It is snowing in Denver. I was planning to get out of here before the snow started. As a result, I did not pack closed-toe shoes or a coat. And rather than ‘standby' all day tomorrow in hopes of catching a flight, I decided to just give in to a Friday morning flight. Fortunately, Kathryn worked her magic and found me a hotel room! Believe me, there are many, many weary travelers in Denver who were not so lucky.

As a result, I am missing out on a chance to formally thank Mandy Parks and the Inland Empire Resource Conservation District for being such amazing partners. I have no doubt that Janet and Chris will express our gratitude on my behalf but I was really looking forward to seeing Mandy again but it just doesn't seem to be in the cards; we had already rescheduled once due to a conflict the IERCD had with a previous date.

I plan to make the most of my time at the hotel. Zoom makes it easy to proceed with most of my scheduled meetings and I fully expect to get through 6 to 8 dossier reviews! The Peer Review Committee seems to be completing their reviews, which only serves to make me feel further behind so I like the idea of completing a few more reviews than planned.

I was in Denver for a meeting where the conversation focused on finding ways to convey the benefits to the broader land grant campus of working with Cooperative Extension to engage with communities; bringing the science and solutions of the entire campus out to the state. My sense of the discussion at Monday's UC ANR Governing Council meeting is that the entire 10-campus UC system is interested in working with UC ANR to do exactly this but may not know how or when nor that UC ANR has finite capacity to achieve all wants with our current resources. There's more work to do on this front but I believe we are making progress.

A couple of the other states represented at the meeting shared some numbers that I took note of. In Wisconsin Extension, who has undergone a recent restructuring, county-based academics are funded half by the county and half by the university. Oregon Extension has seen a 117% increase in county support since 2010. They offer an outdoor experience to over 70% of 5th graders throughout the state and are offering the Juntos program in 22 locations! In Minnesota, counties fully fund educators they wish to have located in the county but central funds pay for regional educators; Iowa uses this model as well. One thing that really stuck out was that all of the states represented at the meeting (9 total), with the exception of California, have recently restructured in efforts to position the organization to meet future needs. I was reminded of a quote that Mark Bell used the other day: "I'm in favor of progress; it's change I don't like." Mark Twain. I haven't fully concluded if my travel changes represent progress or not; time will tell.