Hello, my name is Brian MacGowan. I'm an Extension Wildlife Specialist in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources
at Purdue.
I'm going to talk about some of the graduate extension work we have been doing in our department recently.
My colleague, Rod Williams, will give a separate presenation on undergraduate extension found on the same website.
In looking at graduate student curiculum in higher education,
there is certainly a need to train students on public communication. As scientists, we have a much higher obligation to communicate to
citizens about what we do, why it's important and how the work we do improves society.
If you think about it, land grant institutions are really well positioned to do that given our role in extension, research and teaching.
It's a good fit, and we've looked at that within FNR.
Several years ago we surveyed our graduate students, asking them about extension, communcation,
and what they thought was important regarding their time with us here at Purdue.
We asked them to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 the level of importance on being able to communicate with non-scientific audiences,
the importance of sharing findings with non- scientific audiences, whether or not they understood Extension, and if they
were familiar with the Logic Model. While you can see they thought it was important to communicte and share findings with
non-scientific audiences, they didn't understand how Extension can do that. They certiantly didn't understand the Logic Model and how that
fit within this.
And so we looked at that as a need and opportunity to formalize extension within our graduate student curiculum at FNR.
As a department, we formed a committee to develop a policy for integrating extension within our graduate curiculum.
We looked at the Michigan State model as a start. Our group decided to maintain flexibility within requred credit hours.
We didn't want to overburden students with a lot of extra courses or limit their participation in other courses.
Second, we wanted to give academic freedom to faculty. We felt that was very important.
We didn't want to dictate what students had to do to meet that extension requirement.
And third, we really wanted to give students credit. If they are going to do work, it needs to be on their transcript, have something official.
After that, we developed a course, the Theory and Application of Natural Resources Extension.
I co-instruct that with Rod Williams. It's a one credit hour, half-semester course. It meets 8 times during the semester.
We have students take it within their first two semesters.
By then, they should have an understanding of what their research project will be. That will
dovetail, hopefully, with their extension deliverable that they identifiy within our course.
Some of the things we teach, the history and purpose of extension as well as the use and application of the Logic Model.
As the previous slide showed, they really don't have a good understanding of either of those.
But the bulk of the course focuses on communciation and developing a plan that leads to their deliverable.
We have students do elevator speeches where we describe it as they are talking to their uncle, grandma or nieghbor.
Within a minute or so, they have to tell them what they are doing with their graduate research,
but more importantly, why it's important and why they should care.
Students are typically very good at describing what they do but sometimes they have difficulty linking that to why it's important.
Why is it important to study endangered species? Or why is it important to learn how forest work? Those kinds of things.
We also cover extension portals and deliverables. We want students to have a firm understanding of the types of extension
deliverables that are possible.
And groups and agencies that extension cooperates with and how they can tie in with those portals.
Extension plan critiques. Not only do students have to develop their own extension plan, but they have to critique their peer's extension plan.
That is an anonymous critique analogous to journal peer review. We provide them with a rubric to use for their review.
We do cover program evaluation. While we don't necessarily require that within our policy, we feel they should have a firm understanding of
evaluation. If you are planning an extension program it goes hand-in-hand with evaluation because you have to have an understanding
of what the issue is, what you are trying to achieve with your program. Then we have them do presentations.
Through the progression of the course, they understand extension and the Logic model, they develop a Logic Model. That's the outline for
their extension plan, they critique each other's plans and revise their own,
They do the presentations and critique each other's presentations. And so again, we really try and
have them develop their communication skills but evaluate each others.
So not only do we have them develop these communcation skills throughout the course, but by having them critique their peers,
it helps them have a better understanding of what works and what doesn't work.
So this is our policy the way it currently stands. This is available online in our FNR policy manual. We have this linked from our grad
extension web site that I will show you at the end of the presentation.
The course is required. We also require them to have a Logic Model and we require them to have an extension plan. So really you can see by
taking the course, they walk out with two other requirements. The only thing they have left to do after the course is develop their extension
deliverable.
And if you read the policy, this is defined quite broadly and that is intentional. Because, again, we wanted to maintain academic freedom
for faculty and we just wanted to be open- minded about the types of things students would do.
Initially, we had one deliverable for master's students and two for PhD students.
We decided to change that to one in our most recent policy revision.
The analogy was that while these students produce only one thesis or dissertation, certainly their scope and breadth are different.
So, similarly with their extension deliverable, they would produce only one but
we would expect those to be different in terms of scope and breadth.
An important part of the policy is the tracking. Students print and complete an online form at their defense.
They fill out what their extension deliverables are. They take this to their oral defense
at the conclusion of their time here. And then their committee signs off on that. It's turned into the graduate office and it's also turned into
the extension coordinator as well. We can then track the number of deliverables students complete over time.
There's a lot of benefits to adopting the model.
We've certianly realized some of these in FNR. Number one, it increases the understanding of extension. Again, I think having that formalized
structure is key. There's a lot of work done by faculty at Purdue and other insititutions
where they do a really good job of integrating students with the extension they do. The problem is that once they go on,
then that is lost. Where if it is a formalized structure, it is retained as faculty come and go.
Secondly, improved communication skills. We really stress that within the class. And again, our students do a good job speaking at various
professional meetings, and intergrating with those groups, but we haven't done as good a job in getting students opportunities to give
presentations with non-scientific audiences. So the policy can definately help increase their communication skills.
Thirdly, it can increase their marketability. When you look at careers, both within higher education but also within
nongovernmental organizations, government agencies, there's an increased demand for people with good communication and leadership
skills. This can help fill that. It's documented and something that they get credit for. It's helps their marketability from that standpoint.
Fourth, it's really important in terms of linking
teaching, research and extension personnel.
It's become a more cohesive program within our department. Instead of having little parts
that are operating independantly and not neccessarily communicating on a regular basis.
So that's an important part of it. And I think a direct outcome of a lot of these is the last point in it really increases the visibility of extension.
When students come they are all exposed to the teaching mission of land grant universities. Graduate students do research, so they are
exposed to that part of it. But they don't get formallty exposed to extension. Because of that, they don't understand what extension is.
So this has been benefical increasing the exposure of extension not only in our department but within the College as well.
some shows a week of may face with a sleeper Russia was seven years of those resources of
Some challenges that we have faced. Some graduate student research projects have limited extension outlets.
As I've mentioned before, our graduate program is quite diverse. While some things fit very well within traditional extension outlets, other things
like perhaps genetics, we sometimes struggle with that. While we always try to help students identify an outlet or project that
really fits their graduate research, that is not always possible.
Secondly, you get variable student support by faculty advisors. Part of that stems from the fact
that most of our faculty aren't involved in extension. They certainly don't have formal training in extension. So
some of them find it difficult to advise students in developing their extension deliverable. That's definately a challenge.
In our department, we have more FTEs in teaching and research than we do in extension.
That's where it really leads to the third challenge. You really need a team of extension people within the department to support this.
When students are having trouble identifying appropriate outlets or have questions about thier project,
we need extension people within the department who can provide them some guidance.
Our contact information is here. It's also available on our website. I want to direct you to our website.
A lot of what I talked about is on the website. In fact this very presentation is located here.
We have a link to our policy manual that has our graduate requirement for extension.
We also have a section on our course. I breifly described our course but you can find in more detail the syllabus,
but we also have examples of a student logic model, extension plan, and presentation.
Emily McCallen is a graduate student in our department. These provide examples for people who want to learn more about us.
It also provides our students an example of a good logic model,
what they would like as an extension plan, and what that would look like as an oral presentation.
Another section on our website is student deliverables. As I mentioned before, that is an important part of our policy.
We track that because we want to see what kind of difference we are making, are we increasing our extension capacity, those
kinds of things.
We have some examples from recent graduate students. There is also a link to a complete list.
You can go by year to each graduate student and it lists what their deliverables were. It also lists their major professor.
It also lists their major professor.
That is a living document that will grow over time as we progress.
We also have some feedback on the policy. An important part of this is "What do student think?"
We ask them some things on our course evaluation every year but that doesn't necessarily provide us feedback on the policy.
Every graduate student has an exit interview with our department head. He asks each a couple questions related to our graduate
extension policy. Some of that information is listed here on how students find it benefits them.
And then lastly, we have a link to resources for current FNR graduate students.
There is a link to our reporting form. We provide examples of how students should report various types of deliverables on their form.
It would be similar to how they would list items on their CV.
We also have a potential outlets guide.
One of the problems students face is determining an appropriate outlet for thier extension deliverable.
For example, in the publications and newsletters section, we list the Indiana Woodland Steward.
There is information about what the organziation is, kinds of topics they publish, what are the length of the articles, and the audience and
distribution list. There is the contact person who to send materials to, procedures and deadlines for articles, and so on and so forth.
It takes the mystery out of how students can get linked in with some of these outlets.
Lastly, we have some other helpful publications and resources listed on the bottom of the page related to extension, the logic model, and
program planning.
So that is our program in a nutshell. My contact information as well as Rod Williams' contact information is on our website.
If you have any questions about what we are doing with graduate extension in FNR, or undergraduate extension, please feel free to
contact either one of us. Thanks.