingly, with a lot of interest in agricultural education.So there is a great interest among people about what career opportunities are available to young people and there’s a lot of interest particularly in urban and home school environments on how to gain access of agricultural education.
Also, because of the funding I talked about in the previous slide, that has allowed us to start pulling together a request for proposal.We’re going to be looking for a service provider that can help - we’re doing an online review of ag, food and natural resources standards.So we’ll put that online and solicit a group of reviewers from around the profession and from within agriculture to go through that.So we’re going to be looking for a company to help us with that online process.
Also, I want to make you aware that the SA renewal committee is planning to have a face-to-face meeting sometime here in the summer or fall of 2014 to pull together work that’s been happening among the different ag ed organizations as well as try to define our work a little bit more.And so you’ll be getting more on that.We know that that’s a big piece of people looking for us to do is to provide a little more definition to what we’re doing moving forward in terms of SA and experiential learning.
You will be, if you’re on committees of practice with NAAE, you will be seeing a series of questions coming out in the near future that the committee developed and their intent with that through committees of practice is to solicit feedback from within the profession about particular barriers or interests or idea that exists out there among our educators in terms of experiential learning.
Along those same lines, we’re asking local programsto continue working with states on doing SA renewal activities at thestate level and (unintelligible) some ofthe limited planning that we did during the summit back in January.
And also, I just want to give you an update on that collection committee.They will be meeting and finalizing some plans sometime here in the spring in 2014.The good news I can share with everybody in that regards is that it will not be asking people to complete more surveys but one thing you can expect from us is probably to see what data you have to share with us in terms of any ag ed reports or FFA reports, those things that people do at the state level.
So with that, that is our report from the council.
Sherene Donaldson:Thank you, Mr. (Hunica).I appreciate your presentation.
Next, we will hear from the National PAS with Mr. Craig McEnany.
Craig McEnany:Well, good afternoon.It’s great to have an opportunity to give you a brief update on the National PAS organization and the activities that we’ve had and the activities that are coming up here in the very near future.
As we take a look at the activities that have transpired over the last several months, we had a very successful conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota in March.And as part of that particular process, we’re able to enjoy a successful conference with about 670 individuals in attendance.
Right now, we’re in the throes of - working with the new officer team and we’re involved with planning and coordinating of national officer, state officer training that will be held at Ridgewater College in Willmar, Minnesota using the Strength Finders Program on May 30th through June 1st and then also in the throes of doing some national conference - pre-conference planning for Boise, Idaho, which will be in March of 2015.
We have a board meeting August 3rd through the 5th in Ankeny, Iowa.And like all organizations, you have to spend a little bit of time doing some preparation to get ready for that particular meeting and we’re putting some emphasis on some strategic planning for growth, resurrecting some committees and continue to do work on our financial planning for the organization as we move forward.
As I indicated, National PAS conference will be in Boise, Idaho next March 11th to the 14th.And a couple of us will be doing some preplanning activities here in June to kind of get that kicked off as we use the national officer team to assist us in those activities.
You see on the screen the information as far as the National PSA organization and the location and myself and the administrative assistant.If you have any questions at any time, feel free to go online to to get additional information at any time as far as our Web site is concerned and we’d be more than willing to have conversation with you.
That would conclude my report for today, Sherene.
Sherene Donaldson:Thank you, Craig.I appreciate your input.
Next, we will hear from the MANRRS organization and Dr. Williams will be presenting on behalf of Mrs. Ebony Webber.
Dr. Williams, if youcan unmute your phone, please?
Candiss Williams:Yes, I wastalking but realized I’m still on mute.
Okay.Again, I’m Candiss Williams.I am the national secretary andagain, I’m standing in on behalf of Ebony Webber.
We just completed our 29th Annual Career Fair and Training Conference that was held in Birmingham, Alabama at the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel and was sponsored by Alabama A&M University, Auburn University and (unintelligible) University.
We had 875 registrants, 625 of those were students, 75 of those were junior MANRRS students, 20 sponsors and 65 exhibitors.
One other thing to note that we did this year that was new, wehad a 5k run walk.It was the first annualbut we will continue.And all the money raised from this 5k run will be used for scholarships for our member.
One of theother things that we introduced this year because we want it to be technologically savvy like most other organizations at National Conference (unintelligible) Conference that our members attend that we introduced a conference app oniPhones orsmartphones that also helps over the cost associated with printing.It was something that all of our members really enjoyed because it allowed members to take pictures and upload pictures in real-time that we were able to display at our middle time on a large screen, pictures of the activities happening on the conference, and also had bios of our speakers, information about our sponsors, as well as all those who are in attendance.They could send text messages and the schedules they get a copy of the layout of the national meeting.So it worked out really well and thisis something that we will incorporate for future use.
Currently, our nationalofficers are in Riverdale, Maryland for the National Officer Leadership Training, which is sponsored this year by USBA, OasisAnimal Care and Veterinary Services.
In the picture here, we have listed our 2014-15 national president, Maurisha Ross, who’s our National Graduate Student President from Auburn University; Cody Patterson, who is the professor national president and is employed by (unintelligible); and (Martel Wick), an undergraduate - our national undergraduate president, a student atUniversity of Kentucky.
We’re currently preparing forour fall cluster meeting.Our organization is broken upinto regions.And wehave fall meetings where we bring in our corporate sponsors to have one-on-one interactions with our student at the regional level.That way, where they do the one-on-one interviews, helping develop some of their professional skills.This year, the questions will be held in Atlanta, Georgia; Ankeny, Iowa; Las Vegas, Nevada; Dover, Delaware; and Dallas; Fort Worth, Texas.Listed are the dates as well as the - some of the sponsors for those fall cluster meetings.
Upcoming for our 30th ConferenceAnniversary, it will be held at the Crowne Plaza, March 26th to 28th in Houston, Texas.Our conference co-hosts are Prairie A&M University and Texas A&M University.
Sherene Donaldson:Thank you, Dr. Williams, forpresenting...
Candiss Williams:No problem.
Sherene Donaldson:...on behalf of MANRRS.
Next, we will hear fromNational FFA Organization.And if you just give me just one moment while I transfer the rights over to National, then we will hear their presentation.
(Bill):Sherene, this is (Bill).How are we looking?
Sherene Donaldson:I can hear you clearly.It’s all yours.
(Bill):Terrific.Thanks, everyone, and good afternoon.Greetings from the National FFA Center in Indianapolis where it’s raining and stormy today, as (Mike) had mentioned.
First up, I’m going to be sharing the microphone with three others over here but I’m going to give a report on behalf of Rebecca Carter, our team leader for Awards and Recognition Team.
The Successful Training Meeting was held here in Indianapolis last week with the Revision Committee and members of our LPS development and other National FFA staff.And asa reminder for everyone, the 2015 SAE-based Award applications will be accessed through ffa.org.
If you have not already scheduled your state training for teachers, please contact your LPS representative or Rebecca Carter to get it on the calendar.We’re in the process of developing training videos and other supplemental materials that will be posted to ffa.org.
We’re excited to welcome two new staff members to FFA.(Dan Shebo) is the new SAE educational specialist and he will start with us in June, and (Madelyn Young) is a program manager for individual and chapter awards and she will start mid-June as well.
For any questions regarding awards and recognition, please contact Rebecca Carter at the address on your screen or here at National FFA.
Any questions for awards and recognition?
If not, then we’re going to move to report from Katy Mumaw, who is with our Marketing Communications Brand and Sales Management Division.
Katy?
Katy Mumaw:Thanks, (Bill).
I wanted to share with you some exciting news about the Web site.The National FFA Web site will be - being redone, beta tested in August, and then launched right after convention on November 12th of this year 2014.
You may be asking, “Why a new Web site?We just got used to the one you did about 4-1/2 years ago.”Well, to keep up with the times and to be able to provide what our audiences are expecting, you can look forward to mobile responses site when we launch November 12th.And you can be encouraged that we had a lot of help in the beginning planning stages through our survey that we did that more than 700 respondents came back with us.There were ag staff, teachers, students.
And then we got a grant last year in 2013 from IBM, which they analyzed our Web site and gave us a lot of great feedback on what we could do and what other nonprofits are doing and educational organizations with their Web sites.
With the new Web site, you can be assured that ACN will still be there and it was our inspiration, that backend of ACN, the type of information that we want to be able to get to our students for career development.That is the type of platform but we will be rebuilding it in a way that is, like I mentioned, mobile responsive and in a way that educators and students are used to seeing Web sites.
We will be providing a single sign on process, so the process to sign on between ACN and the registration process and Shop FFA.You can be assured one login, one username, and you’ll be able to access all of those entities.
We hope the information provided will be more engaging for each different type of persona that comes to our Web site.And the National FFA is committed to continually improving.So the November 12th launch of the new site is really the beginning of this continued improvement and being able to personalize ffa.org and that experience for all of our users and provide solutions for our stakeholders that they need and they expect.
(Bill):Thank you.Are there any questions for Katy regarding the Web site or any other communications?
If not, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Jada Buchanan, who has just joined the National FFA team here with the National FFA Alumni.
Welcome, Jada.
Jada Buchanan:Thank you.
Hello, everyone.As (Bill) said, my name is Jada Buchanan.I’m your new promotional program manager for Alumni, originally from Greencastle, Indiana.I went to school at Ball State and received the degree in Public Relations and Communications.And I just moved back from Amarillo, Texas where I was working as the manager of marketing for the American Quarter Horse Association.
So that is my face on the screen right now.If you ever seen me out and about, please holler at me.I’d love to talk to you about joining Alumni and anything else that’s on your mind and feel free to e-mail me at any time.
Okay. So just a few updates today.We are working very hard on the Alumni Development Conference that’s going to be in July 9th through the 12th in Grand Rapids, Michigan.We feel this is a great location not only for this conference but also if you want to make it a short, little vacation, there’s lots to do in the area we’ve learned, so really excited about that.