ESCOP COMMITTEES ANNUAL REPORTS - 1999

• Budget, Legislative, Advocacy and Marketing Committee
• Science and Technology
• Partnerships
• Planning
  ESCOP Budget, Legislative, Advocacy and Marketing Committee
  1. Activities During the Year:
  
  Regular meetings were held to discuss budget specifics and develop strategies for advancing the collective interest. Special emphasis was placed on the base budget, NRI and selected items in the research portfolio. There was close communication with Bob Moser (BOA 2000 Budget), Gale Buchanan (BOA Budget Advocacy Chair), Terry Nipp/staff (AESOP) and NASULGC staff. There will likely be a smaller increase in CSREES funding than we had hoped. We are working hard to achieve increases in base funding as our highest priority.
  
  Charles Laughlin, the new CSREES Administrator, has greatly increased the level of information exchange between his office and the BOA Budget Committee. This openness has resulted in the development of stronger linkages between the CSREES and NASULGC budget processes and increased cooperation between the partners.
  
  2. Plans for the Coming Year:
  
  Preparation has been made for the FY 01 budget cycle. Good discussions have been held and consensus is building. The committee intends to work more closely with ARS budget planners with the goal of reducing competition and enhancing the budgets of both agencies.
  
  The committee is assessing a lay advocacy process modeled after the Illinois C-FAR effort. This is intended to complement the on-going, effective CARET effort.
  
  3. Requests for Special Activities:
  
  A new procedure for identifying research priorities and advancing initiatives will be pilot-tested at the SAES Workshop on September 28-30, 1999.
  
  Interest was voiced within the community in assessing the feasibility of complementing the budget advocacy process with something modeled after the Illinois C-FAR effort. That has been discussed and deemed a good idea. A nationally prominent lay person has been approached regarding his interest in taking the leadership role.
  
  4. Committee Membership Changes:
  
  Only standard rotation and replacement at this time to accommodate the division of the core committee into two separate core committees, Budget and Legislative, and Advocacy and Marketing.
  
  ESCOP Science and Technology Committee
  Annual Report - 1999
  
  ESCOP Science and Technology Committee was appointed with George Ham (KSU) as Chair, and Randy Woodson (IN) as Chair Designee, and Tom Helms (Southern Region Executive Director), as Executive Vice-Chair. Additional information may be found at http://www.escop.msstate.edu/committee/scitech.htm
  
  Activities taken during the year:
  
  The ESCOP Science and Technology Committee held a conference call on February 5, 1999. We reviewed the following issues: the Committee's charge, the Committee membership, suggested subcommittee, the ESCOP science road map, and future meeting plans.
  
  On May 12, 1999, the ESCOP Science and Technology Committee met at NASULGC headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Committee discussed action items assigned to the S & T Committee. We reviewed strategic target II: "Improve the effectiveness of agricultural research management," and strategic Target VIII: "Organize the national research portfolio into a set of discreet programs." After considerable discussion on subcommittees, the ESCOP S & T Committee:
  1. Approved continuation of the Pest Management Strategies and Genetic Resources subcommittees. The genetic resources subcommittee will be expanded to include activities of the national animal genome initiative which is focused on production on food animals.
  2. Discussed The Science Roadmap subcommittee activities chaired by Randy Woodson. The subcommittee is moving forward while maintaining a liaison with similar activities in NASULGC and the Board on Agriculture.
  3. Will approve the ESCOP Social Sciences subcommittee as an official subcommittee when they submit a revised membership list to accompany their revised charge for the committee. We anticipate taking this action on September 27, 1999, assuming that we have received this information.
  4. Discussed a subcommittee on food safety. The S & T Chair communicated this to the Chair of ESCOP. With the appointment of William Wagner, CSREES/Plant and Animal System Section Leader and National Program Leader for Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology, as the Interim Director of the Joint Institute for Food Safety Research under the Presidents' Council for Food Safety. The ESCOP S & T Committee will consult with Dr. Wagner and take appropriate action that is consistent with the Council for Food Safety.
  The ESCOP Science and Technology Committee made a recommendation to the chair of ESCOP that some changes be made in the USDA Assurance Statement(s) for Hatch projects. Currently, the Assurance Statement(s), Form CSREES-662, must be signed and submitted with the Hatch project proposal when it goes to CSREES for approval. This presents problems when the protocol is not known at the time of submission but is developed during the life of the project. Approval by local committees may take months depending on schedules. ESCOP S & T proposed that recombinant DNA or RNA research, experimental animal care, and protection of human subjects be handled locally as certifications just as the drug-free work place is handled now.
  
  Plans for the upcoming year:
  The ESCOP Science and Technology Committee plans to address Strategic Target 2 from the ESCOP Strategic Plan: "Improve the effectiveness of Agricultural Management" and Strategic Target 8: "Organize the national Research Portfolio into a Set of Discrete Programs." The Science Roadmap subcommittee will finalize their plans and begin the implementation phase. The "Farm Crisis" subcommittee will develop a set of recommendations to deal with the agricultural situation.
  
  Requests for approval of special activities: None
  
  Committee membership changes:
  The ESCOP Science and Technology Committee has been expanded to include Dan Rossi (NJ), representing agricultural economics, Lou Swanson (CO), representing rural sociology, and Patsy Brannon (NY), representing human ecology.
  
  
  ESCOP PLANNING COMMITTEE
  1999 Annual Report
  The ESCOP Planning Committee's (ESCOP-PC) first meeting was held March 29 at NASULGC in Washington, D.C. with 11 members present. Complete minutes of this meeting are available on the committee's web site at the following URL: http://www.escop.msstate.edu/committee/planning.htm
  Dave McKenzie, past Chair, gave an overview of past activities of the Strategic Planning Committee and an update of the joint futuring activity with ECOP. He also outlined a number of issues that ESCOP-PC may need to consider over the next two years.
  
  The remaining discussion during this meeting centered around the committee's charges. These charges included the following:
  
  1. From the ESCOP Strategic Plan:
  • Couple the processes of national strategic planning with federal budget development and advocacy.
    • Action Items:
      • Create a process for consensus building on a limited set of strategically important national priorities.
      • Provide a process for identifying national initiatives, suitable for concerted promotion.
      • Join with ECOP to plan and promote common priorities and initiatives.
  2. From ESCOP Core Committee descriptions:
  • Create a forum within the land-grant university community, its partners, and stakeholders to solicit information on research issues and priorities, and incorporate them into ESS's ongoing strategic planning process.
  • Develop recommendations for new research initiatives and strategies for implementing strategic plans in ways that benefit multistate, multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary approaches.
  • Recommend ways to support the development of impact statements derived from the implementation of the ESS strategic plan.
  3. From ESCOP Executive Committee:
  • Develop a method to assess the effectiveness of the reorganized ESCOP structure.
  The ESCOP-PC also discussed the Committee's role in the continuing joint ESCOP/ECOP long-range planning and futuring activities.
  
  The following three items chosen to be addressed in the next two years.
  1. Joint Planning with ECOP
  • It was agreed that joint planning activities with ECOP SPC should continue, but concentrated on short-term planning with specific outcomes agreed on up front.
  2. ESCOP Restructuring Assessment
  • A subcommittee consisting of Virginia Clark, Mike Chippendale and Henry Bahn was appointed to develop a draft assessment process. They will contact the ESCOP leadership to obtain clarification on expected outcomes of restructuring. The initial assessment will be done early in 2000.
  3. ESCOP Strategic Target 7
  • The Committee will develop a process to bring up priority areas/initiatives from local experiment stations (with local stakeholder input); build a consensus for a few of these priorities; and feed these into the ESCOP budgeting process. It was suggested that the Fall Experiment Station Directors Meeting/Workshop be used to finalize these priorities and to begin developing priorities for next year. The procedure that ECOP uses to develop its national initiatives will be studied and possibly used as a guide.
  On May 13 & 14 the ESCOP-PC Chair met with the ECOP Strategic Planning Committee (ECOP-SPC) as the ESCOP representative. One of the topics of discussion was future joint ESCOP/ECOP planning efforts. The ESCOP-PC's discussions on joint planning from our March meeting were summarized for them and they agreed that the joint committee should have specific goals and outcomes in mind when it meets and that there should have an initial meeting to determine these. At this meeting it was proposed that both ESCOP-PC and ECOP-SPC meet in late September in Memphis and have at least five topics to consider for the next joint planning session. Also, at that time the format for the joint session, a potential speaker(s), pre-session reading material, and how to communicate the results will be determined. At the next ESCOP-PC meeting, these potential topics will be decided. Also, Jon Ort, incoming ECOP-SPC Co-Chair, will attend that meeting to relay some of ECOP-SPC's thinking regarding joint planning.
  
  In addition, at that meeting, ESCOP-PC will be discussing the priority-setting session that will take place during the SAES Directors' Workshop in late September. A few high priority initiatives will be developed during that session to pass on to the Budget, Legislative, Advocacy and Marketing Committee for consideration in FY 2002 budget development. A draft flowchart has been developed illustrating how the five ESCOP Core Committees could work toward a high priority research budget initiative. Actions by the various committees shown in the flowchart would be a coordinated, concerted effort targeted at one initiative area (or at the most three) arising from the SAES system through the Fall Workshop. This is not meant to replace what the committees would do in other arenas. This general scheme will be used as a beginning point for the committee's discussions on linking planning and budgeting through a high priority initiative building process.
  
  The next meeting will be on Tuesday, August 31 in Dallas, Texas. The next joint ESCOP/ECOP Planning meeting, to decide the agenda for future joint meetings, will be on September 30 and October 1, immediately following the SAES Directors' Workshop in Memphis, Tennessee.
  
  ESCOP Partnership Committee
  Annual Report
  
  The Committee met September 14, 1999 in Washington, D.C. to frame goals for the committee, characterize successful partnerships, and begin to identify potential partnering issues that would lead to specific activities. The following items were a consensus of the Committee.
  
  The goals of successful partnershiping efforts should be:
  1. Effective partnerships between LGU's and CSREES
  2. Enhanced partnerships between LGU's and other USDA agencies
  3. More collaborative programs between LGU's and non-USDA federal agencies
  4. Recognition of agricultural research as part of the nation's science agenda.
  Characteristics of a successful partnership include:
  1. Mutually shared vision and ownership Strategies that draw on interdependency and/or synergy
  2. Joint planning (common objectives), execution (distributed activities), and assessment (agreed upon outcomes)
  3. Commitment (e.g., funds, people, facilities, administrative time, and advocacy)
  4. Interest by each partner in certain benefits, which may be different.
  5. Strong leadership, giving continuity, decision making, and "championing"
  6. Effective communication
  7. Mechanisms to overcome conflict
  8. Tangible successes
  9. Shared recognition and credit
  
  Points to Consider for Our Traditional Partnerships
  * SAES - CSREES
  
  The Committee would like to see a renewal of the state-federal partnership based on the identification of shared values, a more clear understanding of roles, facilitated links to other federal agencies, strong leadership, enhanced credibility, more trust, agreement on common goals, and greater responsiveness to the needs of the partnership.
  
  * SAES - ARS/FS/ERS/NRCS/NASS/RDA/FAS and other USDA agencies
  The Committee proposes dialog among the LGU's, REE and other USDA agencies to enhance understanding of opportunities for partnering.
  
  Points to Consider for Our Non-Traditional Partnerships
  * SAES - non-USDA Federal Agencies
  The Committee recognizes the enormous opportunity to redefine the federal-state partnership to accomplish our research agenda. Specific agencies with interests compatible with ours include NSF, EPA, DOE, DOI, DOD, NASA, NOAA, HHS (NIH, FDA), DOJ, DOS, DOL, DOC, DOT, HUD and DOEd.
  
  Recommendation: The Committee requests endorsement of this approach and encouragement to develop some specific partnering activities with an initial focus on CSREES.