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It seems like just yesterday that I was introducing myself and this blog. And today I am packing up and excited for the next new opportunity. One thing is for sure, there’s never a shortage of opportunities and challenges to make a four-year administrative appointment seemingly go by fast.

Like the changing seasons, I enjoy continual professional changes too. For me, it makes me feel a part of something dynamic and alive. I can reflect on and appreciate what has ended or passed and plan for and look forward to what might be next. Becoming ever more reflective in the closing months, I’d like to think that this blog and my ongoing efforts in general helped advance the overarching goal to help improve our understanding of what it means to be an Extension professional. We talked a lot about the A&P and faculty promotion processes, timelines, deadlines, roles, and responsibilities. We engaged in a lot of group and one-on-one coaching, live and recorded webinars, and kept the web-based materials as up to date as possible (thank you, Terri Fisher!!)

The uniqueness of Extension teaching, and scholarship have been discussed often, as have been the various forms of impactful service and how all of this works together to comprise what we might refer to as your Extension Program. We covered the variety of other elements of being an Extension professional including our extramural funding (e.g. training grants and contracts, program fees, research funding, etc), stewardship and administrative leadership roles, and program team involvement, for example.

Beginning November 1, I will be focused on trying to better support the Extension profession via a partial appointment in the Department of Agricultural Communication, Education, and Leadership (ACEL). This role will involve visioning and direction for the online M.S. program, some advising of Extension professionals enrolled in the graduate program as well as some classroom teaching. As part of the Gist Endowed Program, I hope to engage Extension professionals in leadership training and one-on-one coaching, especially for our new and interim leaders. Thanks to the generosity of the late George and Genevieve Gist, much if not all of the programming you might engage in will cost you little more than your time. In the coming weeks, expect to learn of some exciting opportunities you might pursue in 2024 (maybe we can talk more at one of the Fall Regional Conversations). All these endeavors are interconnected with a focus on community leadership curricula, applied research, teaching and Extension program team involvement. If you have an interest in leadership development in any way whatsoever (e.g. student, teacher, researcher, etc), I hope we can connect in the coming weeks (davis.1081).

In closing out this appointment, I leave you with our Recap and Recommendations from the 2023 Department of Extension P&T cycle. If you are interested in a faculty appointment at some point in your career or in any way currently involved in faculty advancement, I encourage you to take a quick look at the three-page document. It outlines the three most important things for us to recognize about faculty work and highlights the most practical takeaways noted this year for dossier authors, reviewers, supervisors, and anyone involved in informal coaching. Thanks to Jim Jasinski, Jason Hedrick, and Eric Romich for leading the faculty colleagues who served on the P&T committees this year – and a special thanks to them too. It was through their dedicated efforts these key takeaways were identified.

Working with all of you in these various administrative roles I have been continually reminded that the Extension calling is a noble one. A profession guided by dedicated custodians who are held in the highest regard. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to serve and look forward to working with you in whatever ways might present themselves in the future.

your journey lies ahead

It is that wonderful time of year when we recognize colleagues for the successful application for promotion in rank. What is that all about? Put simply, our A&P and faculty program professionals continually engage in a variety of functions (think programming, engagement, teaching, scholarship, service, etc). When deemed ready, they share their accomplishments across these various dimensions which are reviewed by peers and weighed against the expectations of their rank and position description. Think A&P Educator Expectations Table and our Departmental APT Criteria for faculty.

Today we celebrate professional growth recognized in the form of promotion in rank of 21 A&P and 2 faculty colleagues. A&P professionals promoted in the 2023 class include:

  • A&P Educator I to II (7)

Liz Avers (Wood 4-H), Kristen Eisenhauer (Mahoning ANR/4-H), Alisha Faudie (Geauga 4-H), Katie Hughes (Shelby 4-H), Emily Masters (Butler 4-H), Haley Palmer (Huron 4-H), Jess Soffee (Lucas 4-H)

  • A&P Educator II to III (2)

Alisha Barton (Miami FCS), Carrie Brown (Fairfield ANR)

  • A&P Educator III to IV (12)

Amanda Bennett (Miami ANR), Amanda Bohlen (Washington FCS), Kelly Coble (Allen 4-H), Rachel Fraley (Lawrence 4-H), Sue Hogan (Franklin 4-H), Dean Kreager (Licking ANR), Dan Lima (Belmont ANR), Tracie Montague (Clinton 4-H), Joy Sharp (Pickaway 4-H), Laura Stanton (Warren FCS), Meghan Thoreau (Pickaway CD), and Kristy Watters (Adams 4-H)  

  • Faculty promoted include:

Pam Bennett, Clark County ANR and State MG Program Director (to professor)

Brian Raison, Field Specialist CD (to professor)

The process of applying for promotion is like applying for a new job. You document your qualifications, skills, experience and meaningful accomplishments. You also describe what you have achieved in ways that enable others to reasonably assume you can succeed in the role for which you are applying. Why do we do this? You want to continue to be challenged and grow as a professional. Your employer wants to ensure you can continue to be successful when tasked with higher level responsibilities.

Our collective goal is to help each other continue the upward trajectory in a way that is manageable, healthy, and sustainable. Key in doing so is understanding how the expectations vary depending on one’s rank. Do you know the rank of those you are working with? Do you know the expectations of their rank and of your own? Let’s continue to think about and prioritize how we nurture and support each other.

You received this as a subscriber of the blog focused on professional growth and support in Extension. If you have colleagues you believe would appreciate being part of the celebration too, please feel free to forward!

Posted In: A&P, Faculty
Tags: A&P Promotion, faculty promotion, celebration
Comments: 0
OAA Handbook webpage

Most recently these pages have focused on telling your story. First was a focus on the 3-page narrative for A&P educator promotion. A more in-depth approach involves the OAA faculty dossier and a faculty-type dossier. The former is required for all OSU faculty, the latter you might use in a faculty job search. As promised, this post goes one step further and talks about a CV (acronym for curriculum vita).

Unlike the “dossier” (listed 81 times in the most current version of OSU’s Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) Policies and Procedures Handbook - Volume 3), the “CV” is mentioned only 3 times. Fittingly, while your OAA dossier could very easily span 81 pages, your CV looks right at home contained in just 3. The CV should be brief. It should quickly and efficiently illustrate the focus of your efforts. It is perfectly happy being the bearer of “selected” accomplishments, activities, funding, etc. Sounds like a 3-page narrative, but it is different.

Like the 3-page narrative, your CV is the polite response to the question “so, what do you do?” It is the snapshot of how you spend your time and who you spend it with. It is your response to a typical interview prompt, “tell me a little bit about yourself”… but it is done in outline form.

How much do you share? Like so many other of life’s questions, the answer depends. In some circumstances, a potential funder may require that you provide a CV of a certain length (e.g. 1 or 2 pages). The CV you create and maintain to inform potential collaborators or your supervisor should be long enough to be useful and brief enough to quickly illustrate what you are about.

Starting out in your Extension career, you may find it difficult to cover 2 pages. However, over time you may be challenged to limit yourself to 3 pages. We do so much that we are excited to talk about! What I have found fun is to identify what can be dropped to make room for something better (or higher value) that more effectively tells your story. Yes, it happened and yes it mattered. Then, it mattered enough to earn a place in your CV. Now, it knows and you know that it helped you get better. Whatever that item currently under your scrutiny might be, it represents yet another building block under which this new accomplishment rests.

Growth over time is the goal. As you gain more recognition, more impactful or focused scholarly contributions, larger or more targeted funded projects, etc you will begin to see how those previously cherished entries enabled you to achieve these more recent accomplishments and contributions. But here is not the place to list them all (perhaps another post on another dossier-type). Here, we are building a story that fits nicely on (say it with me) just a few pages.

In short, creating and keeping your CV up to date should be fun. You have done the work. You are growing as a professional. The CV grows along with you (and like you, it gets better over time). Exercise your creativity in its layout and what you list (think resume). Find a look you like and copy it. Not sure where to start? Go here to see others.

You can also attend one of the virtual office hours focused on the topic of preparing a dossier noted below:

 

Posted In: A&P, Faculty
Tags: CV, curriculum vita
Comments: 0
OAA Handbook webpage

Last time we ran through the dossier as a tool to tell your story. As a member of the faculty, the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) dossier is key to your tenure, promotion, and the annual performance review (i.e. merit increase) processes at OSU. Read more here.

So now let’s assume you are not a member of the faculty but you aspire to be. There is also a faculty-type dossier that you might assemble and submit as part of your application packet for a faculty position. Our A&P IV educators who are interested in applying for a tenure track faculty position within the Department of Extension would assemble a dossier in this format.

The difference between the two is as subtle as the letters OAA. OAA dictates what is included in the OAA dossier for the purposes listed in the opening paragraph. OAA dictates the dossier outline and the contents within it, the focus and suggested length of the narrative sections, and how to represent your specific contributions in cases of collaborative effort.

On the other hand, a faculty-type dossier used in a job application need not necessarily resemble the dossier format required by OAA. Your goal in the job application is to tell your story in a way that efficiently and effectively illustrates your ability to be successful in a faculty role. Thinking of your past accomplishments, what best tells your story when assembled in a faculty-type dossier format? The goal isn’t to include everything you have ever done, every award you’ve ever won, every committee you’ve ever been a member of, or every program/teaching event you’ve ever conducted. Your task is to assemble the parts of a faculty-type dossier in a way that shows a balanced effort and professional growth over time in your teaching, creative/scholarly outputs, and service. In short, there are most likely a good number of items included in OAA’s faculty dossier outline that won’t apply to you. Adapting your own faculty-type dossier outline from that template probably fits you better.

If you have even the most remote interest in a faculty appointment, I encourage you to start on this faculty-type dossier today. It will be easier to build over time and probably beats the alternative approach in most cases (i.e. trying to find/collect/organize/report years of contributions and accomplishments in a fraction of the time spent making them).

How to start? If you have been a Vita user, you can run a dossier report from Vita (see previous post for instructions) and edit/build out via Word as a starting point. You can also download the OAA dossier outline (scroll down on this page about halfway), start your own Word document, edit a colleague’s, call me, etc. Key above all else is to get started!

OAA Handbook webpage

Last time we discussed the value of a 3-page narrative (a key part of your A&P promotion application). This 3-page narrative describes your unique position, highlights what you have accomplished in your current role, and describes the contributions you plan to make in your new role. You can read more about that here.

Building on that idea, this time we’ll focus on the dossier. The term “dossier” is listed 81 times in the most current version of OSU’s Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) Policies and Procedures Handbook - Volume 3. A faculty-type dossier is like a 3-page narrative in that it describes your unique position, highlights what you have accomplished, and includes sections for future plans.

The elements of a faculty-type dossier are prescribed in the OAA Core Dossier Template found in both Word and PDF formats here. Compared to a 3-page narrative, a dossier affords you much more opportunity for in-depth detail and therefore more readily illustrates a trajectory or pattern of professional growth over time.

Faculty at OSU must follow this dossier outline when compiling their accomplishments and contributions for tenure and/or promotion in rank. (Note: We’ll explore a dossier submitted as part of an application for a faculty position and the role and function of your CV in a future post – “CV” is mentioned only 3 times, BTW.) Your dossier as a member of the OSU faculty would include these three parts:

  1. Introduction - where you describe your position, your academic training, positions held, etc.
  2. Core Dossier - where you list and describe your teaching, scholarly/creative and service contributions and accomplishments in reverse chronological order
  3. Evaluation - which includes your teaching evaluation data such as EEET and/or SEI reports, Peer Evaluation of Teaching letters, etc. (remember, our APT requires 3 evaluations of teaching via EEET and 1 peer evaluation of teaching letter per year)

Much of the faculty dossier appears in lists and the lists are arranged in outline form. The contents are accompanied by narratives of a length “no longer than 750 words” (in most every case). Your narratives provide context for much of your dossier content. Narratives include:

  1. your biographical statement (found in the Introduction section)
  2. curriculum you have developed and/or revised
  3. your teaching approach, goals, accomplishments and future plans
  4. how you have used formal evaluation of instruction to improve your teaching
  5. focus of your research/creative/scholarly work including accomplishments and future plans
  6. indicators of the quality of your scholarly/creative work
  7. a description of goals and impact of your service and engagement

If you are feeling like this is a lot to be tracking and including in your dossier, there is some hope. OAA guidelines offer this on what to include:

  1. Probationary faculty (i.e., untenured faculty) should list teaching and service accomplishments since date of hire as faculty.
  2. Tenured faculty should list only those teaching and service accomplishments that occurred in the previous 5 years or since date of last promotion, whichever is most recent.
  3. All of your scholarly/creative contributions can be listed in your Research and Creative Activity section so long as you clearly denote all those since appointment or last promotion at OSU.

In short, the faculty dossier at OSU is a big deal. The dossier is required of all faculty as part of:

  1. the tenure review process
  2. promotion in rank
  3. annual performance review process
  4. so much more that I’d love to share but know I have already taxed your attention with this long post

One last item: For a number of years now the university has provided a faculty dossier platform (you may know of the current system referred to as Vita). Realizing the value of an institution-wide faculty information system, Interfolio has recently been chosen as the new platform for dossiers (and other key information to aid in reporting). This will replace the increasingly unstable Vita system. If you are a Vita user, please note that NONE OF YOUR EXISTING Vita data will be transferred or migrated to the new system. To preserve the content that enables you to most easily tell your story, please download your current dossier and any other valuable reporting data (e.g. Annual Performance Report) from Vita ASAP by clicking the large “Review Dossier” button at vita.osu.edu and then by clicking "Request Dossier". Once generated, you can click “Save as Word” in the upper right-hand corner of the generated dossier and edit as needed.

Posted In: A&P, Faculty
Tags: faculty dossier, OAA, CV, 3-page narrative
Comments: 0

Last year we celebrated promotion of 33 A&P educators in the 2022 class (38 in 2021). Now is the time to gear up for 2023.

Thanks to Terri Fisher, we have tried to anticipate everything you need to know and organized it online to help you navigate the pathway forward. It is found at https://extension.osu.edu/policy-and-procedures-handbook/vi-promotion-and-tenure/ap-promotion-instructions-extension-educators

A previous post covered the key dates. This one is focused on your three-page narrative.

Your three-page narrative can be thought of as a written response to the age-old interview question, “Please tell us a little about yourself and why you are interested in this job?” Below is how you might respond to such a question in writing:

Describe your role as an Extension educator – What are your focus areas? Who are key partners? How do you spend your time? Put this in the context of the specific A&P rank you currently hold described in the General Expectations for A&P Educators.

Describe some of the most significant accomplishments you have made in your current rank for the various dimensions of your role – What impacts have you made in teaching? How have you engaged in applied scholarship? What differences have your service contributions made? (Check the General Expectations Table to see all of the various dimensions of an Extension educator role).

Describe how you plan to build on what you have accomplished in your current rank in the context of the expectations of the new rank you are applying for. What do you want to do with your key partners? How do you want to continue to grow your expertise and reputation within your focus areas? How will you continue to actively serve and to what ends?

In applying for promotion, you are not only applying for a new rank, but you are also applying for a new role with higher level expectations. The goal of the three-page narrative is to help you think through your work, the difference you have made, and how you want to continue to grow and challenge yourself.

For the 23 A&P educators who are promotion candidates in the 2023 class, February 1 is the first due date for these narratives. We typically aren’t in the habit of thinking, talking, or writing about ourselves in this way but doing so has value. Each of us, our positions, and our work are unique. The narrative is designed to help us better tell our unique story. Regardless of your plans for promotion, how are you using the three-page narrative to help you grow as a professional?

 

 

 

Posted In: A&P
Tags: three-page narrative, narrative, A&P Promotion
Comments: 0
Pathway Forward

The Ohio State University aims to be recognized worldwide for the quality and impact of its research, teaching, and service; key responsibilities of tenure-track faculty at the institution (3335-06-02). A mindset of continuous growth and improvement strengthens us, our collaborators, and teams and creates the potential for individual, organizational, and community excellence.

Excellence of this magnitude has the potential to make us healthy, happy, highly functioning Extension professionals and ultimately make Extension an employer of choice. Such excellence requires us to know and understand the expectations.

Regardless of rank as an A&P educator or faculty professional in the Department of Extension, a body of work is expected. Creation and maintenance of your dossier is one easy way to “see” your growing body of work and share it with others. That dossier can also help you seek balance across your various efforts and ultimately inform your direction or pathway forward. 

When you have demonstrated excellence in your current role, you may be ready for challenges that foster your continued growth and professional advancement. Our Department of Extension APT describes expectations for faculty (pp 17-20 here). A&P educator expectations are similar with respect to a body of work and are shared here.

Like any meaningful adventure, navigating professional advancement in Extension via faculty or A&P promotion requires advance planning, an understanding of the journey, and learning from others who have adventured before you. To help in that regard, Terri and I have recently updated the online guides for faculty and A&P educator promotion. Key dates, actions, roles, and responsibilities are outlined to help you plan the next leg of your journey.  Please become more familiar with these online materials to help inform your next steps.

When you are ready to talk more, come see me! Three more dates and times have been scheduled for open office hours via Zoom at this link https://osu.zoom.us/j/6142478808?pwd=NVVvSm0xa1ZYc0dqUWVtcVdGK1BEZz09

  1. Oct 18 9:00-10:00
  2. Oct 26 1:00-2:00
  3. Oct 31 2:00-3:00
  4. …and if these don’t work for you, let’s set something up.

The pathway may not be the same for all of us, but a pathway is waiting for you. Let’s keep traveling together.

Posted In: A&P, Faculty
Tags: promotion, Tenure, advancement, Dossier, APT, educator, faculty
Comments: 0

A previous post announced this year’s A&P educator and faculty promotion class. Today, we will briefly highlight the promotion celebration held for our A&P educators a few weeks ago. Roughly half of this year’s class could join along with our four state program leaders too. If you were unable to join, you can view/listen to the brief recording here.

If you prefer the much-abbreviated notes version, keep reading to see the top take-aways:

  1. Promotion in rank is like starting a new position. With promotion, you have higher-level expectations. See the A&P educator expectations table here.  
  2. How will you approach your work to meet or exceed expectations of your new rank? Like starting a new position, don’t wait to visit with your colleagues, program leader(s), area leader, etc about engaging in specific activities, pursuing contributions, addressing audiences, etc. Collectively, our goal is to help you grow as a professional. We build on existing and previous efforts. I am always happy to talk with you about your work and what comes next. Send me a note if you would like to set up a time to visit.
  3. If you have thoughts about pursuing the opportunity for a faculty appointment we should visit soon. If you are A&P IV and you are wondering about how to move ahead, consider these three steps: A) let’s find a time to talk soon, B) get a look at the materials posted here, and C) it’s time to start building out your dossier (if you have not already – FYI, you can download the dossier outline from a link on the right-hand side of this OAA page.)
  4. If you don’t know yet what you don’t know and want to just drop by to learn from others, we have had three very informal Open Office Hours via Zoom in early August and have more scheduled (below) at this link:  https://osu.zoom.us/j/6142478808?pwd=NVVvSm0xa1ZYc0dqUWVtcVdGK1BEZz09
    1. August 24 – 11:00-noon
    2. September 6 – 9:00-10:00 am
    3. September 19 – 11:00-noon
    4. …and if these don’t work for you, let’s set something up.

I hope you have had a great summer and are looking forward to fall!

celebration

It is that time of year that we recognize colleagues for the successful application for promotion in rank. Our A&P and faculty program professionals continually engage in a variety of functions (think programming, engagement, teaching, scholarship, service, etc). When “ready” their accomplishments across these activities are reviewed by peers weighed against the expectations of their rank and position description. Think A&P Educator Expectations Table and our Departmental APT Criteria for faculty.

If you are interested in more info, you may want to subscribe to a blog dedicated to this topic at https://extension.osu.edu/blog. It aims to aid in your pursuit of professional growth. It might also help you in your efforts to assist colleagues. If you are already subscribed, please encourage your co-workers you believe might also benefit.

Today we celebrate professional growth recognized in the form of promotion in rank of 33 A&P and 3 faculty colleagues. A&P professionals promoted in the 2022 class include:

A&P Educator I to II (8)

Molly Avers (Ottawa 4-H), Justin Bower (state 4-H), Danielle Combs (Highland 4-H), Lydia Flores (Marion 4-H), Frances Foos (Madison 4-H), Andrew Holden (Ashtabula ANR), James Morris (Brown ANR/CD), Sami Schott (Noble FCS/4-H)

A&P Educator II to III (10)

Katie Cole (Seneca 4-H), Michelle Fehr (Guernsey 4-H), Beth Guggenbiller (Mercer 4-H), Stephanie Karhoff (Williams ANR), Tyler Kessler (Adventure Central 4-H), Marcus McCartney (Washington ANR), Beth Miller (Auglaize 4-H), Christy Millhouse (Preble 4-H), Roseanne Scammahorn (Darke FCS), Lydia Ulry (Fayette 4-H)

A&P Educator III to IV (15)

Godwin Apaliyah (Fayette CD), Becky Barker (Morrow 4-H), Christy Clary (Brown 4-H), Mike Estadt (Pickaway ANR), Cheryl Goodrich (Monroe 4-H), Jason Hartschuh (Crawford ANR), Teresa Johnson (Defiance 4-H), Jenny Lobb (Franklin FCS), Lisa Manning (Lake FCS/4-H), Amanda Osborne (Cuyahoga CD), Kelly Royalty (Clermont 4-H), Kate Shumaker (Holmes FCS), Beth Stefura (Mahoning FCS), Kyle White (area leader and Lorain CD) and Rhonda Williams (Darke 4-H)

Faculty promoted include:

  • Glen Arnold, Field Specialist Manure Management (to professor)
  • David Marrison, Coshocton ANR (to professor)
  • Elizabeth Hawkins, Field Specialist Agronomic Systems (to associate professor with tenure)

The process of applying for promotion is like applying for a new job. You document your qualifications, skills, experience and meaningful accomplishments.  You also describe what you have achieved in ways that enable others to reasonably assume you can succeed in the role for which you are applying. Why do we do this? You want to continue to be challenged and grow as a professional. Your employer wants to ensure you can be successful when tasked with higher level responsibilities.

Our goal is to help each other continue the upward trajectory in a way that is manageable, healthy, and sustainable. Key in doing so is understanding how the expectations vary depending on one’s rank. Do you know the rank of those you are working with? Do you know the expectations of their rank and of your own? How are we working in ways to better take care of each other?

Posted In: A&P, Faculty
Tags: expectations, promotion, A&P, faculty
Comments: 0
Charting a Course

The turning of the calendar is usually a time we report on last year, and then think about and formalize plans for the next year. As far as recurring work activities go, this one of my favorites because it forces me to slow down and think about accomplishments and where I’ve spent time. Reflecting also provides some perspective on the things that didn’t get as far as I’d hoped and can generate some new thinking and ideas that I might try instead. It helps to identify a course forward.

Evaluating like this is what we do. It can help us with focus, direction, and inform our strategies for getting better. It can work for us in our solo work, as a regular part of the teams we work with, and the larger organization as well.

Let’s talk about our Extension teaching, for example. We have tools to help us become a better instructor. Engaged in teaching as a part of OSU, we have a responsibility to evaluate our instruction. Classroom teaching uses the Student Evaluation of Instruction (SEI) at the end of each course. Extension teaching events can use the Evaluation of Effective Extension Teaching (EEET) to assess quality of teaching across nine dimensions. To better inform your teaching improvement set an intention about how you want to gather feedback from your learners. Be intentional about how you will use this information for personal growth. What are your strongest dimensions? Study what you do and ask colleagues to help explain what you are doing to be rated so highly in them. Do the same for the other lower rated dimensions. See evaluation of teaching as more than a requirement – it is an opportunity for growth. You can learn more about EEET here.

The university also requires teaching faculty to acquire an evaluation of teaching from a peer on an annual basis too. Extension teachers (both A&P and faculty) have a responsibility to evaluate teaching in this way as well. Seek out peers who are known for teaching excellence (to be of a higher rank is no longer required). Watch them teach and ask them to formally observe you. Perhaps you want to demonstrate your teaching skills via the on-line Zoom platform. Find a reviewer who has expertise teaching with Zoom to get the most useful suggestions and feedback. Make it easier for them to help you by providing plenty of advance notice, teaching materials, and a letter template already started with the pertinent details. Learn more about peer evaluation of teaching in Extension here.

This time of year, it’s cold and dark a lot more than I prefer. What a perfect time to chart out our professional journeys that will take place over the sunny and warm months to come. There’s no shortage of opportunities!

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