As Cooperative Extension is increasingly being asked to co-create solutions with partners and communities we serve, it requires a different approach in program planning. Karen Vines, Virginia Tech, has been selected as the 2018 NAEPSDP/eXtension program design/development fellow. Karen will serve as a key informant for the 2018 Impact Collaborative in program development and will focus on helping extension professionals use engagement in their program planning.
Karen is an assistant professor and continuing professional education specialist with a split teaching and Extension appointment in the Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education department at Virginia Tech. Karen teaches the introduction to Cooperative Extension class and the online graduate nonformal teaching and learning course. She also provides professional development workshops on program planning to agents in Virginia Cooperative Extension.
Karen’s dissertation completed in 2017 focused on increased use of engaged program delivery models in Cooperative Extension. Through her research, she confirmed that in order to increase engagement in Cooperative Extension we need to think differently about how we develop and implement programming.
Karen has served in extension roles in four different systems, University of Kentucky, Purdue, Penn State, and Virginia Tech. During her career, she has been active in both the National Association of County Agricultural Agents (NACAA) and Epsilon Sigma Phi (ESP) with responsibility in both organizations for program development associated with their professional conferences. She has also chaired an emerging issues subcommittee for the ESP professional development committee which developed one of the early webinar series and provided both an invited presentation on mobile technologies and served as a representative of NACAA and ESP, chairing the poster and workshop sessions at Galaxy IV.
I am interested in using this program design/development fellowship to share and learn from others about how program design and development must change as Extension remains relevant for the future.
Dr. Vines can be contacted at kvines@vt.edu