Stereotypes – Extension Foundation

Congratulations! You Failed.

At the recent First State Innovate! Event, a panel of Extension innovators talked about the role of failure. One key is to test your ideas so that failures occur early and allow you to pivot and iterate quickly. These kind of “failures” are more likely to lead to programs that provide new insights, new practices, or reach new audiences.

What have been some of your ‘favorite’ failures in your career? How have those helped shape your work today? Let us know by tweeting to @eXtension4u and using the #coopext hashtag.

News Roundup

Impact Collaborative. eXtension Foundation is supporting three Impact Collaborative cohorts in 2018 for Extension professionals at member institutions. The first will focus on Food Systems with the application process expected to open in November. This will be followed by Behavioral Health and Diversity and Inclusion. The process for all three will kickoff in January and February 2018 with Designathon One, and continue with Designathon Two events (one for each cohort) in April/May 2018.

The process will also include tailored professional development events (online), and access to key informants. Selected projects will have the opportunity to apply for fellowships, innovation funding, or invited to serve as mentors/key informants to the 2019 cohorts. Past participants have shared how their experience helped them expand leadership skills, gain greater visibility at their institution, work differently as a result of their concept map, and advocate for their programs and ideas.

Some important information:

The recording of the webinar on the Food Systems IC is now available!
For more information, contact the Food Systems Program Fellow, Melanie Weir melanieweir@extension.org

Project Manager. eXtension is pleased to welcome Tira Adelman as the project manager for the recently-announced EPA pesticide safety grant. She will be in charge of establishing and administering a national sub-award program in support of pesticide applicator education and training for certified applicators of restricted use pesticides. Tira previously worked as a Research Project Manager for Susan G. Komen, the largest funder of breast cancer research. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration. The grant program is a collaborative effort between eXtension, the National Pesticide Safety Education Center, U.S. EPA, and other partners. Learn more about the NPSEC…

Digital Green Webinar. Last March, we announced a collaboration between Digital Green and eXtension. This is the first of many solution partners we plan to introduce to the Impact Collaboratives to incubate projects and bring new opportunities to the table. The goal of this collaboration is to pilot test a platform, used successfully in Asia and Africa, in U.S. Extension projects. Possible connections for food systems projects include an online organized network, database, or mobile application, information access, commodity aggregation, transport services, or data collection and analysis. Join the eXtension Digital Green Fellow, Jennifer Cook, Colorado State University and Karin Lion, Digital Green’s Director of Global Agricultural Strategy for this 30-minute webinar. November 14, 2017, at 2:00 EST. Register for the webinar…

From the eXtension Blog

One of the 2017 eXtension innovation projects is developing a kit for youth to build their own fitness tracker. (Visit the project page…) The Ohio State University project team recently hosted a webinar on the Bioband fitness tracker and provided a project update on the blog “Big things are coming for Bioband!”
eXtension NAEPDSP Fellow, Julie Huetteman of Purdue University offers “Perspectives: avoiding stereotypes in program evaluation”.

Civil Rights Course. Civil rights are front and center in our nation’s news, which makes Extension professionals’ responsibility for understanding the importance of civil rights training and ensuring inclusiveness in programming more important than ever. A new online course developed by more than 40 University of Minnesota Extension faculty and staff and led by Renee Pardello, Key Informant for the eXtension Impact Collaborative, is now available nationwide. The course, which works best as a small-group activity, can be accessed at eXtension’s online Campus.

EdTechLN. The Ed Tech Learning Network held a Tweetup on November 2 around the topic of “Clear, effective communication with clientele”. You don’t need to be on Twitter to read the Tweetcap which includes great examples and advice from Extension professionals (and others) from across the U.S. Read the Tweetcap… | Learn more about the EdTechLN…

Upcoming Webinars

Check out these (among many more) upcoming professional development events listed on learn.extension.org

Open Data and CGIAR’s Big Data Platform. Open data is increasingly becoming a priority and requirement from funders. Some universities have created systems for compliance such as maintaining repositories under the direction of the university libraries while others have left compliance up to the researchers. This webinar will focus on the need for a culture that values data as a product in itself and targets efforts towards best practices to managing it and following FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles.November 16, 2017, at noon EST. Learn more or register for the webinar…

Make your story maps shine! Learn more about how to use the popular story mapping tool to increase visibility and engagement with your clientele. November 20, 2017, at 2 pm EST. Learn more or register for the webinar…

Search Recordings on Learn

Visit learn.extension.org anytime and search for topics in your area of expertise or in areas in which you need to get started. Want to know about bugs, climate change, composting, or military families? There are dozens of recordings being added every month to this valuable resource. Visit learn.extension.org…

Julie Huetteman, Ph.D., is the Strategic Initiatives Coordinator at Purdue Extension. She is serving as the National Association of Extension Program and Staff Development Professionals (NAEPSDP) eXtension Fellow for 2017.

As the 2017 eXtension NAEPSDP Fellow for Program Evaluation, I have been on a journey to expand my awareness and understanding relating to inclusion, and to look at evaluation from this perspective, since participating in the Diversity and Inclusion Corps in Cincinnati.

Quality versus Quantity

I often ponder the busy-ness of those working in Extension. We wear a lot of hats and have many roles, but in providing education to our county or state residents, we want to be sure we are doing the best we can. To help us think about the quality of programming, not just the quantity, I share these thoughts that put stakeholders first.

Another thoughtful and thought-provoking reading recommendation from my colleague, Dr. Pamala Morris, Assistant Dean/Director of Multicultural Programs at the College of Agriculture at Purdue University, led me to Whistling Vivaldi by Claude M. Steele.

This book on “how stereotypes affect us and what we can do” is based on our human perception of identity. It shares the ways in which stereotyping defines groups and characteristics, how pervasive it is, and how it can influence performance. When individuals experience identity threat from associated restrictive characteristics, their performance is negatively affected. Stereotype threats occur from many perspectives and affect how people perform in education settings, as well as personal and professional situations.

What can we do?

In an education setting, researchers share a two-part explanation:

Self-affirmation or sense of competence and worth.
Accomplished challenges may create a mindset to interrupt negative restrictions of stereotypes.

For example, think of the message that women are not as good as men in math or science, and the resulting performance by women in STEM. Programming that affirms abilities in science — in combination with instruction and challenging STEM opportunities for accomplishment — can help in addressing the gap in performance associated with the stereotype.

Applying these concepts to our Extension setting, we can be deliberate in efforts to maintain keener awareness of our communities, to explore how we might affirm our stakeholders’ senses of self, and provide quality instruction and challenges to encourage achievement in learning.

This awareness can help direct our program evaluation activities to address the participants’ experience and perspective, not our own as program deliverers. Consider asking stakeholders about their experiences, comforts, barriers, challenges, benefits, values, and accomplishments from participating in programs. Here is where we find the quality in our work!

Thanks again to Pamala Morris for sharing and recommending this book on the human situation we live and face every day.

For More Information

You can contact Julie at jhuettem@purdue.edu

Steele, C.M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Whistling-Vivaldi/