ACE Update – March 2016

Message from the President
Congratulations New ACE Leaders
Register Now for 2016 ACE Conference in Memphis
Cultural Tips for Touring Memphis
ACE 2017 -- Save the Date, Complete Survey, Help Us Plan
Three Projects to Receive Development Fund Grants
Retiree Profile: Lyn Jarvis
John Brien Obituary

Message From The President: #ACELeadership

At its core, ACE is a volunteer organization of land-grant communicators focused on providing professional development and networking for members and advocating for our profession. Although we continue to adapt and change, the hard work and vision of our founders in 1913 set a course for where we are today. I would like to thank all of the talented candidates in the recent 2016 ACE elections for stepping up to offer their vision for this organization going forward. You can see the election results later in this update.

According to our constitution, several ACE leadership positions are not elected by member ballot, but instead appointed by the president and approved by the ACE board of directors. As the current ACE Treasurer term comes to an end at the summer business meeting, I thank Elaine Edwards for her service over the last three years and am happy to announce that Becky Koch will serve as our new ACE Treasurer and lead the ACE Finance Committee.

In less than 90 days we meet at our 2016 ACE Conference in Memphis. This is the time our Learning Communities recruit members for vice-chair elect positions on their individual leadership teams. This is a great opportunity to become involved in ACE and a chance to serve, grow and gain leadership experience in a creative and supportive environment. Consider stepping up in your area of expertise and sharing your vision with ACE members. I am confident you will find it a rewarding experience.

As always I invite your questions and comments.

Brad Beckman, ACE President

Congratulations to New ACE Leaders

ACE members elected these four new members to the Board of Directors. Each will begin their new roles at the Memphis business meeting.

Elizabeth Gregory North, Vice President, leads Agricultural Communications for the Mississippi State University Extension Service. She provides strategic communications leadership for Extension and the Division of Agriculture, Forestry, and Veterinary Medicine and manages a unit of more than 30 professionals working in media relations, educational publishing, graphic design and photography, television and radio production, and printing, distribution, and inventory management.

Dennis Thomas, Marketing Director, has been a member of ACE for 15 years. Thomas is production coordinator for the land-grant Program at Kentucky State University and facilitator of a $3.5 million Satellite Production Unit and video/audio recording studio. Employed at KSU for over 15 years, he worked for WKYT-TV, a CBS affiliate in Lexington, Kentucky.

Victor Villegas, Professional Development Director-Elect, is the technology and media support coordinator for Oregon State University Extension Service. A leader in social media, technology, creativity and unconventional marketing, Victor is passionate about teaching others how to use technology to improve their lives and work.

Lauri Baker, Research Director-Elect, is an associate professor of agricultural communication and journalism at Kansas State University where she is the co-creator of the Center for Rural Enterprise Engagement. The Center is focused on new-media research and the application of this research to improve the livelihood of rural agricultural communities.

Register now for 2016 ACE Conference in Memphis

Registration is now open for the 2016 ACE Conference, June 12-17 in Memphis.

It’s all about impact, and measurement guru Katie Paine will kick off the conference with insights into measurement standards for traditional and digital media. Katie will also teach two break-out sessions related to measurement to take conference attendees even deeper into the topic.

Terri Lee Freeman, president of the National Civil Rights Museum, will speak, and an optional tour of the museum will be available to attendees. Terri's goals for the museum, which she began leading in 2014, include establishing it as the new "public square" for dialogue about civil and human rights.

Do you love agriculture but find communicating its importance in the 21st century to be challenging, with audiences embracing divergent and often opposing views? Janice Person, a fourth generation Memphian, is an active blogger and Monsanto’s online engagement director. Janice will share her experiences as a communicator for an international company and offer insights about reaching new audiences while navigating the current media landscape.

For more information, email registration@k-state.edu (please indicate ACE Conference in the subject line), or call 785-532-5569 or 800-432-8222 (8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday).

Cultural Tips for Touring Memphis

Oregon retiree member Evie Engel and her husband recently visited Memphis, and offer these insights for touring the city while attending the June 12-17 annual conference:

In looking at the information about the ACE conference in Memphis, I see that Terri Lee Freeman, president of the National Civil Rights Museum, will speak to attendees. There is an optional tour of the museum, which I highly recommend. My husband and I visited Memphis last year and the Museum was one of the highlights of our trip and has reasonable admission fees. The museum is built around the former Lorraine Motel, where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Two other buildings and their adjacent property, also connected with the King assassination, are part of the museum complex.

The Museum complex is set up in a chronological progression starting with slavery in the colonial era and ending with today's human rights issues. Visitors can choose mixed-media, well-signed exhibits, and audio recordings. The first building ends on the Lorraine Motel balcony and continues across the street to the room where James Earl Ray positioned himself (the second building includes artifacts from the criminal investigation and addresses conspiracy theories).

Another fascinating location to visit is Elmwood Cemetery. Monuments are a photographer's dream, too! The cemetery tours were not available the day of our visit, so we wandered throughout the historical area on our own. I've been told the tour (audio-tape, I believe), is wonderful for filling in the stories of those entombed from the Civil War and more.

Graceland was fun, but I felt pressured to keep moving for the next tour group (and this was not a busy time of year). It is expensive, but an iPad photo/audio tour explains the house and grounds. Of course, there is Beale Street for music (e.g., Triple Play sometimes visits the Memphis "Tin Roof;" and Preston Shannon plays at several clubs on Beale and is worth a listen). Also consider touring Sun Studios! -- Evie Engel

ACE 2017: Save the Date, Help Us Plan, Complete Survey

The ACE 2017 conference program subcommittees, with gracious help from our LSU AgCenter colleagues, are already hard at work to plan an engaging and inspiring conference—full of new ideas for renewing and refreshing your work, your skills, and your professional connections.

Here are three things you can do now, to help make ACE 2017 great:

• Save the date: June 12-15, 2017, New Orleans

• Let us know if you have a strong interest in serving on or sharing ideas with one of our subcommittees (especially speakers, tours/events, scheduling/professional development, or sponsors).

• Share your thoughts on including a community service activity in the conference by completing this short (1-minute) survey by March 31. -- Jennifer Alexander and Tobie Blanchard

Three Projects to Receive Professional Development Grants

Congratulations to the ACE members selected to receive $1,500 Professional Development Fund grants for the following projects:

• Ariel Ginsburg, Dionisia Morales and Luisa Santamaria, Oregon State University, What Workers Think: Communication Needs Assessment for Latino Farm and Nursery Workers
  
• Scott Swanson, North Dakota State University, How to Capture High-Quality Video
  
• Kristina Boone and Gloria Holcombe, Kansas State University, Exploration of Digital Asset Management Systems.
  

To benefit as many members as possible, the selection committee looked for projects with broad application. As a requirement, project leaders will submit a final report for publication on the ACE website. They will be encouraged to talk about their projects at next year’s ACE conference and to contribute to the Journal of Applied Communications. You can access reports from previously funded projects here.

The grant program was established by longtime members who wanted to encourage others to take the next big step in their careers. In addition to solving day-to-day problems, grants may be used to explore new concepts or technologies, engage in interdisciplinary team projects and with colleagues at other institutions, or to build on previous service to ACE.

Ongoing support for the program comes from the ACE Development Fund auction, which takes place during the annual conference, and from the donations of individual members. Watch for more information on how you can contribute. -- Donna Sheffield

Retiree Feature: Lyn Jarvis

In 2002, Lyn Jarvis retired from University of Vermont Extension as producer of Across the Fence telecast on WCAX-TV, the CBS affiliate in Vermont. This year it celebrated 60 years on the air and is the longest running farm and home show in the country. Lyn has been involved for 40 of them...hard to believe. Upon his retirement, Will Mikell, the current producer, invited Lyn to serve as contributing editor and do a show the first Thursday of every month called “In the Kitchen with Across the Fence.” It is very popular and a nice way to keep in contact with their many viewers.

With free time, Lyn started to travel and purchased a Cannon XA10 to document his adventures. These are aired on Across the Fence and below are links to shows done in Spain that aired n December 17 and 18, 2015.

In Antarctica he captured a “Rolling Iceberg” on video that now has 566,337 hits on YouTube.

He stills considers enrolling his work in the C&A competition. Since Memphis is one of his favorite cities, he hopes to be there in June.
-- Bob Furbee

Watch Lyn Jarvis' Recent Shows

A Trip to Madrid, Spain
A Visit to Spain, Barcelona, and Catalunya

The Passing of John P. Brien

Our Australian ACE Life Member John Patrick Brien passed away earlier this year. John was a specialist in communication of science and technical information. After graduating in Agricultural Sciences at the University of Melbourne in 1954, he started his career as an information officer at the Victorian Department of Agriculture. He undertook postgraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and continued close affiliation with UW colleagues all his life.

He held the first appointment in Agricultural Extension at the University of Sydney the 1970s to the early 1990s. He then held appointments at Macquarie University and Charles Sturt University; and he was a visiting fellow at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii.

John served as a consultant for CSIRO and other organizations, including AUSAID, Australian Development Assistance Bureau, and the Asian Development Bank. He had close ties with and spent several sojourns at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at Los Banos in the Philippines (his PhD on knowledge utilization was based on IRRI). He also undertook agricultural development and extension work around the world -- the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, India, China, Singapore, England, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Japan, and the USA. He supervised many PhD students from around the world.

John was honored by ACE with the Award of Excellence in Research and the Award for Excellence in International Communication. John was instrumental in the development of the International SIG. He was awarded the higher doctoral degree of Doctor of Agricultural Science by the University of Queensland in 2007.

John is survived by Marie, his wife of 57 years, and their children, Jo-anne, Mary Louise, John and Chris. Condolences can be sent to Jo-anne at jo-anne.brien@sydney.edu.au

Newsletter editor: Suzanne Steel. Send submissions, upcoming webinars and ideas to steel.7@osu.edu.
Contributors this issue: Brad Beckman, Joanne Littlefield, Jennifer Alexander, Donna Sheffield, Bob Furbee, Evie Engel.