The opportunities for professional growth and success within Extension are unlimited. It is the goal of Extension to provide flexibility, resources, and training to allow you to pursue and achieve the highest levels of success in your career.
Professional Development
Nebraska Extension is committed to the success of its team members. The Professional Development (PD) Coordinator role includes:
- Foster an organizational culture dedicated to regular, high-value professional growth;
- Identify, create, and implement contemporary professional growth offerings and;
- Organize and coordinate professional and personal skill development programs.
Learn more about our many professional development offerings here.
Extension Scholarship
Extension is grounded in research and embraces engagement. Extension professionals create and deliver educational experiences that are based on sound science and research. Engagement involves the development of sustained working relationships with a target audience, collaborator and/or partner to co-create solutions to relevant issues.
Scholarship in Extension is a process that:
- Identifies complex emerging and relevant issues.
- Sets goals that reflect intended social, environmental, and economic impacts.
- Sets objectives that anticipate change and significant outcomes.
- Develop partnerships, cultivate volunteers, pursue funding, and resources to support and sustain the program.
- Delivers a breadth and depth of learning experiences that transform knowledge into attitude change and behavior change.
- Engages people for the mutual benefit, the development of learning environments, the creation of knowledge and solution of problems.
- Measures the outcomes (actual change in behaviors) that achieve impact on goals (social, environmental, or economic change).
- Share products and impacts through scholarly presentations and writings, adding to the body of knowledge in the discipline.
In Extension, we begin the process by discussing needs with our community partner and looking at emerging data and studying research trends in our discipline. We discuss these “big idea” needs and trends with colleagues who also work in our subject matter discipline and with our community partners. Together we develop an issue that is broad in scope and will make a significant impact. These issues usually take several years and several different strategies to address.
Writing goals helps Extension professionals focus on the “end game”. What will be different? What environmental, social, or economic change will take place over the course of our work on the Issue. These “big impact changes” make a difference and better the lives of the people in our state.
Extension writes learner-based outcomes/objectives. What will the learner change or do that is different because of the program or educational partnerships? These outcome/objectives have three important parts:
- Identify the learner,
- Identify the change that will take place, and
- Identify the program(s). Issues usually have multiple outcomes/objectives.
Extension faculty use a variety of educational teaching strategies to meet the different types of learners. Extension professionals understand learners fall in a range of experiences with the subject matter from the novice to the most sophisticated. Therefore, we strive to deliver the programs that have both breadth and depth. We use multiple strategies (face-to-face, web-based, blogs, social media, print and co-learning) so that learner can engage with us “Any Time, Any Place, Any Path, Any Pace”.
Extension professionals create just in time learning to help people make informed decisions at the time of greatest value or need to our learners. Extension professionals recognize that our clientele make many decisions based upon some degree of balance between science, economics, and values. Extension professionals strive to deliver education that contributes to the science and economics aspects of those decisions and rely on individuals to weigh their individual values into their final decisions.
Extension professionals are expected to demonstrate the relevance and effectiveness of their work by communicating program impact. There are two benefits of program impact assessment.
- Impact data gives the Extension Educator a look at “what’s working and what’s not working”. What teaching strategies and delivery strategies are hitting the mark and what needs to be changed? Is the information too technical or not technical enough? Faculty should study impact data to improve as professionals. Extension teams often develop standardized outcomes and evaluation questions and program material.
- Impact data also helps us tell our funders and stakeholders about our program accomplishments and value. Local elected officials are most interested in impact in their communities. Contributing program impact data to these groups is critical to develop Impact Reports that can be given to state and federal partners.
Funding/Grants
A great deal of Extension work is funded through grants and partnerships with industry.
When you are considering applying for/participating with a grant or partnership, it is important to talk with your supervisor(s) and the grant support team from the business center in advance. Through these conversations, you will gain insight about programming needs, understanding for the responsibilities, and guidance for next steps. This pre-work will benefit you greatly to successfully submit proposals and achieve great outcomes.
You can learn more about grants and resources here.
eXtension (pronounced E-Extension)
eXtension’s mission is to increase Extension Professionals’ effectiveness in addressing issues of importance to the nation. eXtension provides up-to-date science, evidence-based information and education to Extension Professionals and the general public. eXtension fosters creativity and innovation in developing solutions and methods of work and advancing the visible and measurable impact of this work for the public good. Learning opportunities to collaborate, co-learning and co-create are generated through a virtual network of more than 15,000 users system wide. Learn more here.