You might think that Tu Tran is smiling because this week is his birthday and he's expecting a big surprise party. Nope. He's smiling because he and Greg Gibbs were part of a ceremony to celebrate a UC ANR Presidential Endowed Researcher at the Lindcove REC, made possible by a generous donation from the Citrus Research Board and matched by the President's office. Great work everyone! I'm looking forward to identifying the first holder of the endowment.

That's not all that Beth Grafton-Cardwell has to smile about. Her webinar-based training was called out by Western Farm Press and then re-run in UCOP's Daily News Clips yesterday. Thanks to Jeannette for sharing this information with the media! This group is doing things differently to meet clientele needs. According to Jim Farrar, this is the first of three pest management webinars available to clientele for continuing education credits required by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Beth Grafton Cardwell is conducting two of the trainings (citrus thrips in October and Fuller rose beetle in December). Ben Faber is conducting the third, avocado diseases, to be offered in November.

In addition to the 46 position proposals, I've done a little bit of reading this week. Adina Merenlender shared an article about ‘boundary organizations', such as Extension, and how to evaluate the work of these organizations (Pitt et al., 2018 in Conservation Biology). From the paper: "... boundary organizations face the challenging task of demonstrating their value to diverse stakeholders...Although no off-the-shelf solution is available for a given boundary organization, we identified 4 principles that will support effective evaluation for boundary organizations:engage diverse stakeholders, support learning and reflection, assess contribution to change, and align evaluation with assumption and values." These all sound familiar, with at least two of the 4 principles, core to what I think we regularly consider indicators for UC ANR. That's something to smile about.

The other reading I've done was a document someone left on my desk that provided 4 strategies to avoid overworking high performing employees: 1) Refrain from asking high performers to help on small efforts, 2) Let high performers occasionally pick their projects, 3) Create high-performing pairs of employees at similar levels, and 4) Keep track of additional demands on their time and consider micromanaging what high performers are allowed to say ‘yes' to. Given no context I don't know what to read into the anonymous gesture although I do wonder if the sender questioned whether or not they should enter my office, uninvited, versus leaving the document in Joan's box with my name on it.

Here's hoping that next time someone leaves me lottery tickets or a dark chocolate mint truffle (smile)!