Extension ExPress, May 2024

Director’s Message

Essential to Our Stakeholders

University of Idaho Extension programs are more than just relevant to stakeholders. What we do is essential, helping Idahoans save money and learn important new skills. We recently surveyed 30,734 of our program participants, and the findings were jaw-dropping. Last year, we offered 3,563 educational programs — and more than 12,000 related activities. Our participants reported adjusting behaviors or applying new skills learned through their involvement in Extension programs 35,358 times. Participants who responded to evaluations of 2023 programs credited us with providing them a combined $47 million return on investment — and that whopping figure doesn’t capture many program participants who didn’t return evaluations. Our team tallied nearly 400,000 face-to-face, educational interactions with people. We published 263 publications, and our messaging reached a mind-blowing 29 million indirect contacts through social media, blogs, videos, podcasts, etc. To put that in perspective, if every person we reached indirectly stood side by side spaced 2 feet apart, the line would stretch 10,606 miles — roughly the distance from New York to Beijing, China. Clearly, we’re needed, we’re making a difference in Idaho communities and we’re telling our story.

We’re fortunate to have Extension faculty spread across Idaho — located in 42 of the state's 44 counties, three tribal communities, nine research and Extension centers and at the Moscow campus. Our team boasts 90 UI Extension educators, 44 specialists, a clinical faculty member, seven administrators and 100 people who work as program coordinators, associates and staff. They’re engaged in conducting in-state research, delivering research-based data to the public, helping people develop skills to solve problems and teaching ways for Idahoans to build better lives. The industries we serve recognize our value, investing in both the research we conduct to address their challenges and the facilities we’ve built in recent years to keep us on the cutting edge of science.

We’re delighted that we’ve also received a strong vote of confidence from the Idaho Legislature. During the past session, we asked our lawmakers to fund a pair of new Extension specialist positions — one focused on crop irrigation, to be based in Kimberly, and a forest operations manager based in northern Idaho. Both positions were approved. The irrigation specialist will provide invaluable guidance to help irrigators maximize their water supplies, which is vital in a state with so much desert pasture and farm ground. And the forestry industry has been adamant about the need for a new specialist, which will be a joint position between CALS and the College of Natural Resources tackling the business side of forestry. As Extension professionals, we’re in the business of “empowering farmers, ranchers and communities of all sizes to meet the challenges they face, adapt to changing technology, improve nutrition and food safety, prepare for and respond to emergencies and protect our environment.” Incredible as our mandate may be, we’re living up to the challenge and we’ve got the numbers to show it.

Barbara Petty
Associate Dean and Director
University of Idaho Extension

Extension Impact

Generations of Experience

Audra Cochran was in kindergarten when her mentor, Randy Brooks, first joined the University of Idaho Extension team serving timber-rich Clearwater County in May 1996.

Among UI Extension’s close-knit group of forestry experts, institutional knowledge traces back generations, and a mentor’s guidance is always close at hand. Cochran, 34, who became a UI Extension educator specializing in farm and forestry topics for Clearwater County in August 2023, has supplied fresh ideas and enthusiasm to a team with a proven track record of service and a long memory.

“I remember her being in 4-H and livestock, and I watched Audra grow up. She got her master’s degree with me,” said Brooks, who is the state Extension forestry specialist. “I always joke I’ve been training Audra since she was 6 years old to be an Extension educator.”

In turn, Brooks, 62, still works closely with the professional who showed him the ropes when he first started — Chris Schnepf, 63, area Extension educator in forestry. And neither Brooks nor Schnepf were alive when Norm Fitzsimmons, 93, who has remained an active supporter of Extension in retirement, put in his first day as a local county Extension educator on June 5, 1955.

“They’re great people and I believe in the program, and if they can promote those programs, I think it’s the greatest thing in the world,” Fitzsimmons said. “I think Audra is going to do a great job, too.”

Read more…

Financial Conference Growing

Karen Richel surveys stakeholders in the months leading up to the annual financial conference she organizes to ensure the topics covered are especially timely and relevant to northern Idaho residents.

Richel, a University of Idaho Extension educator specializing in financial literacy, based in Latah County, believes keeping content fresh has been key to the growth and popularity of Our Financial Conference.

For a second consecutive year, all 250 slots for Our Financial Conference, hosted from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on the first Friday of April at Moscow's Best Western Plus University Inn, quickly filled prior to the event. The conference features several expert speakers on a wide range of finance-related topics and draws between 15 and 30 vendors.

Admission to the conference is free, and attendees receive coffee, breakfast, snacks and lunch. The most recent conference, hosted April 5, featured a potato bar.

“Whatever is happening in our community, we speak about that,” Richel said. “It’s new, it’s different, it’s fun and it’s very relevant.”

Each conference has a central theme and nine breakout sessions, plus a mini keynote address, a general session and a closing session. Richel strives to provide content for participants ranging in age from teenagers to senior citizens. Representatives from both U of I and Washington State University collaborated on a session about financing a college education during the April 5 conference.

“Divorce was a really hot topic this year,” Richel said. “We had an attorney come in and talk about handling finances through divorce and also finances for blended families.”

A class on taxes was also popular. The conference always features a housing panel, which focuses on the latest trends in real estate.

The name Our Financial Conference was chosen to emphasize how the event is a collaboration of many community partners. In 2019, Richel approached several stakeholders from financial institutions including Latah Credit Union and Idaho Central Credit Union, agencies such as the Idaho Department of Finance and organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce about the concept.

“Every single one of them when I asked them, I barely got the words out of my mouth when they said, ‘Absolutely, yes,’” Richel said.

Four other stakeholders joined Richel on a board of directors to plan the conference. They hosted their first conference virtually in October 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The April 2021 conference was also virtual. Conferences in April of 2022, 2023 and 2024 were all hosted in-person.

“This conference fits everything about my job,” Richel said. “It’s bringing in stakeholders I am working with as a financial educator. I am meeting everybody exactly where they are. I am bringing community resources to help people be better with their finances.”

The tagline of the financial conference is “Bringing You and Local Financial Resources Together.”

End of an Era: Susan Bell, Maureen Toomey Retiring

Susan Bell

University of Idaho Extension educator Susan Bell, Ada County, has had many firsts in her career.

She developed the nation’s first Advanced Master Gardener Program out of necessity. The year was 1986, and Bell was getting overwhelmed with gardening-related public speaking requests from community organizations throughout the Treasure Valley. Furthermore, some of her students who loved the Idaho Master Gardener Program and were retaking the basic course year after year wanted fresh content and a logical next step to continuing their horticultural training.

Creating that course inspired similar courses to launch nationwide. It was one of many significant contributions Bell has made to UI Extension throughout a long career, which began in 1984. After 40 years of teaching, Bell plans to retire on Aug. 30.

Bell designed advanced master gardener to create an “army” of public speakers. The UI Extension course emphasizes public speaking skills and detailed research of specific horticultural topics. Participants choose a topic to study and then shared their research with one another in class and later in the community. Bell and her students compiled seven informational booklets to sell to the public using the research students gathered for their presentations on trees, shrubs, perennial flowers, vegetables, herbs, weeds and garden practices.

Bell established the first emeritus honor for master gardeners in Idaho and Idaho’s first Master Composter Program in collaboration with Boise City’s Public Works Department. In 2003, she and two Master Gardener students launched the Boise Urban Garden School (BUGS) in a vacant lot to teach children where their food comes from. This school became so popular that it was adopted by the city of Boise and a 7-acre park site was dedicated to it, complete with new educational facilities. It is now a community-run entity.

Assisting with the development of many community gardens throughout the city has been a priority for Bell over the years to help develop important neighborhood sources of food and nutrition for those in need. In 2021, Bell was awarded the Gold Medal of Horticulture by the Idaho Nursery and Landscape Association for her dedicated horticultural work in the state.

Bell has emphasized programming for visually impaired gardeners. In 1996, her master gardeners recorded on tapes 45 U of I horticulture bulletins for the Idaho Commission for the Blind’s library. Currently, she and her master gardener students assist as interviewees during monthly ACB Radio programs for the American Council of the Blind. This program reaches an international audience with listeners able to call in and ask questions. Bell’s Idaho Master Gardeners are exploring a new project — how to install a sensory garden for the blind and visually impaired at the UI Extension office in Ada County.

Maureen Toomey

Maureen Toomey worked for a year as a schoolteacher before deciding she didn’t want to spend her career in the classroom.

She instead devoted herself to helping youth achieve their potential in a different capacity — teaching them life skills on behalf of the University of Idaho Extension 4-H Youth Development program.

Toomey, who is based at the U of I Caldwell Research and Extension Center, started with U of I in December 1989 and will retire on June 28. She’s made a lasting impact on youth development in Idaho, securing several grants to deliver programming in nutrition and healthy habits, both inside and outside of classrooms. She’s also developed 4-H curriculum that has been used throughout the nation.

“There are many ways to deliver 4-H — the club model, camps, special-interest programs, grant-funded programs — and we are doing it here in Idaho,” Toomey said. “All of the delivery is based on positive youth development and helping kids truly find what interests them and how they can thrive by doing those activities. Maybe it’s art, maybe it’s robotics, maybe it’s animal science, maybe it’s dog training or maybe it’s a cooking class. We are teaching them skills they can apply when they’re in the classroom, they can apply when they’re with their family or with their peers.”

Toomey holds bachelor’s degrees in recreation park management and history and has a minor in zoology. She also has a master’s degree in education and is certified to teach seventh- through 12th-grade history and science.

Early in her 4-H career, Toomey was involved with running the Idaho 4-H State Teen Association Convention, which provides youth an opportunity to experience college life and explore career opportunities. She’s also facilitated environmental education programming. She currently directs programs in nutrition, physical activity, wellbeing and visual arts.

Toomey has applied her teaching background with 4-H by developing curriculum that’s been broadly used. She was recently the lead in developing visual arts curriculum for fourth- through eighth-graders, called 4-H Create Art Now. The curriculum can be purchased by educators nationwide via Shop 4-H.

“Within the Extension 4-H world there was nothing new in the visual arts area since 2012, so it is timely that there be a new curriculum put forth,” Toomey said. “The other thing that makes our curriculum unique is we’re not focusing on art as a project. We’re focusing on art as skill development, both artistic skill development and life-skill development. The whole point about our curriculum is to use the visual arts as a process to help youth express themselves.”

Toomey achieved her greatest accomplishments by working as part of a team. For example, Shaina Nomee, formerly a UI Extension educator serving the Schitsu’umsh Reservation, developed a unit for the art curriculum on marketing artwork. Toomey also helped develop 4-H curriculum in partnership with Eat Smart Idaho on nutrition education. Upon completion of the program, participants received groceries to make healthy snacks and a recipe book. The recipe book was translated into Spanish. Working with tribal experts, Nomee developed a version with Schitsu’umsh language vocabulary, and Danielle Scott, a UI Extension educator serving the Nimiipuu Reservation, developed a version with Niimiipuutimt vocabulary.

“I believe in teamwork and all of my work has been done with colleagues, either in Idaho Extension or nationally,” Toomey said.

Some other notable programs she’s developed include Teen Health Advocates, which trains teenagers to aid their communities as advocates for better health, and Art Advocates, through which teens are paired with mentors and complete a community action project.

In retirement, Toomey plans to spend more time cycling, hiking, climbing and with family.

New Rangeland Economist

Jessica Windh was a part-time student at Fresno State University still pondering career options when she read a brief passage about rangeland management and began to imagine a life spent exploring the scenic, open spaces of the West.

Windh, who was raised in Central California, was hired last November to be University of Idaho Extension’s rangeland economist, a position vacated several years ago when Neil Rimbey retired.

Read more…

New Entomologist

Entomologist Armando Falcon-Brindis is eager to put his extensive background in pollinators, biological pest control agents, ecology and taxonomy to work for the benefit of Idaho’s farmers.

Falcon-Brindis, a research associate with University of Kentucky (UK), will join University of Idaho’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences on Jan. 7, 2024, as a new assistant professor of entomology and Extension specialist based at the U of I Parma Research and Extension Center.

Falcon-Brindis was educated in Mexico, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2009 in animal science, a master’s degree in 2014 in environmental science and a doctoral degree in 2019 in natural resources management.

Read more…

Faculty Spotlight

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