INNOVATION IN EXTENSION: Kansas State University

The following describes an innovation.

Region: North Central

Main contact information for this innovation: Barbara Stone

Main contact job title / position: Assistant Director

Main contact number: 785-532-5800

Main contact email address:  bjstone@ksu.edu

Innovation name: New Families

Brief description of innovation as provided in online survey: Reaching families of 4-H aged children who have no previous connection to 4-H or Extension.

Notes from phone interview: That would be great. As a matter of fact, they were one of those that was just recognized, that group. What it was, was a recognition of the opportunity that-- in many parts or our state, and actually more and more towards the rural part of our state, we are seeing increasing numbers of Hispanic and Latino families settling in to those communities, having really no experience or no real strong understanding of the benefits of engaging with extension or with 4-H. They'll often times have--they'll be young families, and families with children of that 4-H age. It was a team - and I've identified Barbara Stone, who is our assistant director of state 4-H program leader as a contact person. It was really a team of individuals from the southwest part of Kansas who came together and said, "You know, we could organize and do some things in a different kind of a way to give families a whole family experience in 4-H." So they worked with some of the businesses that predominantly employ the parents - the men and women of the Hispanic and Latino community. Specifically they worked with some of the larger dairy operations in that part of the state, and invited those workers to bring their families together to have a learning experience for their children. And it really became a family experience and all of that. The intent was that if we were successful with this-- and brought some interns in from the Kansas State University campus, interns who were bilingual - they were actually from that part of the state - and helped to organize and create some of those kinds of learning experiences, but brought those families all together. The hopes were that they would have 30 young people that would organize into one or two community clubs. And instead what they've ended up with is they had about 90 that first summer, and organized into about four different clubs. It's continuing now to grow. But the innovation there was so often people have said, "Well, but we tried to invite them. They don't come." In this case, it was more turning that table entirely to talk with the employees of that area and said, "You know, what would you like to see happen in all of that? How would like this to be organized?" And they became interested. And then to recognize that what they were really after was truly a family event - the family values. So that was a new and different way of attempting to open 4-H and extension to audiences that had absolutely no previous experience with us at all. One of the other innovative outgrowths of all that is that we now have an individual-- we just advertised and hired a specialist whose efforts are devoted towards coming up with innovative ways in which to bring new families and youth into extension and the 4-H program. She's located in our 4-H Youth Development Department, but that's her focus. That position really came about as a result of some of this pilot work. We got started and said, "Hey, if we do this in the right way, there is a huge opportunity to bring a whole lot more young people into the 4-H movement and those families into the benefits of extension. One of the things we recognize - and this is part of being in these rural communities - is that many of those families are going to be the community leaders in the next generation, which really says that extension has a responsibility and an obligation to work with those families, to help them to move from only worrying about what's happening today to actually looking at life as a legacy that sets a direction and a tone for opportunity for the next generation. That's a part of what we're already seeing with these families when they get involved. It's like one mother said, she goes, "You know, I'd never ever thought about my children going anything further than the K through 12 education right here in this community. Now just having been in 4-H and Kansas State University for a few months, I'm beginning now to think about how I can see my son or daughter moving on to higher education." So that was a pretty gratifying testimonial from her


The following describes an innovation.

Region: North Central

Main contact information for this innovation: Trudy Rice

Main contact job title / position: Community Vitality Specialist

Main contact number: 785-532-5840

Main contact email address:  trice@ksu.edu

Innovation name: Dane Hansen Foundation community vitality specialist

Brief description of innovation as provided in online survey: The Dane Hansen Foundation was seeking a way to create positive change in communities.  Through innovative developments, a new Extension position in community vitality was created through Foundation funding to work in communities to facilitate community engagement, strategic planning, and proposal development.  The Foundation will get improved proposals for community enhancement by funding this position to work in those communities.


The following describes an innovative person.

Region: North Central

Contact information for this innovator: Brian McCornack
Job title / position: Associate Professor of Entomology

Contact number: 785-532-4729

Email address: mccornac@ksu.edu

Brief description of innovator as provided in online survey: Creative means of collecting and sharing data and management decisions of crop insect pests via mobile technologies and innovations.

Notes from phone interview:

And what that project is all about is he has a strong interest in using mobile technology to help fulfill sort of two dimensions. One of them is data collection for some of his applied research initiatives. But the second one is then to be able to share the information, the findings, and alerts, and various other kinds of things back to the crop producers that he would be working with out across the state. So what he's done is worked on developing mobile applications that-- in fact, they put insect traps out around the state. And on those insect traps, he puts a QR code. Are you familiar with a QR code?

He puts a QR code on there such that if any producer comes by, they can take their mobile phone out and grab hold of that QR code. It'll open up to a website, which will then ask if he wants to enter any information with regards to insects that they're identifying within that trap. Then it'll open up a whole host of additional information, both about the research project and what that's all about. But in addition to that, any other alerts or any other things to be looking for at that particular time in that part of the state. Quite frankly, no one that I know of in our Kansas extension system had ever approached that kind of a learning environment previously. Well, and any other part that he's been interested in developing more mobile apps and so, getting very close to being able to release one of those mobile apps. Currently what he does is set up websites that are going to be mobile-technology friendly. But I know he's really after moving towards the apps. He's really looking at it from the standpoint-- they can, as a producer out there, if I can get them to come into our mobile website, that producer can provide us information that may give us an alert. "Hey, there's a insect now that is just showing up in this particular part of the state that we had not detected previously." So he looks at it in terms of the benefit that comes back to him and his research project. So he's trying to give enough benefit back to them in the way of information, and technology, and current updates, and that sort of a thing to encourage that two-way communication, two-way learning process.


The following describes an innovative person.
Region: North Central

Contact information for this innovator: Jeanne Falk Jones
Job title / position: Multi-County Specialist - Crop and Soils

Contact number: 785-462-6281

Email address: jfalkjones@ksu.edu

Brief description of innovator as provided in online survey: Using social media to reach out to her crop production clientele via questions and informative/fun activities.  Having attracted several to the use of social media, she has then moved to increase the sharing of information, announcements, and important research in decision processes.

Notes from phone interview:

She is a crops and soils, multi-county faculty member. And why I define this as an innovator-- she was probably one of the first that I saw within our system who figured out how to engage farmers, crop-producers, in social media. She did it in the creative, innovative kinds of ways of asking questions that were similar to the questions that you would expect might get asked at the local coffee shop in the morning. How much rain did you get? How low was the temperature? How's your wheat looking? And she gets all of those individuals to start sharing that, and they're sharing it in a way in which she's actually then able to develop a little bit of a database across that region that she's working in - creates little databases to what's happening across that region, gives her a little more information to help support the educational work that she's doing. At the same time, I think the farmers enjoy it because they don't have to go to the coffee shop. They can do that on their tractor with their mobile phone, and can communicate with each other and say, "Yeah, I got eight tenths of an inch last night, and didn't get any wind with it or anything like that." Somebody else will go, "I wish I'd had the eight tenths of a inch of rain rather than the hail that we got," or whatever. She really has gotten that group engaged, where she's got a large number of followers now. So that gave her the additional platform that if she has any kinds of upcoming educational meetings or again, you know, any kinds of crop alerts, or anything like that, she's using that social media as her mechanism to get that out there. And the producers and her peers out there - her fellow agents - are all really pleased and impressed with the way in which she uses that social media through her educational work.


The following describes an innovative person.

Region: North Central

Contact information for this innovator: Gary Pierzynski
Job title / position: Department Head - Agronomy

Contact number: 785-532-6101

Email address: gmp@ksu.edu

Brief description of innovator as provided in online survey: Using Twitter to grow followers of the research and extension faculty and their work in the agronomy department.

Notes from phone interview: Gary is actually the department head in the agronomy department. I listed his because he was interested in looking broadly at the work that goes on in the agronomy department, and getting it out of the black box. He was wanting to communicate all kinds of work of various faculty. So he was the one that set up a Twitter account, that took it upon himself to try and begin the process of tweeting things out, but then made that Twitter account available to any of his faculty members only with the few pieces of guidance that basically said, "What we're wanting to do here is to pass along information that would be of great interest to any of our peers, and our producers, and people that we see as our clientele. You cannot pass along other people's work, or any kind of controversial pieces." So it was sort of with that set of parameters that he started doing that, but then we've had several of the faculty members. So he said, "Anymore, I don't do a whole lot of Twitter," but he says, "I've got a lot of faculty members now that use that." So it's sort of the agronomy's department's voice out to that public. And at this stage, I think they've got something like 1500 to 2000 followers. They're aware of some of that information that they might push out in a timely way, that through the metrics, they can see where some of that stuff has hit 60,000 users of Twitter across the country and all. So it's really helped open up the lines. Now they've got individual faculty members using Twitter and then connecting back to that particular account as well. So the innovation in all of that was to say, "We're going to figure out how to make this work," and he took it on in that sort of a vein. I would say now, it's become more and more of a culture of that department because they've been doing it now for probably at least two years.